Total cost on this home made golf cart dump box was just over 5 bucks thanks to all the scrap wood from the old house.

It expands the back hauling capacity of the golf cart from 2 buckets to 7, with about 3 buckets worth in between the cracks.

Next up is a wooden rack to take advantage of some space up front.

This short video provides an accurate yet boring picture of how the rental chipper cuts a rug.

Our share ended up being 1/3 of the weekend time which worked out to be 65 dollars.

It was a great opportunity that would not have been possible without our neighbors' suggestion of sharing the time and the aid of their tractor to pull the thing all the way back here. Well worth waking up early tomorrow morning to drive it back to it's home in the big city.

I imagine this might be the closest thing we have to participating in an old fashioned barn raising which is too bad because this neighborly cooperation thing is a pretty darn good feeling at the end of the day.

The final step of assessing your stream for microhydro is doing a bit of math to determine the creek's power.  I'm simplifying a bit here because you will lose some power due to friction as the water rubs up against the inside of your pipe, but this formula is good enough for estimating whether your creek is worth looking into further.

If you'd rather have your estimated energy output in kwh/month so that you can compare it to your electric bill, continue on to this formula:

So, it's finally time to see if our little creek passes the test.  She puts out 20 gpm of water and has a head of about 3 feet.  So:

Sadly, our little creek failed miserably --- that would be enough to keep the lights on in our house, but nothing more.  As a rule of thumb, you need either a large head or a large flow to make microhydro appealing, and our little creek had neither.

On the other hand, we have several other possibilities on our property that look more appealing.  If we were willing to pay a lot for a run of the river system, or to build a big dam, our primary creek would definitely provide all of our power.  On the cheaper side, it's possible that it would be worth our while to tap energy from the spring that comes out way up on the hill, although it does stop flowing during dry weather.

Finally, I'm curious whether there would be a way to make electricity from the water running off the barn roof if we installed gutters.  I envision using tanks as a storage system and just letting the water leak out slowly, rather than buying expensive (and environmentally unfriendly batteries.)  I estimate that nearly 4,000 gallons of water flow off the roof each month, but I guess that's only 0.09 gpm.  Back to the drawing board....

The other important measurement to take when assessing your creek for microhydro is pressure or head.  The two terms are different measurements of the same thing --- potential energy just waiting to turn your turbine and make some power.

Many homesteaders pipe water from a spring down to their house, and the energy in the water line can be tapped for microhydro power.  To measure pressure directly in such a situation, install a gressure gauge in the line and read the dial.

If you don't already have a water line in place, you're better off calculating a stream's head rather than measuring pressure directly.  Head is simply the change in elevation between the highest and lowest points of a stream, and it can be measured in several different ways.  If you have a gps or watch with an altimeter, this can give a rough measurement of the respective elevations, but I found the water level method (outlined in the embedded video) to be the simplest.

To measure head using the water level method, find an inflexible length of pipe and start at the stream's highest point.  Completely submerge the pipe, then slowly lift the downhill end out of the water.  Creek water will flow out of the pipe's downhill end until it is raised level with the uphill end, at which point water will stop flowing.  Measure the vertical distance between the downhill end of the pipe and the ground and you have the change in elevation between the two points.  Now scoot the pipe downstream until the uphill end rests where the downhill end used to be, and repeat your measurement.  Lather, rinse, and repeat until you run out of shampoo...er, reach the end of the stream.  The head is the sum of all of the elevations measured along the creek's length.

The downfall of our property's creeks is their valley-bottom flatness.  Our small creek has the largest head, and even there the total change in elevation is barely over three feet.  Granted, microhydro applications can work with as little as 2 feet of head, but the setup becomes much pricier if your head is less than 50 feet.

Last year, a couple of friends teamed up and bought us a dozen beautiful blueberry plants in honor of our wedding.  We were sorely unprepared, so we only managed to whack down box-elders and open up the canopy, then roll the logs out of the way and plant the bushes in new ground.  This oversight caused a lot of problems since I couldn't really get the lawnmower around the logs, and by the middle of the summer, our blueberry patch had turned into a weed patch.  Luckily, the blueberries survived the neglect, and I promised them a more weeded existence this year.

We spent the morning Wednesday clearing up the tree carcasses in the blueberry patch to make this year's mowing much easier.  Mark's hard work with the chainsaw netted us half a cord of firewood, now drying in the woodshed, and my branch piles are growing too.  Our chipper rental date is tentatively set for this weekend, but Lucy didn't want to wait --- she did her part to increase the farm's wood chip supply while we cleared the brush.

Despite wanting to consider energy efficiency first, I was still curious whether the copious water on our farm would be a good fit for microhydro power.  The first step in assessing a site for microhydro is to measure stream flow.  Scott Davis suggests two easy methods.

The weir method is used in large streams or rivers.  The water flows through a notched weir that forms a waterfall.  You can use various tables or formulas to determine the flow rate of your creek based on the width and depth of the water in the weir's notch.  I didn't feel like constructing a weir, so I moved on to option 2.

The container method consists of finding a spot where all of the creek's water runs through a culvert or pipe, then sticking a five gallon bucket underneath.  Time how long it takes for your bucket to fill up, then use the following formula to determine your stream's flow:

As you can see in the embedded video, I found a spot where a huge root mass had channeled all of our smaller creek's water into a waterfall, so decided to try out the container method of estimating stream flow.  I couldn't fit a five gallon bucket under the waterfall, but a one gallon cook pot slipped right in between the roots and filled up in 3 seconds.  Our flow in that creek is approximately:

Our smallest creek's flow is pretty low, but is definitely within the realm of microhydro power.  In fact, Scott Davis notes that you can get power from streams running as slowly as 2 gpm (gallons per minute.)

Power usage numbers were the first part of Microhydro that caught my attention.  Scott Davis considers a system rated at 50 to 100 continuous watts to be the bare essentials level (running lights and small appliances).  This equates to only 35 to 70 kilowatt-hours per month!  The amount of juice put out by even the so-called modern conveniences level seems inconceivably low at 75 to 125 kwh/month.

For comparison's sake, the average American household uses 936 kwh/month.  During our lowest energy month ever (this past June), we came in at 270 kwh.  Running a household on 75 kwh/month seems almost inconceivable to me.

But Scott Davis makes the excellent point that artificially low electricity prices in North America have led to extremely wasteful behavior.  Specifically, he notes that electricity should never be used for making heat --- since you lose a lot of power every time you convert energy from one form to another, burning coal to make electricity to make heat is a bad idea.

His example household that runs all of the modern conveniences on microhydro deletes any heating appliances from the mix.  Clothes driers, of course, are replaced by the good old solar clothesline.  Rooms are heated with wood or passive solar while water is heated with solar hot water heaters in the summer and coils around the wood stove in the winter.  Finally, cooking is done on propane (or, I would add, on a rocket stove.)

As always, the best and cheapest way to save energy is to become more efficient, so I think we'll do some basic efficiency tricks before saving up for an alternative energy system.  Our biggest energy hogs are clearly our electric stove (which heats our water as well as cooks our dinners) and our back-up space heaters, so these seem like a good place to start.

Microhydro: Clean Power From Water by Scott Davis is written at a sixth grade reading level...and that's a good thing.  I'm far from ready for an installation guide; instead, I just wanted to know if microhydro is feasible on our farm.

Although most people with an interest in alternative energy go straight to solar cells, microhydro can be a much more economical option if your terrain is right.  I've read estimates suggesting that consumer-level microhydro systems are between 5 and 40 times as cost effective as photovoltaic systems, in large part because water is much less intermittent than the sun so you don't need as many batteries.

Scott Davis divides microhydro systems into five levels, only two of which are of interest to me.  The bare essentials level will run lights and small appliances (like a microwave, radio, telephone, blender, stereo, and laptop) while the modern conveniences level adds in efficient refrigerators, freezers, and well pumps.  A microhydro system running the bare essentials can be put together for as low as $2,000 (or possibly even less if you scrounge some parts) while the modern conveniences level can cost two to three times that much.  Finally, an alternative energy source that wouldn't put us into debt!

Somewhere in the middle of the morning Thursday, the homemade storage building began to feel like inside rather than outside.  I could tell because Mark went outside, leaving the door ajar, and I came along behind him and closed the door to keep the room warm.

And it was warm inside.  Despite being snowy and barely above freezing outside, once Mark fired up the wood stove, the building heated up surprisingly fast.  We don't even have the insulation up in the ceiling yet, but within an hour we were shedding our coats and working in our indoors clothes.  I guess we've been losing a lot of heat from our exterior wood stove to the outside!

I wonder if, rather than saving up for an efficient wood stove, we should instead make another small building and install two small wood stoves, relegating the trailer to summer use.  Not this year, though!  The garden is already starting to pull at my brain, begging me to finish up winter chores and start the pruning.

(The photos above show what I've been up to while Mark was putting in the door --- covering the walls with a nice, smooth plywood.  I find myself getting lost in the swirls of the wood grain.)

Remember our huge pile of firewood?  We ran through it unbelievably fast --- first the power was out for two weeks and we had to keep a big fire going just to keep the trailer above freezing due to lack of a fan.  Then we had two weeks of below freezing temperatures and again had to keep the fire raging to keep us warm.  The result is that the 1.75 cords of wood that we thought would last all winter lasted a mere month.

So in January, we went back to electric heat.  I hated to give in to the coal-fired power plant, but our firewood supplier took our $50 down payment and dropped off the face of the earth.  Due to major environmental guilt, I keep the trailer between 40 and 50 degrees when heating with electricity, which is really quite comfortable if you wear layers (and are used to it.)

That's all a long explanation for why Joey came in his truck last week instead of his car --- he wanted to drop off a load of firewood for his poor, freezing baby sister.  The firewood was much appreciated, but the truck got stuck due to completely treadless tires.  Rather than calling a tow truck to haul Joey out, we called our mother and begged her to come pick Joey up so that Mark and I could take advantage of this opportunity to haul gravel for our driveway.  (We ordered some of that from our hauler too, but we really haven't heard from him in over a month....)

On Monday, Mark babied the truck out of the mud (now thawed and thus a bit less precarious) and took her to town to get new tires.  We thought the two back tires we needed to replace would come to about $300, but Mark came home with a receipt for only $140 --- he had discovered the wonder of retread tires!  If you, like me, have never heard of retreads, you're in for a treat.  Old tires end up in a factory where they're tested for safety and have the old tread buffed off, then a new tread is is applied.  The end result is nearly as good as a new tire (and every bit as safe), for a fraction of the price.  Apparently, at this time, only big tires (R16 and greater) are retreaded, so most of them end up going to large-scale trucking and bussing fleets, but farmers are also retread fanatics.  If you have a truck that needs new wheels, retreads seem like the way to go!

 

We've had a really good test for the storage building roof today thanks to a steady stream of rain. No leaks so far while we begin the process of measuring, cutting, and installing the plywood that Anna worked so hard to bring in yesterday.

 

A perfect complement to yesterday's solar powered automatic chicken coop opener would be this portable hyrdogen generator.

Kristie Lu Stout has an interesting post about this exciting new product that will allow everybody to generate their own hydrogen from water and store it in a safe, low pressure battery-like container. No word yet on how much it might cost, but plans are to have a tabletop model available by the end of 2010.

Getting off the grid with solar or wind has always come back to battery storage. If this technology improves, it could replace most of those expensive and toxic chemical batteries and bring alternative energy within the reach of the common homesteader.

As part of  my continued obsession with lower-energy cooking, I decided to try to make a haybox to cook my chicken carcass down into stock Sunday.  Someone (Heather?) had emailed me in response to my Dutch oven post, telling me that you can bring a pot of incipient soup to a boil, wrap it in towels, and leave it alone for the afternoon.  The cast iron and towels will hold in the heat, and the soup will cook itself.

While researching rocket stoves, I stumbled across a mention of hayboxes, which seem to work on a very similar principle to Heather's idea.  You fill up a box with hay (or other insulation), put in your boiling pot, and leave it alone for several hours.  I've seen figures suggesting that using a haybox with long-cooking recipes like chicken stock will save 80% of the energy you would use to simmer the stock on the stove.  You should leave the pot in the haybox somewhere between once and twice as long as you would have left it on the stove.  If you're worried about bacteria, bring the whole thing back to a boil for a few minutes on the stove before serving.

So how did my experiment go?  I brought my carcass and water to a boil and tucked it into an old comforter in a cardboard box.  (The image on the left shows the pot before I bundled the rest of the comforter over the top.)  Our house temperature was low on Sunday --- 50 degrees Fahrenheit --- but when I peeked in six hours later, the pot was still steaming and the stock was a lovely yellow.  Success!

A few of you were as intrigued by the rocket stove concept as I was, and Roland's comments sent me searching the web for more information.  Basically, I wanted to know if I could design a slightly modified rocket stove made out of found/bought materials to simplify construction.  I was also interested in any updates to the design that might maximize efficiency.


Preheating the combustion air

The drawing shown here is Roland's suggestion for preheating the combustion air to increase efficiency, in much the way that efficient space-heating wood stoves work.  A search of the web turns up contradictory pages --- folks who have tried similar methods are split on whether it increases efficiency or not.  Many sites suggest that the conventional design already preheats the combustion air by passing the air intake underneath the burning fire, so I think I'll stick with that.


Insulation

Insulating the burning chamber is another important factor in rocket stove efficiency.  The official Aprovecho design calls for making your own fire bricks, which are rated at about R10 when fully assembled.  Roland's suggestion --- perlite --- has an R-value of 2.7 per inch, so four inches of loose-filled perlite placed between an inner and an outer wall could be a much easier option than making our own fire brick.  (For future reference, other folks mention using materials such as vermiculite (R2.08 per inch) and pumice (R2 per inch).)


Body materials

I've seen various DIY rocket stove options using found or bought materials, and the ones that caught my eye used nested stove pipe.  The image shown here is my revised version of the official design made out of one big stove pipe, two pieces of smaller stovepipe, and an elbow to connect the smaller stovepipe pieces together.  As Roland mentioned, the bigger stovepipe might be replaced by a metal bucket --- otherwise, I'd have to add some kind of cap to keep the perlite from coming out the bottom.  I'm envisioning the pot sitting on pieces of rebar stuck through the exterior walls rather than welding anything together.

There's a bit of math involved in deciding how high the interior chamber should be and how much air space should be left between the pot and the skirt -- more on that later!

Our homemade storage building continues to be a learning experience.  When we started out, I blithely said, "Let's put in as much insulation as possible despite the cost," and Mark agreed.  What I didn't realize is that you have to plan for your insulation needs from the get-go.

The map and chart at the top of the page show EPA's insulation recommendations for new wood-framed homes when heating with gas, heat pumps, or fuel oil.  (They recommend more insulation if you heat with electricity, and don't even give you an option for heating with wood.)  We're in their zone 4, which means we should have at least R30 in our ceiling and R13 in our walls.  The latter is easy, but the former is a bit of an issue.

Assuming you're using fiberglass insulation (which fits our wallet and our remote setting), you need thicker wall or ceiling cavities to fit more insulation.  A typical 2X4 wall will hold up to R15 --- if you try to cram R19 in, you compress the insulation and, I believe, actually get less insulative value than you would have with a lower rated batt of insulation.

Our original rafters are 5.5 inches deep, which would only allow us to put in R19 insulation up there --- makes me chilly just thinking about it (although I think the trailer ceiling has about R13.)  So we extended our rafters with some two by fours, giving us the space to increase our ceiling insulation to R30.  For future reference, here is the cavity depth you need for some common insulation r-values:

• 3.5 inches --- R13
• 6 inches --- R19
• 9 inches --- R30
• 12 inches --- R38

Most of our building project has been very forgiving of my learn-as-we-go mentality, but insulation requires some forethought.  For those who might want to try their own hand at building --- shun the fault I fell in!

While I'm on the subject of more efficient stoves, I wanted to do some research into efficient wood stoves for space heating.  Our exterior wood stove is a good choice for heat on our farm since wood is a renewable resource (and is cheaper than most other options), but I'm still concerned about the pollution that comes out the chimney.  Luckily, scientists have been plugging away at building a better wood stove and have developed models that can eliminate 90% of the smoke and use only about half the wood.

The new, energy-efficient stoves come in two categories.  The first, shown to the right, is a non-catalytic stove that increases its combustion efficiency using firebox insulation, a large baffle that extends the gas flow path, and pre-heated combustion air (which is actually a lot like the reasoning behind the design of the rocket stove.)

Wood stoves with catalytic converters (shown on the left) can cut emissions of even the most efficient non-catalytic stove in half, but they don't seem to use less wood.  Although I'd love to be polluting less, catalytic wood stoves aren't the best choice for most homesteaders.  The $100 to $200 catalytic converter wears out within two to six years, and you need to be relatively adept at tinkering to keep it in prime operating condition.  The startup costs are also higher

So how much does a new, energy-efficient wood stove cost?  From what I can find online, it seems like new non-catalytic wood stoves start around $1,200 and go as expensive as you can imagine.  In 2009 and 2010, there's a 30% tax credit in effect for buying wood stoves with at least 75% efficiency, which is a great deal if you can use it.  If you buy and burn a lot of wood, a more efficient wood stove might pay for itself even without the tax credit --- I estimate that we'd start saving money after about 4 years if we bought the cheapest model.

Although efficient wood stoves seem like a good idea, I'm still not ready to take the plunge.  I'm very curious about whether our current wood stove could be retrofitted to increase its efficiency.  Has anyone tried that out?

Rocket stoves are currently being introduced to several third world countries to help lower the pressure of firewood harvesting on native forests.  The stoves are designed to need very little wood in order to heat up your cook pot, so trees get left in place.  I love the concept, but can't help wondering --- why don't we promote rocket stoves in the U.S. too?  I'd never tell someone in a third world country to institute environmentally friendly measures I wasn't willing to put into practice in my own life.

Before I knew it, I'd penciled a rocket stove onto our ten year plan and started researching.  First, I discovered that you can't use rocket stoves inside because they're basically an efficient hearth.  So, in practice, they'll probably be part of a summer kitchen in our long term plan --- something I want anyway because I always dread turning on the stove on a sweltering summer day.

The video I've embedded above is well worth watching if you'd like to build your own rocket stove.  It looks like we could probably make one quite cheaply, though it would take quite a bit of trial and error to figure out certain parts.  The sheet metal looks an awful lot like a stovepipe to me, suggesting that we might not need welding skills (the part that scared us off building our own initially.)  Alternatively, we could buy one pre-made for around $125.

Have any of you built or used a rocket stove?  What did you think of it?

It's been a beautiful week of spring, with temperatures above freezing and highs in the low fifties, but winter is returning this week. 

Until finishing our water line moves its way to the top of our list, we've instated a new rule --- fill the thousand gallon tank as soon as it empties halfway.  This is harder than it sounds since there are usually only a few days a winter month when the ground is thawed enough to pump water and the creek is clean instead of flooded brown.  We got lucky and stocked up on Sunday.

Meanwhile, I've doubled the number of milk jugs of drinking water we keep on hand --- now we've got twenty eight gallons.  We should be okay on both drinking and washing water for at least two or three weeks regardless of flood, freeze, or lack of electricity.

The temperatures rose above freezing at last, and the month-old snow began to creep back toward the hill.  The first daffodil leaves peeked through the soil in the sunniest spot, and an amorous cardinal started to sing.

I celebrated by washing our laundry, pumping water down the hill from the thousand gallon tank since our water line is still frozen.  Then I turned off the pump...and water kept right on flowing.  Gotta love capillary action!  Now I know that I only need to use electricity to get the suction started --- after that, water will flow four feet up out of the tank all by itself!

 

The team at KMS woodworks has made some interesting progress in bringing together a compact solar charger that can be used for several low end power needs like a lap top. They are still in the testing stage, but it looks like they might make them available for sale in the 300 to 350 dollar range in the not too distant future.

It would be worth that much to me if it could power our modem and both lap tops for a few hours per day, especially during a power outage.

I really like the idea of having a portable off the grid option, especially one that can be taken on a back pack to provide the power for blog posts in some random ancient megalith site or more Mayan ruins.

Using this utility pump to fill a proper water container feels like a huge improvement over last year's 5 gallon bucket method. The biggest downside was lifting the bucket back out once you filled it as full as you dared.

 

10 years ago I found this hand cranked radio in the discount bin of a Radio Shack just after the Y2K hype was settling down. Most hand powered devices use a small dynamo that charges an even smaller battery that will eventually stop holding a charge over time. This unit uses a medium sized spring that slowly releases its mechanical power after the energy is stored in the form of hand cranks. It will hold up to 40 cranks, which equals about 20 minutes of power.

The radio is very basic and also works on a little solar cell that is embedded in the top, but only if you place it directly in the sun. I like to have it on hand as a back up power source and someday dream of building a larger version that might be more capable of powering something like our modem and router and maybe a laptop or two. It only produces enough electricity for a small flashlight, which can be considered night time entertainment during a power outage.

The University of Michigan has made some impressive strides in the area of human generated electricity.

Their latest prototype is a knee brace that harnesses the energy normally lost when the knee is bent. It can produce up to 5 watts of power, which would be enough juice to run 10 mobile phones.

It would be interesting to see how much electricity the average person generates over the course of a day?

(I know Mark has already told you some of this, but it's so momentous I wanted to post about it too!)

Mark and I finally got away from the farm Wednesday to visit my family in Bristol.  When we got home, we were thrilled to see the powerline back in place atop its poles!  We scurried into the trailer...only to discover that the juice was still off.

Remember how I lost faith on day 1 of the outage?  Now it was Mark's turn.  When the electricity was still off on Thursday morning, I could see his spirits plummeting into his (cold, wet) boots.  It was too rainy outside to heat anything up on the wood stove for lunch, so we shivered in the kitchen, eating cold chicken sandwiches and bemoaning our fate.

Then I gasped.

"Oh, no!" Mark responded.  "What's wrong now?"

Speechless, I pointed down the hall to where our CFL had flickered into light.  "Look, Mark!  Electricity!!!!!!"

We stared in rapture at the glowing bulb for a couple of minutes, then jumped into action.  Mark plugged in the stove fan and freezer while I started up the fridge and internet.  I turned on the drinking water pump and filled up our emergency milk jugs of water, then we headed out to pump water from the creek to fill the thousand gallon washing-water tank.  (We'd been caught, very unfortunately, with it nearly completely empty, which really made the outage more difficult than it should have been.)

Next, Mark plugged in the golf cart while I filled pots of water to heat on the stove.  Near instant hot water, and plenty of it!  After skimping for nearly two weeks, washing each day's dishes in a scant gallon of melted snow, I was so excited that I filled our sink with gallons and gallons worth, even though there weren't really that many dishes.

Before I was able to calm down enough to check my email, I had to twirl around outside in the snow, singing at the top of my lungs, "Elec-tri-ci-ty!  Light!  Heat!  Water!"

My weather-forecaster buddy warns that bitter cold weather is on its way tonight, with all next week slated to stay below freezing.  Right at this instant, though, I can't muster any doom and gloom at all.

 

We got our 5th visit yesterday from the electric company. I tried appealing to this guy's sense of duty by casually mentioning that we've had four other visits, each ending with a bit of looking around and head scratching at how deep our creek is.

"I didn't come all the way from North Carolina to just look around," he calmly stated. His confidence filled us with with a newfound hope and sure to his word the lines were back up before he headed back home last night.

We spent the morning waiting, trying not to think of all the obstacles that could be keeping the flow of cheap electricity from coming back to our trailer when all of a sudden the hallway light came on and the power outage of 2009 was officially over.

It's good to know we can get by without the grid, but this has been a wake up call for us by pointing out a few areas we can improve upon for a more streamlined approach to off the grid living.

 

I spotted this small crew off in the distance while I was working outside on the do it yourself storage building project. It gave me a glimmer of hope that something was going to get started today, but that was not meant to be.

Maybe they're getting everything ready for an early start tomorrow?

After a week of hunkering down and getting by, we went back to work on Monday morning.  The first order of business was to clear the rest of the driveway of fallen limbs.  Last week, we just cut through the ones between the car and the road, but I wanted to be ready to drive the golf cart from the cars to the trailer to ferry in supplies.  So we pushed and pulled tree-sized branches out of the way to clear our path.

Later, we scooted across the creek on a log to keep our feet dry.  In the neighbor's field, we ran into two more power company employees, scouts who promised that the chainsawing guys weren't too far behind.  I'm not quite sure why it takes two separate on-foot scouting expeditions and a helicopter to assess the damage, but I'm not complaining as long as the real workers aren't too far behind!

The Ford Festiva stalling issue came back when the gas tank hit the 1/4 level point. Something the chainsaw repair guy said after he tuned up our Stihl recently got me to thinking. His comment was that he had to use his special carburetor bath 4 separate times to get all the gunk cleaned out. This prompted me to give the Festiva another Seafoam treatment, and it took over half the tank before the problem finally went away, but it's running like it should now and it's all thanks to Seafoam.

The snow is almost gone, which means mud, mud, and more mud.

My mom gave us some baby crib pieces back in the summer left over from an emergency turkey transport she was constructing which have really worked out well as a catch for my wood splitting station.

It was a real bummer to watch a nice dry piece of firewood split its way directly in the mud.

 

We had a visitor from the sky come out this afternoon just before dinner. It seems like this iron bird was inspecting our downed power lines, which gave us hope that we might get our power turned back on before next year.

Someday, we'd like to be off the grid by choice, so we've considered this extended (and still ongoing) power outage as a useful dry run.  It's been very helpful in giving us an idea of infrastructure we need to be adding to the farm, and reminding us which aspects of our electrified lives are really just optional.

Here are the top electricity-free items we've added to our wish list for next year.  Some are to buy, but a lot can probably be made from the parts at hand.

• DC fan to keep the wood stove blowing hot air while the generator's off.  (Daddy suggested that we look into the fans that cool off car engines --- we might be able to get one cheap at a junkyard.)
  
• Alternator setup to get juice out of the golf cart so that we can run low electricity items (like the fan and maybe a router!) for much longer periods.
• Solar charger for the golf cart so that we can fill the golf cart batteries back up.
• Rocket stove (which we might be able to build) and a real Dutch oven for easy cooking.
• A second sub-zero sleeping bag so that we can both stay toasty during short-term emergencies.
• Solar LED lighting.  You'd be amazed at what a difference it makes to have enough light to read by on long, dark, electricity-free nights.  Flashlights have served us well, but we'd really like to take some of those solar yard lights you can get so cheaply in the big box stores nowadays and turn them into indoors lighting with the solar panel outdoors for charging.  Even though our current bulbs are CFLs, I suspect that this would lower our electric bill during our on-the-grid times too.
  

I also need to remember to keep more library books on hand --- I'm starting to run a bit low, which is a pain since the creek has flooded as the snow starts to melt so I can't get to the library.  We would have had a much easier time with water, too, if we'd had the water line completely buried and the big tank all the way full.  Still, all told, I think we've done pretty well so far.

When Mark mailed our week's chicken waterers (made without the benefit of electricity) this week, he overheard a lady in the post office complaining about how difficult the power outage was since she couldn't do her dishes.  I feel so lucky that Mark's ingenuity has enabled us to want for very little during this power outage!

Despite the phone dying again on Monday night, Tuesday was an outstanding day.  By mid morning, the sun started to poke through the clouds that had kept the sky white for the last three days.  Solar radiation quickly started melting the snow, and it only took a bit of hoeing to work our way out of the driveway.

On the one year anniversary of our marriage, we ended up in the parking lot of the same courthouse...but this time we were poaching wireless.  Our goals for this trip to town were really quite simple --- we wanted to fill up some big jugs of gas so that we could continue to run the generator an hour a day and I wanted to upload all of my past posts (thus the poaching).  While we were out, I figured we should also stock up on some other essentials --- citrus, chocolate, and flashlights.

Back home, we thawed out the top of our wedding cake on the wood stove and ate it along with some chicken cooked in my homemade Dutch oven.  And then two miracles!  First, an electric company employee came wandering through our yard.  He was lost and needed help reaching the road, but the mere fact that he was scouting the downed power line gave us hope (even though he said it may still be a week before we get juice.)  Finally, halfway through our generator hour, I picked up the phone and heard a dial tone.  Internet at home!  Rapture!

You all have been astoundingly patient with my shut-in, run-on blogs.  Now you're up to date!  Starting tomorrow, we'll be posting in real time (and will hopefully have a video to share with you.)  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook for some Christmas reading.

Monday night as we read by solar flashlight, the telephone rang!  I'm a confirmed phone-o-phobe, but that sound was the nicest one I'd heard in days.  I leapt up and pounced on the receiver, then enthused in my father's ear, called my Mom and sister, and even talked to my equally phone-phobic brother.

Earlier that day, I'd resorted to putting a letter to my mother in the mailbox to assure her that I was alive.  When I got her on the phone, it was clear that Mom had been worried, but she also told me how she'd often been snowed in at my childhood farm and unable to contact her own mother for a solid month.  "No news is good news," Mom said...then admitted that she'd emailed two of my neighbors to check on me.

Daddy gave me equally good words of wisdom.  "Isn't it nice to go without so that you'll really appreciate power when you have it?"  I have to admit that in the past I've wished my ancestors hadn't opened up Pandora's box of industrialization.  But living without for just three days, I can completely understand how we ended up in our current era of modern conveniences.

Tuesday morning, the phone was once again dead.  Farewell, civilization!

One of these days I'm going to get up to date, really....  For now, though, enjoy reading our backstory, then check out our microbusiness ebook.

When we learned that electricity was a long way off, I decided it was high time to start really cooking rather than hastily heating up leftovers and hot dogs in the wood stove.  Our exterior wood stove is singularly ill-suited for cooking, with a sleeve around the stove providing hot air to be blown indoors and also preventing the surface from reaching cooking temperatures.  The inside is generally far too hot to cook in without charring.

But I had nothing else to keep me busy, so I decided to create my own Dutch oven.  I dug up an old roasting pan out of the barn, set it up on a cinderblock, and filled it with hot coals shoveled out of the wood stove.  A pizza pan fit well on top, and a big lid enclosed the heated surface.  I had moderate luck "baking" chocolate chip cookies but great luck frying up bacon.  Maybe the latter tasted so good because of the bit of leftover chocolate melding with the bacon juices?

Meanwhile, I was starting to get worried about our water situation.  We still had seven jugs of drinking water, but I could easily see us running out and the dirty dishes were stacking up.  I was pleased to discover that packing a pot full to the brim and then half again as high with clean snow melted down to a nearly full pot of warm dish water in three hours on the wood stove.  I added a bit of bleach for safety and revelled in the feel of warm water on my hands as I cleaned up the dishes.

In a pinch, we probably could have gotten away with drinking the melted snow, but our generator made that unnecessary.  We've allotted ourselves an hour and a half of generator time every evening, plenty of time to turn on our drinking water pump and UV light to fill up another dozen or so milk jugs.  And time to feed my blogging bug!

This is the last installment on the Monday CD.  Stay tuned for more details soon (I hope.)  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook.

Monday morning, I was bound and determined to get to town, if only to let my mother know that we hadn't been wiped off the map.  Mark and I both geared up and filled our backpacks and hands with the bare essentials --- chainsaw tools, mixed gas, empty gas jugs in case we made it to town, my laptop for the same reason, two oranges in case we got stranded on the way, and the chainsaw.  We only have one pair of waders between us at the moment, so Mark had to cross the creek, change into his work boots, then toss the waders back across the cold water to let me cross.  I was very glad that he has a good throwing arm.

The driveway was just as much work to clear as we'd thought.  It took a couple of hours of hard sawing and dragging to move the pines that had fallen across the road, but the work was for naught.  We got in the car...and watched as its tires spun vainly on the icy snow.

My next thought was to walk to the neighbor's house a quarter of a mile down the road and beg the use of their phone.  The public road had been plowed, but was seriously icy, making me glad that our little car hadn't made it out of the driveway.  Along the way, we ran into another neighbor who gave us the bad news --- everyone in the area has no power or phone.  The electric company is hoping to restore the juice by Christmas to those on the main road, which I figure leaves us looking at New Years.  Time to hunker down for the long haul.

Stay tuned for part V soon.  Meanwhile, check out our ebook that gives the secret of not worrying that your boss is going to fire you while you're incommunicado for a week or two.

We bought the Champion 3000 watt generator about a year ago for back up power. I took it out of the box, made sure it was all there, and installed the wheels and handle and pretty much forgot about it till this past Friday when our power went out.

It was a great relief to feel its gas-powered throaty engine come to life. We only have about 4 gallons of fuel on hand, so we decided to ration our generator time to a few hours in the evenings. This way we can alternate between the freezer and refrigerator, giving them each about an hour of cooling off time, charge our laptop batteries, and power the blower fans that send heat from our exterior wood burning stove to the inner sanctum of the trailer. The new stove configuration is able to keep the back room heated during the night without the fan as long as we keep it fed with fresh firewood.

We've got a bit of kerosene, and nearly a full tank of propane as back up for heating and cooking, but I don't think we'll need it if we're able to get out tomorrow and top off our generator fuel.

I was most impressed with how easy this generator started. I barely have to pull on the rope and it springs to attention.

I'm not sure when we can expect to have our electricity fixed, so I guess I'll be expecting nothing and gearing up to be ready for anything.

Our first full day without power brought us back to basics: animals, water, food, and shelter.  The animals, luckily, weren't too hard.  Huckleberry and Strider came bounding up to the trailer through snow over their heads (nearly a foot deep now, but finally slacking off) and Lucy pranced and played in the drifts.

The chicken tractors were completely covered, and one had half-collapsed under the weight of the snow.  I brushed the tops clear and saw hungry hens eager for their breakfast...once I'd shoveled out the tractor so they wouldn't get their feet wet.

Without electricity, the fan on our exterior wood furnace doesn't run, which means that most of that heat dissipates into the great outdoors.  Mark first rigged an ingenious setup using a DC fan and the golf cart's battery banks, but the plastic fan quickly melted out of whack and stopped running.  At this point, I gave up and curled myself under a sleeping bag on the sofa with Huckleberry and a book.  But Mark wasn't deterred.  He dusted off the generator, and soon we were back in business!  Lights, power, action!  Heat!  Even electricity to top off the cold level in our fridge and freezer and keep our food safe.

Luckily, we had drinking water stored up, but food was going to be difficult since we cook on an electric stove.  It took most of the next day for me to figure out how to cook in and on the wood stove, ending up with food that wasn't charred at one end and cold at the other.  But at least we had the basics we need to keep the farm rolling along.

Stay tuned for part III soon.  Meanwhile, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

The trees started splintering before sunset on Friday.  Heavy snow weighed down their limbs and kept falling, heaping up four inches deep.  By dark, the wet snow took down an electric line somewhere, and suddenly the trailer powered down.  Off went the furnace fan, the computers, the fridge.  I called the phone company and was informed that power is off all over the county and that they expect it back on by Sunday at midnight.

The snow kept coming.  When we went to bed, it was already six inches deep, and all night gunshot-like cracks heralded trees crashing down.  I slept fitfully and was out at dawn to assess the damage.

During power outages, I'm constantly expecting a miracle --- the lights will flicker, the fridge will hum, and we'll be powered again.  At first light on Saturday, I discovered that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.  Our powerline was down straight up the floodplain, across the garden, and then up the powerline cut going the other way.  I called my mom to share the excitement, hung up, and then picked the phone back up.  It was dead.

I don't want to overwhelm you with the whole story at once, so stay tuned for part II soon.  Until then, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

These new peel and stick solar panels are more efficient than the fragile glass panels and cost about 300 bucks less. This new design allows for more robust applications, such as on the roof of a golf cart without the fear of your expensive panel breaking. Having the sun constantly charging your batteries prevents the sulfates from building up and extends the life of the battery bank by a minimum of 25%.

Since a golf cart is sometimes considered an electric car by the IRS you can deduct a nice 30% of your solar investment and you may even qualify for a few hundred bucks per year as a battery credit. These kits usually cost about 1600 dollars, weigh about 4 pounds and take about 15 minutes to install.

Add an inverter and it can double as an emergency back up power system for your home if you can manage to park it close enough to reach an extension cord to.

Since Mark now has our wood stove up and running, I figured it was high time to gather some kindling.  The windy days last week knocked down a lot of dead, dry branches out of trees in the floodplain, and it only took a few minutes to pick up a heavy hauler load.

Last winter when the chainsaw wasn't working, we discovered that the miter saw makes short work of small and medium-sized branches.  First, I broke all of the small branches over my knee, then I sawed through the larger branches.

I was a bit shocked at how small one heavy hauler load of kindling becomes once sawn to size --- the resulting pile was only about knee high.  That should be enough to start a week's worth of fires, though.  Warmth sure does make me happy!

Fire.

We now have the exterior wood burning stove operating in the half finished storage building. This must be what it felt like when early cave men figured out that keeping your woman warm equals keeping her happy.

Although people used to live on our farm during the Depression, the farm's only drinking water supply is a shallow, hand dug well that tested positive for coliform bacteria.  Granted, many people drink from shallow wells and springs just like this around here.  You build up a tolerance and tend to do just fine, but if you give water to unsuspecting visitors, they get sick.

To avoid this problem, we spent our first year or two lugging drinking water back to the farm.  My mom would rinse out empty milk jugs and save them for me, then we'd fill them up at her house when we went to visit.  Other times, we'd fill up our milk jugs at various other friends' houses closer to the farm.  Sometimes, we were able to haul the jugs of water back to the trailer in our four wheel drive truck, but a lot of the time the truck wasn't working and we'd just carry them in --- it's not too hard to haul a jug of water in each hand while walking Lucy in the morning.

Water feels more precious when the supply is limited.  We cooked and drank the special water, going through about a gallon a day between us.  For everything else, we used creek water, treated with some bleach when we did dishes, but plain for other tasks.

Then we splurged on our water filtration system and were blessed with unlimited, safe drinking water.  I felt like we'd moved from a third world country to a second world country!

The only flaw is that we still haven't quite gotten our water line all the way buried since my wrists can't take much heavy digging and I tend to set Mark on tasks that seem more important.  So this week we fell halfway back to our third world country.  I dragged all of the old milk jugs out of the barn, rinsed them out, and filled them up with our treated water.  By Friday, the freeze set in and we started dipping into stored water.

It's funny to read on other peoples' blogs about disaster preparedness --- people filling up empty milk jugs just in case the world comes to an end or a heavy storm knocks out their power for days on end.  It doesn't really feel like a disaster to be pumping our drinking water during thaws and drinking out of jugs during cold snaps.  I guess it's all a matter of perspective....

In addition to lacking space, China has a serious shortage of wood.  Even a hundred years ago, King noted that trees were scarce and small, and even those trees were heavily utilized by cutting the lower limbs for firewood.

As a result of the wood shortage, most buildings were traditionally made out of straw and clay.  Although the straw and clay tended to need frequent replenishing, the old building materials were perfect for throwing in the compost pit. 

Farmers were also very good at utilizing other types of plants for fuel.  Woody vegetable stems (especially rice straw) were frequently burned.  Although I approve of making full use of the resources at hand, King's description of the cooking fire requiring one person to constantly feed it small bits of straw sounds like a bit too much work.

Otherwise, King made the Chinese traditional agriculture system look so rosy that I find it hard to remember that, a century later, farming looks a lot different.  If you're interested in what's happened in the last hundred years, you should check out the overview on Wikipedia.

The refrigerator root cellar suffered a set back last night during a heavy down pour.

It should only take a few hours to dig back out, and the new plan is to add a small roof like the one on our home made firewood shed to prevent this from happening again.

We had a slight problem with one of the retaining walls for the refrigerator root cellar. It seems like a sturdy metal bracket will be needed to secure the wall to the side of the refrigerator.

You might notice a faint circle of melted snow around the chimney output. This was more noticeable a couple of hours ago, which is a nice way to illustrate how warm the air must be that's coming out.

 

It's time to begin framing up the walls of the new storage building.

We decided to fill the wall that gets the most sun with windows we've managed to salvage from a few different places. Thanks Bill B.

The landfill can be a good place to find used windows for a project like this if you don't have generous neighbors who've cleaned out their barn recently. New construction sites have also been known to provide the frugal builder with discarded windows if you know where to look and who to talk to.

 

The refrigerator root cellar is now generating a cool and damp atmosphere which needs to be protected from insects looking for the perfect home to ride out the winter.

It was easy to secure down the lower vent screen with several small dry wall screws. They drive straight into the plastic without the need for a pilot hole.

The top vent was just as easy. Cut some scrap screen material to the desired length and use some electrical tape to fasten it down.

 

The gaskets on the refrigerator root cellar are old and don't quite seal up the two doors. A simple screen door latch is all it takes to solve that problem. I installed them a little on the tight side in order to pull the door firmly closed with no gaps. The refrigerator latch required a piece of scrap wood behind the handle for the eye to bite into.

This might work for a low budget fix to a working refrigerator that has a weak gasket. I've often heard a new gasket can cost nearly as much as a good used refrigerator.

I was almost going to buy one of those heavy PVC caps for the refrigerator root cellar chimney, but when I walked past a foam faucet cover I stopped in my tracks, looked at the PVC cap in one hand and the foam cover on the shelf and weighed the coolness factor of the foam geometry along with the fact that it was only a buck compared to the 6 dollar price of the PVC.

Anna thinks it adds a sort of mother ship look to it and I agree.

The next step will be to drill some holes in the side towards the top of the chimney and then attach some screen material to keep out any unwanted bugs.

We dream of someday leaving the mainstream electricity grid behind and becoming energy independent.  Although solar panels or hydropower have been top of our list in the past, Jerry clued me in to the Jean Pain method --- a technique of converting wood chips into methane, heat, and compost.  We're nowhere near taking the plunge to that level of production, but maybe it would be a loftier goal than saving our pennies for solar panels?

 

It took both of us to lower the refrigerator root cellar into its new home below the earth. Once it was in place I decided to make some side panels from a couple of 2x4's and some scrap wood. It seems to be helping by keeping the dirt away from the hinge and door opening as I begin to bury it.

 

Two drill holes and a few minutes with the jig saw was all it took to create the new chimney hole for the refrigerator root cellar.

I also removed the foam and plastic barrier that separates the freezer from the rest of the refrigerator. One of the metal shelves slid right into its place, which will provide plenty of open space for the cool air to flow while at the same time working as a sturdy surface to store apples on.

 

After thinking about lowering the refrigerator root cellar into our new hole I decided to see just how hard it would be to strip off the metal coil from the back of the unit. It turns out it only took about a half hour to take everything off including the compressor and wiring harness. I think it's going to make sliding down the hole a bit smoother and safer.

I'm planning on mounting some screen material over the new holes in the bottom. The good thing about this approach is that it will be easy to add more holes if we think the air flow needs to increase.

 

We decided to dig the refrigerator root cellar down a bit deeper to accommodate a large cinder block in each corner. I thought two post holes in the middle might help to increase the cold surface area that will hopefully stream a steady flow of cool air up through the refrigerator and out the soon to be installed vent pipe.

The new chipper/grinder seems to have a problem with sticks and branches any bigger than what you see here in this short video. It's sort of a hassle to stop everything and flip it on its side to reset it once you send something through that's too big.

It still might find a place here on the farm, but today the verdict is too small and wimpy for the level of mulch production we are looking for.

 

The old gas powered chipper/grinder got moved up to the front of the get fixed line this week in an effort to increase our mulch production. Its 50 year old Briggs and Stratton engine won the first battle yesterday afternoon, but today I figured out exactly what to do with that stubborn motor.

Delete it.

The first step was to remove the four bolts that hold the engine to the frame. Then it's easy to lift out. Next fabricate some sort of vibration plate for the electric motor to be attached to, I used a scrap piece of 2x6. Once you get the pulley lined up secure the whole thing down to the frame and wire up a switch.

 

The Spud Buddy is a device that gets mounted to the side of an old broken freezer or refrigerator and uses a fan and a steady supply of water to keep the inside temperature and humidity where it needs to be in order to function as a root cellar.
 
I've never seen one of these in action, but the concept seems solid enough to work. Expect to spend about 160 bucks on the unit, and maybe some extra pennies per day for the additional electricity.

A clever solution for someone with limited time and space who wants to turn their old broken refrigerator into a functional root cellar.

I was experiencing some power trouble with the Ford Festiva last week. It stalled out three separate times during a short trip to town. My first thought was that the repair last year with a dab of silicone to the ignition coil was giving out, but then I decided to try a 10 dollar can of Seafoam. You put this stuff right in your tank and top it off with whatever fuel you usually use and presto...I noticed an immediate improvement. I could now get up hills with only dropping down to 4th gear instead of 3rd or 2nd. Technically speaking something happens that cleans some internal stuff to make things run smoother. No more stalling! I'm now a believer in Seafoam.

This week's theme has been biomass transport.  Mark, the innovator, tripled our leaf productivity by changing our collection method.  I had been raking up leaves that fell on the driveway, stuffing them into our leaf bag, and driving back to the garden to spread them one bag at a time.  Mark figured out that we could put two to three leaf bags' worth of leaves into the heavy hauler with some judicious smooshing and a tarp tucked on top.

He also figured out that we could rake the leaves down off the hillside above the driveway and get scads of leaf matter for very little effort.  There's a chance the bared soil will erode some, but I have to weigh a little bit of erosion that will never reach the creek against extra transportation (aka, coal burned in the nearby power plant to pollute our air and water).  Some days, it feels hard to be human --- no matter what we do, it causes harm somewhere.

The good thing about the hillside leaves is that we get some duff with them, which helps solve our nitrogen problem.  Meanwhile, Mark has started peeing on some of our leaves to give them an influx of nitrogen and help them decompose faster.  Suddenly, the garden feels under control!  We topped all of the beds in the mule garden this week, which means we only have about two to three times that much garden left to put to bed for the winter.

Want a free golf cart?  Move to Oklahoma!  A federal tax rebate currently allows people buying street-legal golf carts to write off $4,200 to $5,500 of the cost.  Add in the state rebate in Oklahoma and your golf cart is free.  (Although Oklahoma may have figured out this loophole and be working to fix it.)

Even if you don't live in Oklahoma, now might be a time to buy that golf cart for your homestead.  We've been thrilled at the way our electric golf cart acts as a utility vehicle on the farm, hauling leaves, firewood, and bodies (living, of course.)  It runs through the mud with ease, only has to be charged every month or two, and hardly ever breaks down.

Right now, I believe the only types of golf cart that fit the federal subsidy are made by Tomberlin and Star, the cheapest models of which can cost as little as $2,000 once you take your tax credit.  It sounds like a great deal, but some folks suspect these cheaply bought but sturdily constructed golf carts will be available used starting next year for extremely small sums.  So maybe it'd be better to wait and save even more....

Now, use the money you saved to buy Mark's homemade chicken waterer.

At the end of last winter, Huckleberry tore apart the air pipe that channels heat from our exterior wood furnace into the trailer.  Then the stove pipe rusted out.  We were trying to hold off on lighting our wood stove until the end of the week when we would hopefully have the floor of the shed up and could just move the stove there, rather than fixing it in its current location.

All weekend, I shivered in a house that barely reached 50 degrees, baking large dinners to warm up the kitchen.  Mark had a space heater in his room, but I didn't want to break down and use electricity.  Finally, Monday morning, the interior temperatures were in the thirties.  Yikes!

So sweet Mark threw together some short-term fixes on the wood stove and lit us a fire.  By mid morning, I took off my winter coat, sweater, gloves, and second pair of pants.  Ah, wood heat!

As a side note, you can see that our wood shed is already halfway full.  It looks like we may run out of space before we run out of wood and will have to build a second shed.  A good problem to have!

The Club Car continues to be a work horse for hauling in heavy loads, even during this wetter than usual spell we've been going through.

I think it's time to consider building a frame towards the back to upgrade the carrying capacity from 2 full golf club bags to something more farm appropriate.

Mark wants to live in a round house some day, and I have to admit that the idea has merit every time I go visit Joey's yurt.  The circles and lines in the yurt always capture my interest and I end up taking photos that could almost be abstract, like the one on the left.

Joey considered taking the yurt down for the winter, but instead he bought a Two Dog Stove, specially designed for safe use in tents.  The stove is so small that Joey was able to carry it in by himself soon after our most recent flood.  Setup took mere minutes with the ultra-cool telescoping stove pipe --- no need to laboriously fit pieces together; just grab both ends and puuuullll....  I'm curious to see how well the stove keeps Joey warm during his wintry visits to the farm.

I was struck by a throwaway sentence in Good Farmers, a book about traditional farming practices in Central America and Mexico.  The author noted that traditional farmers usually lack heavy equipment and funds to pay for lots of hired help, so they have to take a process-oriented approach to big tasks rather than being project-oriented.  For example, if they have a steep hillside that they'd like to terrace and create farmable ground, traditional farmers are more likely to put in a spare afternoon here and there building the terrace bit by bit rather than renting a bulldozer to get 'r done.

Homesteading is slowly teaching me to slip out of my project-oriented mindset and enjoy the journey.  For example, the wood we bought was delivered to our parking area, half a mile from our house.  At first, I was considering just taking a day and making golf cart trip after golf cart trip to bring the wood back to its shed.  But instead I've been taking in a load of wood whenever I need to drive the golf cart out to the cars anyway.  A week later, our shed is already a third of the way full!

September gave us 6.2 inches of rain over 10 days.  The days that didn't rain were generally cloudy, so I put off doing laundry until we both ran out of the essentials.

Tuesday, I gave in and washed anyway.  Three big loads of laundry later, I had filled up the clothesline and moved on to draping clothes on the grape trellises.  I didn't even get to our bedding before running out of both laundry detergent and space on the line.

Four hours of clouds later, it started to rain.  I scurried around and gathered up damp clothes, then draped them all over the house while a quarter inch of water fell on our garden.  Wednesday turned out to be the prettiest sunny day in a long time, so I carried all of the clothes back outside, flipping clothes over halfway through the day so that every one finally dried all the way through.  Just this once, I think if I had a clothes drier I would have used it.  (Good thing I don't have one!)

Despite the astonishing amount of effort required to get there, we have enough clean clothes to last us for our entire week long honeymoon.  Most of the posts for the next eight days will be auto-posted --- saved up topics we never got a chance to serenade you with during the height of the growing season.  The farm will be in the able hands of my brother, and we plan to not even check email for most of the time.  So if anything looks funny on the site, I promise I'll fix it when I get home!

 

When installing the 2 middle posts for the new firewood shed I decided to take a cue from the original barn builders and use a simple stone support for each 2x3.

The tarp is a temporary addition for the next couple weeks to protect several garden items from the rain as they cure.

The Walden Effect for me is a path from noise to nature and what happens when you manage to surrender to the everyday beauty of life. My understanding of its exact nature is a work in progress, although I think it's safe to say that it has an emotional element that relates to dealing with unresolved conflict of whatever one feels strong about.

Youtube user Holofractalist has made a clever edit of a Greg Braden interview that goes a long way in explaining what I'm trying to say here. I liked it so much I watched it twice in a row and I'll most likely review it again and again. A fantastic 10 minute chunk of enlightenment that I give 2 thumbs up.

We cut down a small sassafras tree today to provide a crude floor for the firewood to be stacked on in the new shed. I think it's going to work nicely.

The next step will be to install 2 middle columns to support the center stack on each end.

We decided to use some scrap tin pieces from the old house for the roof of the firewood shed.

I already feel warmer knowing that our prime energy source for heat will be out of the rain and close by.

We bought a large truck load of firewood recently due to the fact that we were too busy to cut any this summer, and we've decided the extra time we get will be well worth the price.

I believe it takes a certain amount of experimentation when contracting out essential chores in order to find the most comfortable balance point of having enough time and money left over to relax. I already have a good feeling about the value of this wood pile and how much time it will free up for a few projects we have on the drawing board this winter.

 

Microhydropower.com has some exciting new products that allow the common guy to harness the power of a small stream for the purpose of generating electricity.

Their setup will cost you about 3 thousand bucks...and then you'll need to figure out how to store it and get it where you need it.

Not a bad solution for home made electricity if you live close enough to a steady stream of water.

The folks at pedalpowergenerator have added some step by step videos to the free diy section.

This setup takes advantage of an adjustable V-belt, which will cost you 50 bucks. You take the tire off your wheel and replace it with the V-belt to get maximum efficiency from the exerted energy. The Duracell power pack functions as a storage unit with a built in inverter and usually sells for a bit over a hundred dollars. The generator will cost you more depending on which one you choose, and all that's left is the charge controller and blocking diode, which can be had for under 100. I almost forgot the bike stand....which could be made from scrap material or you can just buy the industrial model.

I've been studying different versions of pedal power over the years and would say this configuration is the smartest one I've seen yet. If you add a small solar cell and reduce your use you might just make enough power to get you through the day.

Hae-Jin Kim has an interesting idea to harness the waste heat generated by a typical refrigerator. It's not quite enough to function as a hot plate, but 150 degrees might be able to dry a pair of socks or keep a burrito warm? I wonder if this heat could be channeled to a small green house structure for a steady flow of warmness as long as the refrigerator is on?

 
Emily Cummins is a 21 year old student/inventor who has come up with a clever and simple way of using the sun to cool things like perishable food and temperature sensitive medications. The concept works with no electricity and can be built with materials like cardboard, sand, and recycled metal.

It takes advantage of conduction and convection to create an evaporative cooling effect. You place what you want to keep cold in the interior chamber and either some sand, wool, or soil in the outer chamber that gets saturated with water. The sun warms the water soaked material...the water evaporates, reducing the temperature of the inner area to 43 degrees Fahrenheit for days at a time. To recharge you only need to add more water once your material gets dry.

  

We had another flat on the Club Car golf cart yesterday. It was on the only wheel without an inner tube. That's 3 separate trips to the tire guy in the span of a year.

The lesson to learn here is if you're going to use a golf cart under heavy farm conditions then you might as well install inner tubes in all 4 tires and save yourself some time and energy.

  

The Boing Boing crew pointed me towards the amazing results achieved by Mike Turner and the new aero modification of his 1992 Honda Civic.

He's spent around 400 dollars and 250 hours of his time making the car more aerodynamic. The inspiration came from some of the older designs from the past that help to streamline air flow while decreasing fuel intake.

This bit of tinkering has changed his drag coefficient from .34 to .17, which can equal 90 MPG on a good day!

He claims that hitting a deer with a car like this scoops them up and over with minimal damage to car and deer. That would make it worth the 400 bucks right there. Watch this 8 second video if you have any doubts.

I jumped in the thousand gallon tank yesterday morning to give it a good scrubbing, the only maintenance it has received in months.

We get our drinking water from a well, but we use the creek for most of our other water needs.  Most folks who don't connect to city water install a pressure tank, but we've found that a gravity system is simpler and requires very little electricity.

When the tank gets low every month or two, we turn on the pump for a few hours and top the water off.  After that, gravity pushes the water to the house to fill our sink, bathtub, washing machine, and chicken waterers.

We started out with a little 50 gallon tank on a tower by the house, but we used up the water awfully quickly and were disappointed by the pressure.  A thousand gallon tank slightly uphill gives us much better water pressure, approximately equal to what you'd get from city water.

 

I managed to warp the second mulching mower blade of the summer today by running over a small stump near the grapes.

On my way to yardpartsexpress.com (my new home for replacement mower blades) I found an interesting culture of bike mowers.

It seems like folks have been merging these two pastimes for several years now. I'm intrigued by the inventive nature of pedal power being used to cut grass, but our lawn is so bumpy and rough that it's just not an option at this time.

What happens when you combine a small motor with some scrap tin and a power source? Hopefully a new type of contraption that will make the deer think twice before they enter our perimeter.

Dawn Rivers Baker has an excellent blog on microbusinesses that pointed me towards a post on bootstrapping that I thought would be worth sharing.

Tim Berry sat down with his wife recently and came up with 10 lessons they've learned over the last 22 years of running their business.

At the top of the list was learning from your mistakes. It got me to thinking how much we learned a couple of years ago from a failed attempt to video tape and sell footage of local parades. We lost money on the deal, and spent a lot of time producing each product, but those lessons gave us some confidence and we were able to translate what we learned about marketing to our next business idea. The contacts we made along the way also helped to introduce us to the area and the people.

Looking back now I can clearly see how those early failures were necessary steps in the quest for a microbusiness that fits our lifestyle.

The June/July issue of Backyard Poultry hit the streets on Saturday and I couldn't be happier with how Anna's full page article on page 36 came out.

We've been getting some good feedback on how much happier chicken chores can be with this new concept in backyard poultry watering.

It's exciting to see an idea go from the drawing board to reality in the span of a few months. I was thinking today that our operation is a level below most small business set-ups, which inspired me to call it a micro-business. The name has been around for a while, and Lloyd Lemons is one of the top sources for all things related to these smallest of businesses.

Ye olde charcoal grill saw the light of day yesterday as we cooked up some asparagus and shitake mushrooms with a few hot dogs on the side.

My mom introduced me to the charcoal chimney starter years ago and grilling has never been the same since.

Your coals get heated up faster while using less lighter fluid. If you have a large crowd to feed you might want to have two going at the same time.

  

All four colonies are thriving and doing everything they should be doing. The sugar water free ride is coming to an end as we've decided it's time to stop feeding and let them get all their nutrition from the local ecosystem.

     

Flickr user Kevin Borland captured the amazing image above that still has the gears in my head turning. This Amish family seems to have evolved to a sort of steam powered solution to farm machinery, which seems brilliant on multiple levels.

The homesteading community could learn a lot from observing how the Amish solve problems in such simple and innovative ways. These casual snap shots provide us one of the few looks into this interesting culture due to their clever rejection of big chunks of the world.

The C-realm podcast is an evolving expression of a dynamic guy by the name of KMO. The C stands for consciousness, and he has a way of choosing words and guests that really take you down roads mainstream media could never even dream of.

I'm still going through his archive of shows and have really been drawn in to the story that's unfolding. He seems to be open to new ways of thinking when it comes to such subjects as the re-location of community and agriculture. I think people who read the waldeneffect might enjoy his show and I encourage everyone to give him a listen. His new shows, which come out every week on Wednesdays are something I now look forward to.

Paul Stamets is an interesting guy with a genuine desire and belief that he can help heal some of the damage humans have done to the Earth with the help of mushrooms.

If you don't have time to read one of his 6 books, then I suggest a recent interview by Frank Aragona as an excellent introduction to the wonderful world of mushrooms.

This is an exceptional 2 part interview from Frank's podcast archive at agroinnovations.com, which is totally free of charge. You'll learn how Paul got started with mushrooms, his work with the government and petro-chemical industry, and a great breakdown of the history and evolution of mushrooms and how important they are for survival.

I've heard several podcasts lately and this one really charged me up like no other. Frank posed some great questions and Paul took the ball and ran a few enthusiastic miles with it.

Jock Brandis has turned his inventive mind from being a Key Grip on B grade movies like the sci-fi comedy Normanicus to helping poor folks discover a more efficient method of shelling peanuts and other material.

The design is simple and solid and can be built for around 50 bucks. The bulk of the invention is two concrete cones, which can be formed with a set of fiberglass molds that Jock's North Carolina company provides. The latest incarnation uses pedal power to get the grinding done while producing a fan effect that helps to separate the shells from the nut.

Someday I'd like to build one of these and try to adapt it for the heavy walnuts that drop from the trees around here.

How do you make an air conditioner fit into a window that's just too small?

Samuel: Beckley, WV.

Delete the old window, put it away for safe keeping. Build up the empty space layer by layer. Most folks will mount their unit in the middle in an attempt to be symmetrical. I did this last year and missed out on not having a window I could open.

The picture shows an alternate method of tucking it into the corner, which provides more stability and just enough room for a small window/door on the side. Building up the space in layers allows you to use up pieces of scrap material, which keeps the price of this project under the cost of a cup of coffee.

Our quest for a more energy efficient refrigerator came to an end today at a used appliance store on the way to a muffler shop.

We got lucky and found a small recent model that is rated a bit more favorably than the new one we were considering.

Having an energy efficient refrigerator brings us another step closer to being ready for a practical alternative to the traditional electrical grid.

I made a discovery recently in my search for some accurate and free pedal power details.

Pedalpowergenerator.com is a one stop shopping spot for everything pedal power. The prices seem fair, and the pictures and diagrams are easy to follow and understand.

We acquired an old exercise bike recently and I'm sure we can modify it to produce small amounts of electricity. Thanks to pedalpowergenerator.com I'm a few steps closer to understanding why a charge controller is important and where the 15 amp blocking diode is wired. The guy who runs the site is Brad, and he only requests a few pictures of your project if you use his plans, and to be safe and take normal precautions.

I've been having some trouble with the chainsaw and was ready to take it in for a tune up. Anna mentioned how she read in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Countryside magazine that fuel with a 10 percent ethanol mix was not good for 2 stroke chainsaw engines. I checked at the gas station and sure enough it had a 10 percent mix of ethanol. It seems like most gas stations around here sell the ethanol enhanced fuel, but I got lucky and found one outside of Gate City on route 23 that advertised non-ethanol fuel.

Some folks will say it's not that important, but all I did was empty out the 10 percent ethanol fuel and mixed up some 2 cycle fuel with no ethanol and my problems went away. This guy suggests that the problem can be avoided by using the high octane gas, which tends to cancel out the ethanol effect. My chainsaw is of the older generation, and I'm going to keep ethanol away from it if that's what it tells me to do.

Dmitry Orlov came out with a book last year titled "Reinventing  Collapse" where he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with what's going on now in the United States.

His attitude towards this bleak version of our future has a surprising upbeat tone to it. He points out some simple things we can change now to be better prepared for what he envisions as a tough ride.

I got attracted to his way of thinking by watching this  very informative interview on Russian television. His blog has even deeper articles he's written on the subject, including a radical way of using sail boats to solve some of the problems he predicts are already unavoidable.

We gathered another load of manure Tuesday afternoon.  Last winter at this time, our pickup truck was working and we hauled manure in the truck and on a trailer behind the truck.  I shovelled a lot of that manure four times --- into the pickup, out of the pickup into a heap on the ground, into a wheelbarrow, and then from barrow to bed.  Phew!

This year, without a pickup truck, we're instead shovelling manure into five gallon buckets.  Given our ultra-fuel-efficient car and the one mile drive from farm to farm (8 cents per round trip), this method actually seems to work better.  We only shovel the manure once, into the buckets.  After that, we can lift the buckets into the golf cart, and then pour them individually onto our garden beds. 

But an even better way is on the horizon --- we ran into another neighbor who told us that if we help him shovel out his barn he'll drive a whole flatbed dump truck load to our garden.  If Mark had a more envious disposition, he would have been jealous at the lust which leapt into my eyes....

March dawned cold and wet --- I hope the month remembers to go out like a lamb.  We scrambled to come up with firewood, lucking upon a fallen Black Locust snag which was dry and burned hot, though split only with much effort.  Warmer weather had better come soon or we'll be out of seasoned wood!

I spent most of the weekend lounging on the couch with the cats, engrossed in my forest gardening book.  Sunday evening, I pulled my head out of the clouds long enough to walk Lucy, catching a glimpse of a sleek mink by the creek which slipped into a hole before I could get the camera out of its bag.  Back inside, I checked out my broccoli and cabbage seedlings, which are growing well (though a tad leggy).  Most have one true leaf and this one is already working on leaf number two.

I rudely evicted what seemed like hundreds of ants from a cozy piece of firewood I was chopping today.

It was a Gulliver like moment where I felt briefly rotten for causing such a huge housing problem for this little colony of ants.

That feeling lasted about 10 seconds and was quickly deleted with the help of our roaming chicken and her appetite for all things small and insect like. The warm fire in the wood stove also went a long way in soothing my ant guilt.

If I had to choose one type of device that was the most labor saving for us on this farm it would have to be our collection of three submersible pumps.

We've had the Ridgid 1 horsepower sump pump for close to two years now and it's really living up to its name. Our first pump was only a 1/6 horsepower which was purchased for around 80 dollars, and it did a good job, but for a little over 200 the Ridgid puts you in a whole new class of water pumpage. We started out using it for garden irrigation and now have it doing duty in the hand dug well helping our drinking water make it to a set of filters inside.

I've got ours adapted to fit a typical water hose and each time I fiddle with it I'm reminded of the early days when we first got to the property here and there was no electricity. The baby apple trees needed to be watered by carrying 5 gallon buckets from the creek, which was not all that close by. It was a tough job, but a good memory. It's hard to describe just how great it feels to be a part of testing and building such an integral part of our infrastructure. I grew up always having running water just a faucet away and took it for granted every day. Now I get a rush of accomplishment whenever I hear the trickle and slush of water making its way to wherever I direct it.

I spent the better part of an hour today arguing with the nut to the far left here in the picture. I wanted it to break free and turn freely, but it kept its arms crossed and insisted on not budging.

The main problem was the lack of leverage. The nut is at the end of the positive side of the flow and the fact that it wasn't stationary made the job that much more difficult. After much inner debate I decided to relent and let the nut stay where it was. I then squashed what was left of its precious copper connector and bent it in a way so as to fit snugly in the slot where the bitter end of a thick wire would go in the new connector. Once tightened down the new configuration seems solid enough to last another 250 thousand miles.

Electrolyzed water is gaining some credibility with today's L.A. Times report. It's still looked down upon in most circles like some sort of snake oil, but Japan and Russia have been using it as an alternative to toxic cleaning chemicals for decades.

It costs about a penny a gallon to produce with a machine that will run you anywhere from 600 to three thousand dollars. The device takes a small amount of electricity, normal tap water, and some dissolved salt and produces hydrogen gas and hydroxide ions. One of the resulting products is 10 times stronger than bleach without harming people or the environment.

The down side is that it can't be stored for very long and it needs to be measured to make sure it's at an effective level. The Japanese are making the most progress by testing its ability as an air filter and Sanyo is talking about a washing machine that promises to get your clothes clean without nasty detergents.

Maybe someday in the future we can all replace bleach and other toxic cleaners with this technology?

In what ways has the "Walden Effect" life differed from what you originally had envisioned? What was romanticized that turned out to be totally different or more difficult? What unexpected pleasures did you find?

--Everett
The concept of "Time Ownership" is one of the unexpected pleasures that first pops to mind when I think of that question.

It has taken some considerable distance from my previous corporate life to fully realize just how little of my time I was able to save for myself and how much of it was traded away for a paycheck and a parking spot. I fixed copier machines full time...the words "full time" being the operative point I'm trying to illustrate here. My time was full of an endless list of chores that always served the greater good of the company. My time off always seemed to have an edge to it because deep in my mind I knew Monday morning was only a day or two away. Before long you adapt to the less than healthy pace and forget what it was like to own 100 percent of your day. You eventually convince yourself that 48 hours on the weekend and a couple of weeks a year is all you need to survive.

I think I'm in the last stages of my corporate de-programming and sometimes it's a struggle to decide which hours go where for which goal, but it's a beautiful struggle that fully belongs to me and at the end of the day a by-product of that struggle can be felt in the form of a warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach as I reflect back on a noise-free day of getting things done on the farm.

The future looks brighter when you fully own your present, and I believe you fully own the present by seizing all 24 hours of each day. Maybe that's what those Latin folks were talking about a thousand years ago when they were yammering about Carpe Diem?