Wow, that book The Moonstone is quite a story!

I thought about getting a quick picture of our generator this morning for this post, but I didn’t have time and it’s really nothing to look at: A yellowish box about three feet square and five feet long sitting out behind the house near the woodshed. But that box is part of the reason that come what may, we’ll be fine in our mountain home.

One morning last winter the power went out. It was during the usual weekday morning rush: family scriptures and prayer, make beds, get dressed, brush hair, eat breakfast, out the door by 7:15. Not a good time for the power to go out. But I slipped on my shoes, padded out through the snow to the box behind the house, and pushed a button. It started to life, puttering like a lawn mower. I went back to the bright warm house, we finished our breakfast, and got out the door with no more fuss.

If the generator had been functioning perfectly it would have started up by itself after 10 seconds’ outage. But everything else went exactly according to plan. The generator is not designed to power the entire house in the event of power failure, nor, come to think of it, would I want it to. There is a certain charm in doing some things by the light of a kerosene lamp.

But for other things kerosene won’t do. Not for a well pump, a refrigerator or freezer, or a microwave, computer, or water heater. (I know, some appliances run on propane, but I was dissuaded by their dinky size for their cost.) All these things are linked via a transfer switch to our generator, and all of them will run–and did run, as demonstrated by our unexpected test last winter–on that power as long as the fuel lasts.

What fuel? Our generator draws its spark from our 1000-gallon propane tank (recently refilled, before prices rise again), and running at full tilt my calculations once led me to the conclusion that it could run 12 hours a day for over four months before we ran out of fuel. Not that we’d do that. But it’s nice to know the thing is there, and that it works.

Remarkably, even though we’re on a rural electrical co-op waaay back in the trees, the commercial power has only failed us once. Our power bill ranges between $50–$58 a month. Not bad for a family of nine.