Fresh off a recent power outage, our wood burning stove has been putting in work. Winter storms and heavy winds often trigger falling trees on our property, so we've got a solid amount of seasoned wood saved up to burn in our wood stove. These things can kick out a surprising amount of heat, so we try to get a fire burning when it's cold in order to help with heating costs. Plus, it looks cool.

The benefits of our woodland homestead are many, but one drawback is that trees are known to fall, and every so often, they fall on power lines or other electrical things, and suddenly, hey, the lights are off. If we’re lucky, it’s a quick flicker and then back to Netflixing, but with larger storms, we’ve experienced power outages lasting a week or longer. This is when portable power stations come in super handy.

We started this process about a year ago and we’re somewhere around Step 9 here, but this is a basic breakdown of the path we followed, with some links to outside resources as well as more in-depth content on this site. Here’s what we did…