Learning to Run a Generator in a Heat Wave

Push-button generator

The forecast was for 97 degrees F.

I know for a lot of folks, 97 degrees isn’t a big deal—might even be a cooling trend. And around here, 97 isn’t completely awful, compared to the triple-digit heat dome we experienced 13 months ago.

Still, in our climate, people, animals and plants just aren’t acclimated to the high 90s.

The other evening, facing the next day’s predicted 97-degrees, I popped into the house to bring in the blueberries I’d just picked, when I saw the power was out.

John was away until the following evening. So he wasn’t around to start the generator—a really nice push-button, gasoline-powered model we’d bought about five years ago. Despite being modestly strong for someone my size and age, we got it because I didn’t have the upper-body strength to deal with our existing pull-start machine.

No pull-cord starter!

And John and I both figured there would eventually come a day when he wouldn’t have the necessary get-up-and-go either.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but for all my preparedness in other areas, I was completely unprepared now. In those five years, I never learned how to operate our generator.

Anyway, there I was, with no power and no John. Of course I know how to push an “On” button. And I was familiar with our in-house circuit box. But I didn’t have a clue about the right way to connect our Gen-Tran system and power up the generator, without blowing out our whole electrical system!

Still, I wasn’t too worried about the outage. I mean, it’s summer! There was no wind, so the problem couldn’t be weather-related, like our wintertime outages. I figured it was just one of those momentary blips in the grid.

But being in the middle of watering the garden and all the berries before the real heat arrived, I had one major, immediate concern. Right away, I strode down the driveway and waded through all the tall bracken fern to the pumphouse.

We’d had a small solar array installed 18 months ago, with battery backup. This design meant the batteries could power the well pump—and the solar panels would feed continually power to the batteries. Unlike the 11 years of power outages John and I had dealt with previously, we now would have water, come what may.

That is, fingers-crossed, if everything was working as it should.

I unlocked the pumphouse door, flipped the light switch and Whew! Lights, plus the lighting display on the inverter was on. Clearly, we were set, waterwise.

But not for our home’s electricity. Besides the pumphouse solar panels, we have a big solar array for our home and shop, but it’s a net-metering system. Which means, the system is connected to the grid. So when the power goes out, you’re out of luck.

While I waited for the power to return, I tried to stay busy. In preparation for the hot day, I was getting as much of the garden and berry patches watered as I could, before the plant-wilting temps the next day.

But the power stayed out. Since we don’t have a cell signal in our corner of the Foothills, we couldn’t call the power company. And I didn’t know if the outage was only at our place, or if the whole neighborhood was out.

A couple of hours went by. Now I was getting worried. Inside the house, it was 82 degrees, and I anxious about the fresh groceries in our filled-to-the-brim fridge—how long could they stay at safe temperatures?

The meat in the deep-freeze concerned me too. And it would be dark in another hour and 20 minutes. I sure didn’t want to be fumbling around with unfamiliar equipment without good lighting. If I had to run the generator, I would have to get up to speed on how to do it.

And fast.

I jumped into the car and made the two minute drive to our closest neighbors—the generous and big-hearted Alan and Gretchen.  Why drive such a short distance, you may ask? Well, they have three dogs at their place, and the pups treat people arriving by car as welcome visitors. People visiting on foot are not.

Come to find out, they were out of power too. We all concluded this was a bigger outage. But our treasured neighbors had one very precious commodity: a landline with an analog phone.

John and I had switched over to Internet phone service months ago, so we no longer had a landline. And you actually need a touch-tone phone to reach the power company’s phone system. But thanks to Alan and Gretchen, I could call John.

He was at his daughter’s house, two states away. I called her number (John didn’t always keep his cell phone on him). Happily, she picked up, and I explained my dilemma. John was out walking the dogs, but he’d be back in 45 minutes.

I thanked her and hung up. The light was fading, but I had our neighbors’ open invitation to come back and try him later.

I stayed busy with more watering and slapping mosquitoes, and returned to Alan and Gretchen’s to phone him again. And he was home! I’d brought pencil and paper, and as he reviewed the steps, I carefully jotted down the directions and details involved.

Gretchen held a little lantern and a headlamp over my shoulder so I could see enough to write. And John, working from memory, had to backtrack a couple of times to retool his directions. But at last, I had things clear in my mind, and after profuse thanks to Alan and Gretchen, I headed home.

From their driveway, I saw our neighborhood bear. But he was across their field, and ambled into the woods as soon as he saw the car.

Once home, I was super-nervous about messing with the main electrical panels. But I had no choice. Almost all our outages generally last anywhere from 12 – 48 hours or longer. And our fridge and freezer food would never go the distance.

I had the rechargeable lantern for light, so it was now or never.

The steps for our generator system are below—your system or the one in your future may be different.

We keep our generator in our shop/garage. Open the garage door for the generator exhaust. John already had the generator positioned right next to the door for easy access and ventilation.

Grab the specialized, super-heavy duty cable that connects the generator with the Gen-Tran system and have it at the ready.

Now the house. Night was falling, but I had my trusty lantern, and the house circuit panel was the easy step. Shut off all the big energy consumers: Hot water heater, heat pump, range, and so forth. I could keep the light circuits on.

Now for the nerve-wracking part. Dealing with the Gen-Tran. Back outside.

Gen-Tran with Warning in Red!

Even opening the panel door was a little tricky, but John had explained how. Nervously, I switched the house circuits off. Luckily, the circuits are designed so you can’t have both the house and the generator circuits on at the same time.

Then I saw the sign on the door. A Very Important Sign. In all caps, so you wouldn’t miss it.

“TURN OFF SOLAR BEFORE TURNING ON GENERATOR”

Well, shoot.

John hadn’t mentioned the solar system. I knew the solar circuit box was just around the corner of the shop, no problem. But it really looked complicated. And I did NOT want to risk doing something wrong and blowing out our inverter!

Solar circuit box

(After all, John and I were in hock for the next 19 years to pay for the whole thing!)

In the car again, this time with my own lantern, and over to Alan and Gretchen’s. I could only hope the third time would be the charm.

By now it was getting quite dark. “I’m so sorry,” I said when they answered the door, and I explained my dilemma. Gretchen took me back to their shop where they kept their landline.

“I can take it from here,” I told her—wanting her and Alan to enjoy the rest of the evening inside. So she returned to their house.

Fortunately, John picked up. He felt a little sheepish about forgetting to mention the solar circuits, but I said, “Well, you haven’t started the generator that many times since we got the system.”

Still really nervous about messing with not one, but two unfamiliar circuit boxes, I was saying my goodbyes—when Gretchen rushed in.

“The power’s back on!” she said joyfully. So John was able to get the good news, and not worry all night.

She and I met Alan out in the driveway, and we shared our elation. They'd heard from another neighbor that a tree had come down on some power lines. The little town about 15 miles away had been completely out of power. 

"No wonder PSE got things back on-line so fast," I said. Not having to rush home, I told them about the bear. Alan asked, “Were you scared?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I was safe in the car!”

He couldn’t resist teasing me about bears being able to break windshields, and after some relieved laughter all around, it was back home for me, for a very late dinner.

But I had lights. I could take a hot, instead of lukewarm shower. I could even re-watch another episode of Downton Abbey, then go to bed, knowing John would be home the next day—and all would be well at Berryridge Farm.

And you can bet that John is giving me a hands-on tutorial on starting that generator today!

P.S. Here are the rest of the steps to starting a generator with a Gen-Tran system like ours:

Go to solar circuit box and turn off the solar circuits.

Once you’ve got the correct Gen-Tran house circuits off, time to connect the special cable from the generator and plug it in to the Gen-Tran. 

You can check your own connections, but for our system, the “male” end plugs into the generator. The “female” end goes into the Gen-Tran box outlet, which have the “male” prongs.”

Here’s a photo. At left of the outlet is the Gen-Tran circuit box.

Gen-Tran outlet outside

When you’ve got your cable connected, then return to the generator and turn the generator key to “on” and press the ON button.

When the generator starts up, let it run for four or five minutes. This way, you’re letting the generator engine warm up before you put an electric load on it. 

Then, and only then, you go back to the Gen-Tran circuit box, and switch the breakers that connect to generator to “On.”  

Personally, (because I can’t always rely on my memory!) I have typed up the directions and have them handy in a kitchen drawer! 

Netting Blueberries is for the Birds

New cage around blueberry patch #2

Home gardeners raising blueberries face a built-in problem: unless you protect your shrubs from the birds in bearing season, there’s just no point to growing them!

Blueberries have been my favorite crop since our “olden days,” back in our city garden. With a few bushes here and there, John and I would circle each one with 1-inch poultry fencing, then toss a net on top and call it good.

Unfortunately, we discovered that simple strategy would never cut it at our rural acreage! Not when you’re surrounded by woodlands teeming with hungry, country-smart songbirds. 

And if you’re trying to produce enough berries to freeze for winter eating—with maybe 10 or 15 shrubs—the casual approach to fencing, in my experience, especially doesn’t work.

John and I have two blueberry patches, one with nine shrubs and a second with eight. And the Foothills birds have proved to be relentless about getting at the berries. 

The thing is, netting is a royal pain. It’s time consuming—it takes John and me at least a couple of hours to net one cage, and at least two more hours to take it down after bearing season. With two blueberry areas, that’s over eight hours. And it’s painstaking work to tie down the nets, making sure there are NO gaps or openings.

After many years of experimenting with various fencing/netting designs, trying to protect far larger swathes of ground than we ever had to in the city, John and I were growing more frustrated.

Now robins love blueberries—but it’s actually pretty easy to protect the berries from this bird. They’re one of the larger songbirds, and can’t worm their way into small openings. Finches are another matter—they're fond of berries too, and they will zoom right through 1-inch poultry fencing. So you have to cover the fencing with nets.

Towhees are still another matter: they’re the most inventive and ingenious berry thieves. They are fearless about working their way into netted spaces via the tiniest opening or loose netting.

And there’s another excellent reason to do the best job you can with netting. Sadly, we’ve had more birds caught in loose nets than we care to count. Towhees, those mischievous and full-of-personality birds, are the ones that most often get caught in the nets and die. 

It’s the most forlorn summertime task, to cut precious birds out of a tangled net and bury them.

While birds are one thing, rodents are another. They can easily get through the poultry fencing or under it. We’ve had season after season dealing with chipmunks eating or damaging hundreds of berries. Mice too—and worse, they chew at the roots at the shrub’s crown.

And after trying to get by with poultry fencing and nets, John and I finally realized our higgledy-piggledy fencing/netting would have to go.

About five years ago, John came up with a new plan: a “cage” for blueberries made from ½-inch hardware cloth. Because blueberries can reach up to six to eight feet in height or more, you wouldn’t want to cover the top with any fencing materials. Instead, before the berries begin to ripen, drape netting over the top, making it as taut as possible. 

1st cage John built with netting in place

After he constructed a hardware cloth cage for our older and more productive shrubs, we discovered this method topped with netting has proved to be the most failsafe protection—and also keeps chipmunk incursions down to a minimum.

We always meant to get around to creating a cage for our second patch. Especially after some critter—a raccoon? (Though we’ve never seen one around here.) Or a baby bear? Whatever it was, one night this animal just climbed right on top of our sagging, wobbly netting and tore a gigantic hole in it.

Judging from the damage, it looked the animal just fell smack on top of the shrub. It broke several of the main boughs, and hundreds of smashed berries littered the ground.

Well, no one, and I mean no one messes with my favorite Chandler shrub!

Although a full plate of pressing chores, family commitments and out-and-out procrastination kept us from this project for two or three years, John—with a little help from yours truly—started construction this summer.

We hit a couple of snags—John tried to remove a stump in the patch. It turned out to be cedar, and was as solid as a rock. Then, when we were all set to hand the top row of fence, we discovered we did not have that extra roll of hardware cloth that I thought we had. John had to make a trip to the city and buy more. But we finally finished this second cage yesterday. 

Costs:

Caging your berries is not a cheap date: at 14’ x 24’, and 6’ in height, our second berry patch required a quantity of 3-foot hardware cloth. Which in this inflationary summer cost $250 for 50’. Plus tax.

Doing the math: a 76’ rectangle, with a top and bottom row = 152 feet to enclose the patch. 

Another view of the 2nd patch

We didn’t have to buy all new hardware cloth; this second patch was already partially fenced with this material. In prior years, the cost of hardware cloth was about $140/50 feet. So we sure would have saved money if we’d done this project sooner.

But when you think about it, this fencing will (eventually) pay for itself. Last summer, even with the June heat dome that fried about 25% of our berries, John and I were still able to feast on our homegrown, organic berries all through the bearing season—about 6 weeks. And I ended up freezing about 50 lbs.

If you’re buying local organic blueberries at the store, at around $5/lb, well, there’s $250 right there!

Besides, as I like to say, you can’t put a price on good health. Or succulent blueberries straight from your garden! 

Great Movie for Preppers… (What not to do!)

If you’re a fan of modern homesteading stories or wilderness films set in the American West, do not miss “Land,” a 2021 production starring Robin Wright! Set in the Wyoming Rocky Mountains, it’s the story of a woman, Edee, who has retreated to the wilderness after an unbearable tragedy. 

You could watch this spare, lovely movie for the scenery alone—awe-inspiring snow-capped peaks, sparkling river, and dense forests teeming with wildlife. (It’s filmed on location on Moose Mountain, Alberta, Canada, standing in for Wyoming.) But you might pick up a few survival skills too!

What struck John and me right away was the Edee’s stunning lack of preparedness for a life in the wilderness—providing lots of “woman versus nature” conflict. At the beginning of the story, she actually didn’t have the first clue about what she was getting herself into. 

When John and I started our new life on our Foothills acreage, we figured out two things really fast. 

First, protect your food supply.

I cringed when I saw our gal Edee open a can of tuna on her front porch and casually pour the liquid onto the ground. I said to John, “What is she doing? Inviting every bear in the vicinity to visit?” Clearly “being bear safe” was not in her wheelhouse!

Second, preparing for winter is a year-round project. 

Edee learned both the hard way. When a bear broke into her cabin and devoured all her food (had it smelled the tuna earlier??) she discovered bears really can bite canned goods open. 

Also, keeping two fires going every day in an uninsulated cabin—one in the wood stove, and one in the fireplace—is pretty much a full time job. 

She did not have any firewood laid by, or a place to dry any. And as it turned out, fetching wood outside in the middle of a blizzard proved to be her undoing.

One other element might be even more important: before embarking on a life of isolation, extreme weather and unrelenting work simply to survive, it’s my experience that you should aim to be in good physical, mental, and emotional health. 

Grief-stricken, Edee’s mind and spirit was nearly broken by what had happened. She simply didn’t have the energy and focus for the life she had chosen. 

Magnificent Canadian Rockies

What Edee did discover is something else John and I learned our first, tumultuous year on our homestead: you can’t go it alone. Even the narrator of the wilderness memoir “One Man’s Wilderness” relied on a circle of friends to bring in food supplies and keep up his spirits.

(He also fed himself very well, with hearty balanced meals…not a steady diet of canned chili like Edee.) 

Complete isolation might work for a short time, but oftentimes it’s the kindness of strangers that gets you through.

Kindness and resilience is the heart of Edee’s journey in “Land.” I hope you’ll give this inspiring movie a try!

Bobcat in Residence

Bobcat (from Pixabay) so you can see the coloring

Bibbity, bobbity, boo!

So says the Fairy Godmother in Disney’s Cinderella. At our place, the magic spell goes bibbity, bobcattiby—boo…

Because the bobcat that menaced our hens is getting conjured up on a regular basis. In fact, evidence suggests the cat has gotten awfully comfortable around here. 

Just last week, he lounged in a patch of bare ground just outside our fence. John ran to get his camera, opened the back door and shot all kinds of pics.

The bobcat just stared at us and lazily switched his short tail.

What’s funny is, our one hen seems to have gotten accustomed to the bobcat too. She’ll cackle when it comes around, but doesn’t even run into the coop anymore.

She doesn’t seem to be anxious either, because she’s also laying like a champ—in 2 ½ weeks, she’s produced 16 eggs!

I’m certainly more relaxed now that we keep her penned up pretty much 24/7. If John is running the weed-whacker close by, we’ll let her into her yard to free-range, but that’s it.

With just one chicken scratching the ground of her caged pen, a few weeds are actually growing in there. I imagine before summer’s over, she’ll have all kinds of greens to peck at in the comfort of her safe spot.

Five minutes ago, I saw the cat on top of our back fence. A bobcat, against the rich green of midsummer, is not hard to see—their distinctive coat is a variegated mix of tawny browns with a bit of black, and a white flash on his tail.

Today, as he jumped off the fence, I grabbed my iPad for a shot, and caught the bobcat sauntering across the open spot where we’d seen him last week.

When I opened the back door, he saw me, paused, then just went on his merry way. (See cat on the grass, just above the bare strip of ground.) 

He must have figured out John and I are no threat to him—but hopefully he’s also got the idea that partaking at our chicken buffet is over.

So it seems that all four of us—John, me, the former Miss Broody, which we now call “Missy,” and the bobcat seem to have found equilibrium.

And if the bobcat is hanging around to feed on Berryridge mice and voles, more power to him!