Local resources

We were graciously gifted this week with some treasures, to us anyway, another's throw-aways. We have been looking for a stationary bike like this, to experiment with bicycle-power generation. There's countless uses for a sturdy stationary bike like this, grinding flour, threshing grain, spinning butter... But the way that we currently do these chores is pretty efficient, and the bike would not necessarily be a great improvement in these areas. The most valuable part of this bike is the heavy wheel, it acts like a flywheel once the bike is in motion, and would work great as a generator. So we are on the lookout for a 15amp alternator and regulator, like you would find in a ride-on lawn mower. Our solar panel generates enough power when the sun is out, but on cloudy days, we run a gas generator for 30 minutes to charge up the batteries. So the pedal-power generator could conceivably be used to supplement our solar panel, and eliminate the gas generator, and the monthly cost of the gas. Usually, on sunny days, we are outside doing plenty of physical labor, but on cloudy/rainy days and in the winter, 30 minutes on the stationary bike would be welcome. So we'll post more when we get some parts to play with...

And from another neighbor came a collection of Mother Earth News from 1977-81, the good juicy peak years before all the adds. So you can guess what I've been doing this week...

There's an article with Helen and Scott Nearing in each magazine...

And oddities like this steam powered bicycle.... hmmm, well we've got plans for a wind-powered electric bike....

And we've been brainstorming about a solar oven, for the summer months when the wood cookstove is unbearable... of course, there's dozens of designs that Mother Earth tested and trialed through the years. This one looks good, we are going to modify it a bit, but we definitely need something that will focus the light up here, we really only have strong sun and heat for a few weeks in late July, early August.

And of course there's piles of recipes and interesting tidbits, lots of solar heat collectors and solar hot water designs... It's the original blogosphere. But to be honest, I find a lot more relevant and useful tips, designs, news and stories on my favorite blogs. But we are grateful for the gifts.

A conversation on ecological sustainability: Part 2

In my post A conversation on ecological sustainability, I made these statements: "I no longer believe that over-population is the dominant problem, or even the root cause of many of our ecological crises. I firmly believe there is more than enough for everyone alive right now on this earth to be nourished, clothed, housed and enabled with dignified work. This is not an utopian ideal, but an ethical principle." I am aware that overpopulation is one of those controversial hot-topics, which is why I feel it is so important to return to this issue and keep churning it.

First off, by simple mathematical equation, arriving at a concrete number for the carrying capacity of the earth, no matter how large or small, requires a calculated footprint for each human being. If we take the current available arable land on this earth as a base, in order to calculate how many human beings can live on that land mass, we need to know how much land each person requires. So which standard of living do we use? When we first began homesteading, one reason we moved into an underpopulated rural area was because we thought that we needed 100 acres to homestead on a largely self-reliant basis, and these depopulating areas held the best chances that we would be able to afford a piece of land that size. In the three years we have been on a 100 acre parcel (10 ac cleared pasture, 90 ac wooded), we have found, through practical experience and meeting the majority of our material needs, that we need a lot less land. Really, 10 acres would almost be too much. Even with wood as our sole source of heat and cooking fuel, and harvesting wood for building all of our barns, fencing and sheds, we have only begun to thin 4 to 5 acres of bush that was clear cut 20 years ago. The trees we harvest are primarily quick growing poplar and fir, and they are not large, average diameter of 6-8", and at least half of the trees we used were dry-rot because the regrowth was crowded and had not been managed. So if we were harvesting our wood out of a sustainably managed woodland, with hardwood for fuel, we need only 2-3 acres, at most. As we develop more solar hot water and solar cooking technologies, we need even less. And this sustainably forested area could also serve as a source of grazing for goats and rabbits, wildlife habitat to shelter natural beneficials in the garden, and food sources such as bramble fruits, orchards and nuts.

As for arable land for gardens, grazing, hay and grain, we first thought that we would run out of room on the 10 cleared acres. And these unamended, unimproved, tired pastures were just enough to carry one dairy cow, a horse and some pigs and poultry, so our first approach was to improve the pastures to increase the carrying capacity. The real revolution for us was to change the kinds of livestock we carry. One dairy cow provides enough milk and dairy products for a large extended family, and without a sustainable community approach to dairying in this area, this one cow was consuming most of the land resources as well as our time and energy, and even with my best effort to use up every drop of milk, in reality, we were producing too much. In switching to goats as dairy animals, and grazing animals such as rabbits and ducks instead of the grain intensive pigs and chickens, we are now able to meet our dairy, egg and meat needs (including growing the grains to raise them) on less than half the land. So as we continue to improve pastures and soil, we can grow all of our food (except coffee, tea and salt) on less than 3 acres, in Zone 4b. The carrying capacity of this zone is just about equivalent to the marginal lands surrounding deserts, we have a 3-4 month growing season, and 8-9 months dormancy, trees grow slowly and pastures do not provide more than one cut in a season. It is the same in a semi-arid climate where the growing season after the rains is only 3 months, with the dormant dry season extending throughout the rest of the year. So in a temperate zone, we could easily decrease our footprint by half or more. A large majority of the land mass of this earth is in the temperate band, if these lands are managed on a sustainable scale, using very low-tech methods and traditional fuels and foods, I would suggest that one acre is plenty to support one adult and a child. If we then continue to innovate, improve and build soils, push back the deserts, and use the types of methods Bishop's Homegrown detailed, the potential is endless.

We also thought that we would run into water issues, even here with a large snow pack and heavy precipitation, because we moved on here with a shallow, hand-drilled well. The well consists of a 2" diameter pipe drilled down to about 25 feet. The water table is usually between 10-15 feet below the surface, but it replenishes slowly because it is only ground water. We are not tapped into any water veins or the fossil water 100" below the surface that our neighbors access. We have to manage our water usage, both in the summer if we go 3-4 weeks without much rain, and in the winter when the ground water and precipitation is locked up as ice and snow. We have often thought of drilling a deeper well, or of using water catchment to meet our non-drinkable water needs. We cannot irrigate the garden on this scale, and even meeting the water needs of the dairy cow began to drain our well, especially in the winter. We mulch the garden and build up water-retaining humus in the soil, and only water tender transplants. On this level, even without rainwater catchment, we use about 10 gallons a day to meet all of our water needs, including livestock, garden, laundry, processing our canned food, etc. Our shallow well only taps the groundwater in a small diameter around it, I would guess that our water footprint, in an area with heavy precipitation to be only 10 cubic feet of ground water. Mr. Fritillary farmed on the edge of a desert, and using permaculture and water management techniques such as heavy mulch, shade houses, etc, he was able to catch enough water for 6-12 months with 5 inches of rain off of a 112 square foot roof. Most semi-arid zones receive 5-10" of rain a year, so with the appropriate rain catchment and storage techniques, water needs can easily be met on the land scale suggested above.

So now for manufactured goods, materials such as metals that require mining, electronics and technology such as solar panels and wind generators. We do our best to make either life-time purchases or buy used goods. We spend well under $1000 a year on purchases such as electronics, bicycle parts, solar panels, generators, tools, grain mills, cookware etc. And that number gets smaller each year. We could easily meet our fiber, clothing and leather needs on the footprint given above. We do not purchase things that are considered "consumables" or pure entertainment. Local theater, arts, artisan crafts and the like are sustainable ways to fulfill our desire to express and entertain one another.

Our power system is on the same micro-scale. We meet our power needs, including powering a laptop, radio, mp3 player, cell phone, household appliances (including a fan in the summer), small power tools, lights and electric fencing on 1200 Watts a month. On this scale, designing and building a power system to meet household or community power needs are easily achievable. Villages in Africa are building their own wind generators out of "scrap" and bicycle generators to power their cell phones, laptops, radios, lighting, etc. The more localized the power generation, the more efficient, because power is lost the further it is pushed down a line. Google is beginning to source renewable power to run the large server farms that provide the Internet. By locating these server farms in appropriate places where there is a consistent power source like tidal, geothermal or wind/sun, we can sustainably build up the global communication network that the Internet provides. Access to the internet can be broadcast over radio-waves, requiring only simple receivers, and data can be stored on-line at these renewably powered server farms, eliminating the need for fiber-optic lines, tele-communication satellites and power-sucking desktop computers.

Transportation is a pretty easy issue to resolve, it just takes a lot of reworking, and restructuring the way we live, but it is technologically and practically possible for us to transport ourselves and our goods without the use of fossil fuels, with low-impact mining and manufacturing. For ourselves, we use bicycles as local transportation, even through our winters, and carpool trips to town a few times a year. But we are working on an electric bicycle design, using a tandem and a trailer, powered by a compact marine wind generator to keep the battery charged. With this bicycle we can comfortably carry 100 lbs in the trailer and 50 lbs on the bike, and travel 100 miles a day at a maximum.

We do not usually "boast" of these facts about our life because we are typically met with a combination of pity and aversion. But we live this way, and are comfortable, nourished, healthy, happy, fulfilled, we have friends and a great marriage, so as far as standard of living, I think we are very well-off. We work hard, but we are not breaking our backs. We live within restrictions, but we are not stagnated by poverty. We are not Luddites by far, and use the latest innovations in technology when they improve our quality of life without harming another's. These are ethical choices, at heart, but they are also practical solutions. It has been a kind of experiment for us to live this way, and because of what we both have learned, we also have a high sense of security and confidence that we are able not only to survive, but to thrive and contribute to our community under incredibly adverse conditions, including the climate disasters to come. I looked into the definition of pragmatism, because I know that I am no longer an idealist, since we have been living by and redefining the ideals that we only held in theory when we lived in an urban environment. By the definition below, I believe, if these kinds of labels really matter, that my approach to this issue has been entirely pragmatic.

"The goal of pragmatist theorizing is not to solve abstract philosophical problems but to attain knowledge of a concrete, social reality and to focus on the problems of actual experience. This knowledge and experience will then direct political action and social change: theory and practice are interrelated. Based on this experiential and practical foundation, pragmatists hold, among other things, that there is a plurality of values and meanings, that human action can better the human condition, and that there is a relationality between the experiencing subject and the experienced object."

So to re-state our belief that overpopulation is not the problem, to us, it is not a question of whether the solutions are out there, the question is whether those of us who have been used to a higher material standard of living are willing to make these changes before it really is too late.

In doing a basic google search for concrete numbers on the arable land available on earth, I found this page:

Surface Area of the EarthEarth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles (which is the mean diameter of the Earth - see "Prove it" under 103).

The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.

Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.

The human population on earth has crossed six billion. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.

Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.

Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.

Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.

I believe that this is possible, and if our earth were being tended on an ecologically sustainable scale, we would be building soil and increasing the amount of arable land. By this I do not mean huge agro-tracts of monocrops, because these farms contribute to the loss of soil and arable land. I am starting to digress into another branch of this issue, so I will save the rest of this discussion for the next blog.

Goals for 2009

2009 is going to be a rough year for most, I hope that it draws together communities and families, to take care of each other. I hope it clears our collective eyes of all the clutter, and reminds us of what is really important: a possible future for the children on this planet, and food, shelter, dignity and peace for every human.

The end of December and the beginning of January are always the slow weeks for us. It is dark and cold, and we are recovering from the busy growing season. This time is necessary for us to regenerate and reinvigorate.
The fierce feline hunters cuddle up to Blackie in his box, some mornings the little grey one is actually sleeping on Blackie's back.

The rest of the winter gives us some time to focus on interests outside of gardening and homesteading, as well as time to plan for the upcoming season. I love to plan out the garden and make plans for the livestock we keep. Mr. Fritillary takes on the larger homesteading "systems" like our power system, or growing/harvesting/threshing grains.

Our goals in the garden are to continue expanding our small grain and pulse production. For cereals, along with wheat, we are also going to grow a crop of hulless oats and spelt. And our pulse crops will include a larger crop of baking beans and dry peas, as well as chickpeas and lentils. I want to try quinoa again, our crop in 2008 failed to produce seed in time for the frost, but we had an early severe frost this fall. After seeing how frost tolerant it is, I will plant at least a week earlier in the spring as well.

The additions in the vegetable garden are minimal, a new variety of pole bean, and paprika peppers. The rest will be just about the same, but I would like to grow more cabbage, sweet potatoes, beets and parsnips. I hope to improve the yield in my onion crop by amending the soil with potassium (from wood ashes). I lost my ground cherry crop to the frost last fall, not a single ripe one, but they struggled to germinate in the spring and I knew they were a bit late. I may have to begin again with purchasing seed since the germination rate of my saved seed was so low.

In the herb garden I'll be adding a few new medicinals, as well as allocating more space for culinary herbs. I am determined to get some fennel seed, I started some indoors last spring, but not early enough I suppose.

And I will be doing more seed saving, especially with the biennials. I have some turnips, beets, carrots, mangles, and onions in storage to be planted for seed in the spring. I also have one cabbage in storage, pulled with the root ball and all, to replant in spring for seed. I left some parsley in the ground to go to seed in the spring, and I mulched over a row of chard and kale hoping it will make it through winter to produce seed in the spring. I am also going to start a lettuce seed bed as early in the spring as possible. Lettuce and radish are long season seed producers, and this fall I lost my radish and the larger part of my lettuce seed crops to the frost.

We are also expanding our variety of grain and fodder crops for the livestock in 2009. Along with wheat and oats, we are planning to grow peas for grain and hay, for both the chickens and goats. Millet, amaranth and sunflower for the chickens. And more mangles for the goats and rabbits.

Our plans for livestock are to keep our two does, and possibly get two ewes, and 2 or 3 doe rabbits in the fall. We will be looking for some ducks in the spring, hopefully some duck eggs to incubate ourselves, somewhere between 12-20. We will also be breeding our young flock of hens and either incubating the eggs or letting a clucky hen hatch them out herself. Going into winter next year we will keep the flock down to 6 hens and a rooster and 6 ducks and a drake.

Our other major project for 2009, Mr. Fritillary's terrain, is to design/build a bicycle generator and/or a horse-powered treadmill (literally a treadmill for the horse), to replace our gas-powered generator. We spent $400 on gas in 2008 (at an average of $1.15 per Liter), $300 in 2007, and we could make one or both of these generators for about that much. The horse treadmill is a bit more complex to build, but it would truly replace the gas generator, producing an equivalent amount of power, and it would give Pilgrim, our standard bred workhorse, something to do in the winter. He actually gets bored and cramped in by the deep snow, and would be a happier, healthier horse for the exercise.

It seems to me that Pilgrim remembers being cramped up by the barn due to the 4-5 feet of snow on the ground through most of last winter, so every time it snows it is as if he is out getting one last romp around the fields.

I have really enjoyed starting this blog, and beginning to build an online community, and will continue to write about our experiences and experiments with homesteading in a brave new world.

Well, don't literally put the fridge in the ditch just yet...

For a bit more motivation on the Ditch the Fridge Challenge, I will tell you all of the wonderful uses we have found for our defunct fridge and freezer...

The first fabulous use of the freezer was as a chick brooder. We turned the freezer on it's side, so that the door opened like a hatch, and the largest surface area (the side of the freezer) was now floor space for the chicks. We laid down cardboard and some coarse sawdust, installed a light bulb on the ceiling (after snipping the electrical cord to the freezer, and re-using it to splice on a light fixture). And screwed in an eye-hook on the door, and a latch, that holds the freezer door open just a bit to allow ventilation. For the first few days the chicks needed supplementary heat. We use hot water to radiate heat. I made a slip pillow to put around a 5 gallon bucket (any bucket, or pot, with a tight fitting lid that fits inside the freezer, and will not be needed again in the house, will work). The pillow around the bucket keeps the chicks from burning their selves as they warm themselves against the bucket, the same as they would under a heat-lamp. For about a week I refreshed the bucket with not quite boiling water, just to the steaming and tiny bubble phase, twice a day. As early in the morning as I could, and as late in the evening, to keep them warm over night. We had a thermometer in there and it kept at a pretty consistent 30-32C. Watching to make sure that it doesn't get too warm when a fresh bucket is installed, in which case I would open the door a bit more, and close it again when it stabilized. After a week, the chicks started making their own heat, and as the freezer is designed as an excellent insulator, their own heat was radiated back to them, and the hot water buckets were no longer needed. At two weeks I had the door open about 6 inches during the day, with a clear plastic window to keep them from hopping out, installed like a child's barrier 3/4 of the height of the opening, again to allow ventilation. By the end of three weeks, the chicks were gradually exposed to outside temperatures, and ready to be moved out of the brooder.

Encouraged by our success with the brooder, we tried it as an incubator. It was a bit harder to keep it up at 37-39C than it is to keep it at 30C, meaning boiling water changed more often. I also made the latch to close the door tight to hold heat well, and taped small sticks around what would be the top edge of the freezer, so that when the lid was closed, the rubber seal around the lid was held out enough to make ventilation gaps. And by moving the freezer-incubator to a part of the house where the temperatures fluctuates less, we were able to incubate eggs without power! The best part about using hot water as a heat source is that it is also a source of humidity. The humidity meter read at a constant 50-60%.

Now for the fridge, when we moved the young chicks outdoors, they still needed a warm place to huddle at night, so we put the fridge on it's side and took off the door. By propping the door against the fridge so that it covered 3/4 of the opening, and just left a gap for the chicks to go in and out, we had a cozy little spot for the larger chicks to keep warm at night.

Now the fridge has been measured and evaluated as a kid box. For the first two weeks of the kid's life, they cannot produce their own heat very well, and need an insulated box to keep warm. Our fridge was a small model, and is not quite adequate, but if it were a full size fridge, it would work very well as an insulated hidy-hoe for kids and lambs.

They also make convenient storage containers for potting soil or as instant raised beds for urban potato growers, etc (You will just have to work out the drainage issue). And in spring can be used as cold frames for transplants. With glass or plastic over the top, and the lid off in the daytime, they will keep plants insulated, holding the heat from the sun like a greenhouse. Just put the lid on at night to keep the frost out. Of course you can also add coffee cans or plastic bottles of hot water at night and on cloudy days to keep them growing.

Or the fridge/freezer can be turned into a big sophisticated version of my camp cooler, with a small pump running cold well water into the basin, and an overflow pipe running water away, to keep your perishables fresh.

Any other ideas?

So next time you see a defunct fridge or freezer in the ditch on big-garbage day, and you have already used up all of your own fridges and freezers for various brooders and cold-frames, you can rescue even more from landfill. And you get a free extension cord thrown into the bargain.

Ditch the Fridge Challenge

I challenge you to Ditch your Fridge! With cooler, or down-right cold, weather coming on, it is a perfect time to challenge your dependence on your refrigerator.

When we moved off-grid, we came with a small fridge and small chest freezer. We had a small generator, battery bank and a solar panel. We could run the darn things, but it was ridiculously expensive to produce enough power to keep our food stored this way. I didn't keep much beyond dairy products in the fridge at the time, without a cream separator, the fridge was pretty full with pots of whole milk, bottles of cream and yogurt. Once it was skimmed, the milk was turned into cheese or fed out. I kept some leftovers in there, where space allowed, but mostly my fridge was an integral part of our dairy processing. The freezer was full of our year's supply of meat, some frozen vegetables and fruit, and extra butter and frozen milk to last through a two month dry period, before the cow calved again.

When we realized we had to make some changes, figuring out how to do without refrigeration was a huge challenge to the milk maid in me. I could do without the freezer, canning the meat, vegetables, fruit, and even the milk for the dry spell. What to do with the extra butter, stumped me until Mr. Fritillary enlightened me about ghee, a traditional Indian or Hindu way of processing butter into pure butterfat, which stores at room temperature like oil. So that took care of storing butter, when fresh butter is not in season. The freezer was soon empty.

I was hesitant to ditch the fridge, but with winter coming on, I was able to cool my twice-daily pot of filtered milk, in a basin of cold water, and let the cream rise in an unheated room that kept at refrigerator temperatures. I could also keep my cream and yogurt in the cold room, as long as winter lasted. But I knew I would need a cream separator by spring. We found one in time for warmer weather. Now I only had our daily table milk, a few liters of cream, a few liters of yogurt, and a pound of fresh butter to keep cold at one time. We do not have a spring or any running water on our property, but the water from the well stays quite cold, even in the heat of summer. We took an old camp cooler, and filled it with cold well water, and submerged everything into the water. Even the butter went into pint jars, same as leftovers or opened bottles of applesauce, etc.

The cooler is on an outside porch, where no direct sun falls on it at any time. In the heat of summer the water must be changed two or three times daily. I put the fresh milk, and separated cream into cold water, morning and night. And change it if need be again in the middle of the day. Come spring and fall, the water only needs to be changed in the evening, the cool night air keeps it cold, and does not start to warm up until late afternoon. In the winter, I change it every few days to keep the water from going stale, and even have to bring the cooler into an unheated room to keep it from freezing out on the porch.

Refrigeration can be done many ways. A small pump from the well can run to a cooling basin, with an overflow, to simulate a spring. Water is a more stable cooling element than air, so it works well. But air can be cooled by a small fan pushing air past a mist or trickle of cool water. In hotter climates, the ground temperature a few feet down can be cool enough to store food.

But designing a way to cool and store your food is only part of the challenge. You may also have to change the way you cook, and even the types of food you eat, to ditch the fridge. Take a look at the contents of your fridge. Eggs and many cheeses can be stored in a cool cabinet. Eggs store quite well at 60-70F for at least two weeks. The only reason they are refrigerated at the grocery store is so they can be kept for 3-6 months. Homemade preserves, pickles and jams will keep in a cool cabinet or submerged in the cooler, for a week, so preserve your food in one week sized portions. With a backyard garden, produce is eaten straight from the garden, and with the exception of lettuce, will keep in a cool cabinet for a few days. Vegetables like shelled peas or broccoli heads can be put into a jar or water-proof container, and submerged in the cooler and will keep fresh for a day or two. For the most part, the refrigerator only prolongs the distance food takes to get to your table. The fresher your food is, the less you will need your refrigerator.

The challenge I have set for myself next year is to expand my range of fermented vegetables. Many people prefer to freeze vegetables over canning them for the nutritional value that is maintained in frozen vegetables. More than just cabbage can be fermented, including beans, cauliflower, roots, and cucumbers. Even a medley of vegetables, onions, peppers, garlic and herbs can be fermented together. Fermentation preserves the nutritional content, since vitamins are never destroyed by heat, and pathogens are kept from spoiling the food with friendly-bacteria that also add their own health benefits to the foods. And fermented foods can be kept for months, or even a year, in a cool room at 50-60F.

Ditching the fridge is not only environmentally progressive, it can wean you off of a dependence on consistently available cheap power, and give you the opportunity to change your relationship to the food you eat.

Winter delights

Penelope and Juniper are looking quite pregnant. The books say that most of the development happens in the last two months of prengancy, and they are due anytime between 6-8 weeks from now. The previous owner did not write down the breeding dates, so we have to watch them closely. One tip I read is that the careful goatherder will be able to observe when the first kid moves into the birth canal, by a slight slimming on the right side. This gives about a 12 hour notice before labor. The kids are carried on the right, the rumen on the left. Overall I am happy with their condition, we have been feeding them our homegrown grains to bring their condition up to snuff before they kid, and they are doing a great job picking off the heads and digesting the whole grain. The chickens do a great job at it too.

Winter has certainly arrived, we got about a foot of snow on Saturday. This is our winter road. Mr. Fritillary did some maintenance on the bikes, pumped up the tires and greased everything well, to resist rusting from salty winter roads. In the summer our 15 mile round trip commute down to the internet access center takes about 15 minutes each way, but slick winter roads can slow us down a bit. Although cold usually doesn't deter us from making our way down here about twice a week, wind and snow can. I wear quilted overalls, a down coat, and my treasured handknit long underwear, and wool bra, along with copious scarves, hats, gloves and a few pairs of socks. I barely feel the cold, even when it gets down to -20C. Haha, I look like a marshmallow, but I can still pedal!

But I have quite a number of blogs that I want to write, and two a week hasn't been covering it, so I am going to post a couple of blogs when I am down here, to make up for not having daily internet access.

Our driveway does not get cleared until spring, we pack a trail over the snow with snowshoes, and our occasional visitors park up on the road, and walk in. The dogs have to leap to get through the snow on our morning walk, as we head out to road for a good stretch.

Winter has beauties that rival summer blooms and breezes. Icicles hang off our rough-cut porch roof. The light reflecting off the snow on a clear day is dazzling. The solar panel collects nearly as much energy from a short winter day, as a long summer day, with the added boost of reflection.

The south-facing kitchen window always forms these fan shaped intricate ice crystals.

And the north-facing windows form sharp angular ice crystals, quite beautiful really.

Brussels Sprouts are practically designed to withstand frost and snow. The leaves protect the little cabbages along the stalk. They have finished growing, but I am still harvesting bits of green. The winterbore kale is doing very well, I am still harvesting a pound a week, but will probably get one last harvest or two. As long as we still have some greens from the garden, I can put off opening my canned green beans and peas, our only greens except sprouts and sauerkraut, until spring.

The last of my green tomatoes are ripening well, they have stored, and slowly ripened over six weeks in the cold room. Again, the longer I can use these, the longer I can put off using up the canned tomato sauce in the pantry. Afterall, it has to last until next August!

Generating Alternative Power

Generating your own power is much like growing your own food. The first step is to change your relationship to your power, much like your relationship to food is changed by eating seasonally and locally. Most households use more power than can be efficiently or affordably produced by alternative sources, so the most important thing to do is to reduce and reorganize your power needs. Reducing the first 50% is the easy part, like growing your family's fresh produce needs for the summer. After you bring your power consumption down, somtimes through outright sacrifice, but mostly through a creative process of doing things differently, then you have a chance at going off grid.

After reading reports from the UN lead Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, and other independent sources, it appears that we should be setting our greenhouse gas emmission reduction goals at 80% or more. That means we need to get extremely creative, and look around at what we can use and afford right now.

We are off grid. We are not fossil fuel free yet, but we are carbon neutral. We have one Sharp 80 watt Solar PV panel, a 1200 watt gas generator, running through a 40 amp battery charger to boost the power, six 6V deep cycle batteries in a 12V configuration, and a 1200 watt moderated sine wave inverter. All of this cost us about $2000. We run the generator an average of 40 minutes a day, and are looking at pracitcal ways to replace it, using 1/2 liter of gas a day (200L or 50Gal a year). With this system we run 1-2 compact flourecent lightbulbs, radio, electric fencer, occational TV and DVD player, charge a laptop, cell phone, ipod, use a fan in the summer, and run kitchen appliances like a cream separator, blender, etc. We do not use electricity to move water, heat water, heat air, cook food or preserve food. Generally speaking there is usually a better source than electricity to provide these domestic needs.

Producing your own power also means looking at what resources you have locally. Wind, sun, water, wood, vegetable oils and human/draft power are all sources of energy, and one or more is bound to be abundant or at least available anywhere on this earth. Generating power is one side of the equation, storing and using the power is on the other side. Below are some things we have learned about renewable energies.

Power Generation:

1. Wind power: HAS TO BE in the right location. Look closely at the startup speeds on individual generators to match it to the average wind speed in your area. Get a wind meter and measure your own wind, don't rely on what other locations experience. If the average wind speed is 12 mph then you are going to be on the low end of wind power generation. You need a consistent 12-25mph wind speed to get real economic and efficient use out of any wind generator. Best to be on an open plain or ocean.

2. Solar voltaic PV generation: With PV technology changing in material composition, efficiency and cost within the next 5-10 years, it may be best to wait or take this into account when investing in a PV system. A general search on Photovoltaics will give you more of an idea of what is going on in the industry. Possibly some exciting stuff. Other important factors to take into account regarding PV's are pollution, smog days, contrails, and climate change. We have found that living under a flight path has cut out our power from 6amps to 3.5amps on high flight days. And they don't have to be directly over you, they can spread out from hundreds of miles away.(see The David Suzuki Foundation). For climate change, if you are living in a climate model expected to go dryer or wetter (meaning more or less sun), then take these into your estimates.

3. Draft power: We have looked into the possibilities of using draft animals: oxen, dogs, horses and donkeys. We have come across a few websites that have interesting ideas and working systems, it may be appropriate for many areas or situations, most possibly as as a seasonal, portable standing motor for farmwork, more than a daily home power source. We have a working standard bred horse, and have worked on some designs to power a DC generator, but not one that would be efficient enough in both time and money. Our horse would be better employed to pull in firewood or cultivate the garden than to waste time and energy on generating power at this stage.

4. Steam: We have looked into it as a stable power source, being that we have an abundance of wood. But anything under pressure has it own state regulation and safety issues. Steam has a lot of potential for small scale sustainable carbon neutral generation, especially for community shared power systems.

5. Bio fuels: At this point a controversial issue. Large areas of rainforest are being cleared in Indonesia to grow Europe's demand for biofuels. This is not sustainable or ecological. Biofuels can be grown on the homestead. They would never have sold a tractor if farmers could not run them on their own corn oil or homegrown ethanol. One acre of sugar beets can produce 1000 liters of ethanol, but again state regualtions apply.

8. Pedal power: We are looking into the possibility using a pedal powered generator to replace our gas generator.

9. Geothermal: This is not likely a realistic option for a single household, but on a community or urban scale it may be the best source of power available. It is constant, and can be used to create electricity as well as heat and cool both water and air. Wikipedia gives a good overview of the technology as well as links to more research and working geothermal power stations around the world.

More on batteries next time....