The phone tech arrived about half an hour before I needed to head out, which was perfect.

I thought the phone company had our section number, like the electric company. We’ve had a tech come out before, a few years back, and there were no issues finding us. This poor guy tried to use GPS! The numerical designation for the road we are on, ends at a cross road some miles from us, then our section restarts maybe a quarter mile off. I’ve never actually driven down that section of road. When I grew up here, it never extended that far, but ended at a farmer’s field, a mile away. The “new” road was built during our decades living in other provinces.

The guy had driven down about 4 miles of gravel road that isn’t very high on the maintenance priority list. He said he had to drive at a crawl! I made sure to tell him where the main gravel road to get back to the highway was.

Once I opened the gate for him, I showed him where the box was on the house, and he asked where the main box was. That would be the one on the fence line by our sign, but there is another one near our secondary gate that I told him about.

He was almost completely done before I headed out!

The first thing he did was test the box at the house. Well. Almost. His first attempt didn’t work, because his test phone was frozen. !! He had to get another one and try again.

What he found was that the voltage was too high. It was definitely an external problem and one that is apparently common. He then went to work on the box at the fence.

As I was about to leave, I couldn’t see him, or his van, anywhere so we checked the phone. We had a dial tone! As I was leaving, though, I saw him parked on the sude of the road, near the box at the fence line. His van had been hidden by trees.

I pulled up next to him and we spoke for a while. He was in the process of calling the phone company. While he got our phone working, there were wires that needed to be replaced, so he was calling that in. He wanted to get that done so it wouldn’t happen again after he left.

I found out from my daughter that he was still there, at least an hour later!

It was done before I got home, though.

I’m glad I made the trip to town today. Along with a few groceries and refilling two of our big water jugs, I did find stove pellets at one of the local hardware stores. It feels strange, buying “premium” stove pellets when it will be used as cat litter! It was a bit more expensive, but not as expensive as driving to the nearest city for it!

We had some blowing snow, but the roads were still good. Looking at the weather radar, the system seems to be stalled at the border between provinces, and dropping a lot of snow! We may end up getting just the edges of it, as it passes by.

We could use the snow, but I’m not going to complain about still having milder temperatures. Assuming the forecasts are at least somewhat accurate!

Now that the phone is working again, it’s time to move the base back to my bedroom/office.

The Re-Farmer