For the second year in a row, Bill and I will be turning off our computer (which is also our TV and radio) during the week of Thanksgiving. It is a happy respite and digital detox that helps us recenter for the winter and reconnect with life off line. On Friday, we will also be leaving our lights off all day. This may be loosely based on Earth Hour, an international event where people turn off their lights for an hour on a specific day. Mostly, we do it because it is fun.
We have a collection of hurricane lanterns, a bunch of real books and a collection of board games. Also, we really enjoy spending quiet time together not just next to each other. When the computer is on it is an easy distraction, but when its off we don't even miss it.
We call this event Dark Friday, in contrast to Black Friday.
If you'd like to join us in spending the day after Thanksgiving continuing to be thankful for what we have, rather than battling to acquire more stuff, I'd love to hear how you plan to celebrate.
There are lots of people who will be celebrating in a similar way, but they call it Buy Nothing Day and it is an international event calling attention to rampant consumerism in the western world. If you'd like some more resources related to a low-impact holiday, check out Buy Nothing Christmas and Center for a New American Dream.
I hope you all have a lovely, rejuvenating Thanksgiving full of the people and moments that matter.
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Friday, November 22, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
Is this really a job?
On Monday and Wednesday of this week, I spent nearly the whole day splitting wood. Check it.
Monday morning:
Monday evening:
Wednesday evening.
A few things to note:
1) Some of this is cherry, so it smells FANTASTIC
2) Yes, I do periodically stand in the woodshed admiring the growing pile
3) We have an electric splitter, so I'm probably not as badass as you're thinking, but it was still a ton of work with much wheelbarrowing involved.
Splitting this wood - all of which is from trees that fell on our land as the result of storms - provided me with a clear example of why we're doing what we're doing. I was confident when I quit my job of our choice to live this sort of life, but it could seem a bit odd to others. There are not a lot of 2013 examples or cultural norms of a woman having no job and no children (it's rather the antithesis of "having it all" by the common current definition). So, I was pleased to realize how directly all this wood splitting could be used to explain the choices we've made.
We (Bill and I...and Sugar Pie and the cats) have a need to keep our house warm during the winter. It's one of those basic requirements that even Thoreau, the king of simplicity, would call a "necessity of life." Previously, I would work at a job that paid me money that I would then exchange for heating fuel in order to meet this need. It was a very fossil-fuel intense process. A car transported me to work, where I sat at a computer for most of the day and earned a paycheck that allowed me to purchase propane gas to be blown throughout my house using a furnace fueled by coal-powered electricity.
An alternative way to provide the heat we need during a cold Indiana winter (and the method that was used when our house was built), is by burning local wood. Now, instead of spending my day earning money to buy propane to heat my house, I spent my time providing heating fuel in a more direct fashion - one that also makes much less use of fossil fuels (the chainsaw and log splitter, and even some of the person-energy rely on fossil fuels in some way, but I am confident it is far less than the previous method). So, even though Childless Woman who Earns No Money is not often considered a job or even a productive choice to make, I think of the work I do here as an employment of sorts - one that meets the needs of my household while making fewer demands on community resources and our environment. It is a weird, but totally viable way to spend a week day.
On a less philosophical note...Kaylee wants you to know that she is feeling better and cavorting around the field at will.
Clara wants you to know that she is still the cutest thing in the barnyard.
Bill and I went apple picking for our anniversary yesterday...
...and added this photo to our collection of arm-length snapshots.
Monday morning:
Monday evening:
Wednesday evening.
A few things to note:
1) Some of this is cherry, so it smells FANTASTIC
2) Yes, I do periodically stand in the woodshed admiring the growing pile
3) We have an electric splitter, so I'm probably not as badass as you're thinking, but it was still a ton of work with much wheelbarrowing involved.
Splitting this wood - all of which is from trees that fell on our land as the result of storms - provided me with a clear example of why we're doing what we're doing. I was confident when I quit my job of our choice to live this sort of life, but it could seem a bit odd to others. There are not a lot of 2013 examples or cultural norms of a woman having no job and no children (it's rather the antithesis of "having it all" by the common current definition). So, I was pleased to realize how directly all this wood splitting could be used to explain the choices we've made.
We (Bill and I...and Sugar Pie and the cats) have a need to keep our house warm during the winter. It's one of those basic requirements that even Thoreau, the king of simplicity, would call a "necessity of life." Previously, I would work at a job that paid me money that I would then exchange for heating fuel in order to meet this need. It was a very fossil-fuel intense process. A car transported me to work, where I sat at a computer for most of the day and earned a paycheck that allowed me to purchase propane gas to be blown throughout my house using a furnace fueled by coal-powered electricity.
An alternative way to provide the heat we need during a cold Indiana winter (and the method that was used when our house was built), is by burning local wood. Now, instead of spending my day earning money to buy propane to heat my house, I spent my time providing heating fuel in a more direct fashion - one that also makes much less use of fossil fuels (the chainsaw and log splitter, and even some of the person-energy rely on fossil fuels in some way, but I am confident it is far less than the previous method). So, even though Childless Woman who Earns No Money is not often considered a job or even a productive choice to make, I think of the work I do here as an employment of sorts - one that meets the needs of my household while making fewer demands on community resources and our environment. It is a weird, but totally viable way to spend a week day.
On a less philosophical note...Kaylee wants you to know that she is feeling better and cavorting around the field at will.
Clara wants you to know that she is still the cutest thing in the barnyard.
Bill and I went apple picking for our anniversary yesterday...
...and added this photo to our collection of arm-length snapshots.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Socks and Sausage
Or "Blurry photos of cats."
This post really has very little to do with sausage and nothing at all to do with socks. It's just an odd title for a blog post that is funny to exactly three people. Here is some sausage, however, so the title can be somewhat relevant.
A few weeks ago, Bill made 4 types of sausage - three pork sausages (2 links and 1 patty) and a chicken, apple, Riesling sausage from our own birds which is the stuff of dreams. Nom. The pork was mostly from a local farm market, but now that it's winter it is harder to get so it was subsidized with some Whole Foods pork.
In other news of local meat, Bill made rabbit cacciatore this weekend. We have a very sustainable population of bunnies on our property (though, when they become dinner we apparently refer to them as "rabbits" and not "bunnies"). I was rather afraid of this - my first rabbit - dinner, but it was pretty yum. I was surprised that rabbit meat is practically white and the caccitore recipe is mostly veggies (including some kitchen-ripened tomatoes I canned in late October). It was eaten on homemade pasta.
Coop and Corrie have achieved a milestone in living with us - their first lunch of eggs!
It makes me feel irrationally happy to give our Humane Society / Animal Care and Control animals freshly scrambled eggs near a warm fire. (Sugar Pie got some too - don't worry! She had her own bowl and the leftovers from the kittens.) Just a few weeks ago (or a few years in Sugar's case), these animals lived in cages and had an uncertain future. Spoiling them a little just feels right.
This post really has very little to do with sausage and nothing at all to do with socks. It's just an odd title for a blog post that is funny to exactly three people. Here is some sausage, however, so the title can be somewhat relevant.
A few weeks ago, Bill made 4 types of sausage - three pork sausages (2 links and 1 patty) and a chicken, apple, Riesling sausage from our own birds which is the stuff of dreams. Nom. The pork was mostly from a local farm market, but now that it's winter it is harder to get so it was subsidized with some Whole Foods pork.
In other news of local meat, Bill made rabbit cacciatore this weekend. We have a very sustainable population of bunnies on our property (though, when they become dinner we apparently refer to them as "rabbits" and not "bunnies"). I was rather afraid of this - my first rabbit - dinner, but it was pretty yum. I was surprised that rabbit meat is practically white and the caccitore recipe is mostly veggies (including some kitchen-ripened tomatoes I canned in late October). It was eaten on homemade pasta.
Coop and Corrie have achieved a milestone in living with us - their first lunch of eggs!
It makes me feel irrationally happy to give our Humane Society / Animal Care and Control animals freshly scrambled eggs near a warm fire. (Sugar Pie got some too - don't worry! She had her own bowl and the leftovers from the kittens.) Just a few weeks ago (or a few years in Sugar's case), these animals lived in cages and had an uncertain future. Spoiling them a little just feels right.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Why?
Someday I'll write a series of posts about why I have quit my desk job to become a small farmer. In the meantime, Susan - the owner and shepherdess at Juniper Moon Farm - wrote a lovely Accidental Manifesto about why she left her life in a big city to be a small farmer.
She covers most of the big reasons why I'm doing this too. (Though, most of you will know, I've never spent a fortune on shoes, make-up or fancy sheets). The satisfaction she describes of decreasing dependence on a centralized, industrial food system, and the joy of making something useful - and honestly getting dirty - is something I really relate to.
Check it out.
She covers most of the big reasons why I'm doing this too. (Though, most of you will know, I've never spent a fortune on shoes, make-up or fancy sheets). The satisfaction she describes of decreasing dependence on a centralized, industrial food system, and the joy of making something useful - and honestly getting dirty - is something I really relate to.
Check it out.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Home heating economics (firewood and other contemplations)
In our house we have central heating and air. We have not yet turned on the Air conditioner, and we probably never will.
Heat for this house has in the past been supplied in many ways. Once, there were wood stoves. Then, there was coal. Coal was replaced by fuel oil. Fuel oil has given way to propane. Propane again gives way to wood.
The current central heating system for the house actually consists of 2 propane furnaces working in harmony and controlled by a multi stage thermostat. One of the furnaces alone does not have sufficient power to heat the house, especially the upstairs. Most of the reason for this is that we have large lengths of ductwork that runs through crawlspaces and the basement, all of which was uninsulated and leaky when we moved in (we also have drafty single pane windows... that's a story for later). When we moved in, the secondary furnace was not operational. As a result, it took about 2 hours for the furnace to begin delivering warm air into a cold house. we always knew where our mittens were. The basement was warm though, and the ducts radiated much heat! Owing to the lack of insulation, in rooms serviced by long runs of ductwork the air blowing out would never be "warm".
After getting the second furnace operational, magic things happened - if you throw enough brute power into things, we get cooking quite quickly! The furnace was fixed on a very cold day, but the house heated up like magic! Two furnaces firing heats the whole house quickly. Of course, wonderful things can happen if you are willing to burn 50 gallons of propane in a day!
This number is real - we burned 50 gallons of propane in a single day. This explains why the average use of propane by the previous owners was 1800 gallons per year!!!! Propane currently costs 2.69 per gallon. I have no interest in spending $5,000 to heat our house this year. Fortunately, I don't think we'll have too.
We stayed chilly for most of last winter, and between mid January and now we have used 600 gallons of propane. We did manage to insulate 80% of the ductwork (Makes a big difference). We also lined some of the windows with plastic shrinky wrap lining (Huge help there!!!). JoAnna also made curtains for the bedroom (kills those drafts quite nicely!). INstallation of a new programmable thermostat was also a big plus. Despite all of this, I still feel as though we're probably getting less than 50% efficiency out of our 80% efficient furnace (we only turned one on for most of the season). Lots of heat wasted still.
Fortunately, we have wood, and 2 stoves to burn it in.
I recently surveyed the trees of our property, here is what I learned:
Our property is slightly more than 8 acres, half of which is a field. The remaining half has trees. I measured every tree on the property with a DBH of greater than 4 inches. We have 438 trees of this size. There are an additional 3-400 saplings of 1-4 inches DBH. The average DBH of the trees on our property is 9.6 inches. The largest tree that we have is a Silver Maple with a DBH of 43 inches. The second largest is a Sugar Maple with a 36" trunk. We have 197 significant Black Walnut trees, 28 of which have a DBH of > 16 inches. The predominant species on the property include Walnut, Sugar Maple, Black Locust, Cherry, and Mulberry.
After reading material from a variety of extension agencies, I am estimating that our trees make up about 115 cords of wood. I am also estimating that 4 acres of woodlot trees can produce 2 cords of wood per year.
Here are some other fun factoids:
1 gallon of propane = 14.6 pounds of wood.
1 cord of walnut = 218 gallons of propane. A cord of Black Locust is the BTU equivalent of 275 gallons of propane. A cord of our least favorite tree, silver maple, is only 188 gallons of LPG.
Let's normalize these somewhat and assume that we want to burn the equivalent of 750 gallons of propane per year - this approximates to ~3.1 cords of firewood, give or take. In the extension materials that I have read, this seems like a reasonable amount of wood and is in line with the experience of others. This may be beyond the sutainable yield of our woodlot though, by about a little more than a cord per year. In 90 years, our woodlot will be a field of stumps. Lesson learned - We have enough wood for our lifetime!
We want to keep trees though, so we need to take a sustainable yield.
So this year, I would like it very much if we did not have to use our central propane furnace at all.
This spring we dropped 4 trees that were interfering with our barn, as well as a large dead walnut tree. We also chopped up a large Sugar Maple that fell in a severe thunderstorm. Our labor earned us a little over 2 cords of walnut, locust and maple, ready and waiting for the first chilly evening. I don't know if 2 cords will be enough to make it through the winter, but I have to believe that anything is better than burning propane in our central furnace, including space heaters.
A 1500 watt space heater will do an acceptable job of heating a room. Left on for 8 hours, it consumes 12 kilowatt hours of electricity. We pay $0.07 per kilowatt hour (for now...). This translates to 84 cents per day per space heater. Even if we run 3 heaters 8 hours each per day, we are still looking at 2.52 per day, or about an extra 75 bucks on our electric bill each month. Even if we doubled that to be an extra 150 bucks per month, and assumed that we ran them for 6 months, we're still looking at less than a thousand dollars worth of electricity. I wonder how this compares to the cost of electricity for the blower on the furnaces. In the winter with the furnace, our electric bill last year was over 200/month. In the summer, it has been 80-100 bucks per month. The only thing not on now is the furnace...
This, coupled with our wood stoves seems the way to go. As fossil fuels become more and more scare, we need to go full circle, back to wood stoves, the way this house was heated when it was built, 152 years ago.
Anyone wanna buy 2 propane furnaces and an A/C compressor?
Heat for this house has in the past been supplied in many ways. Once, there were wood stoves. Then, there was coal. Coal was replaced by fuel oil. Fuel oil has given way to propane. Propane again gives way to wood.
The current central heating system for the house actually consists of 2 propane furnaces working in harmony and controlled by a multi stage thermostat. One of the furnaces alone does not have sufficient power to heat the house, especially the upstairs. Most of the reason for this is that we have large lengths of ductwork that runs through crawlspaces and the basement, all of which was uninsulated and leaky when we moved in (we also have drafty single pane windows... that's a story for later). When we moved in, the secondary furnace was not operational. As a result, it took about 2 hours for the furnace to begin delivering warm air into a cold house. we always knew where our mittens were. The basement was warm though, and the ducts radiated much heat! Owing to the lack of insulation, in rooms serviced by long runs of ductwork the air blowing out would never be "warm".
After getting the second furnace operational, magic things happened - if you throw enough brute power into things, we get cooking quite quickly! The furnace was fixed on a very cold day, but the house heated up like magic! Two furnaces firing heats the whole house quickly. Of course, wonderful things can happen if you are willing to burn 50 gallons of propane in a day!
This number is real - we burned 50 gallons of propane in a single day. This explains why the average use of propane by the previous owners was 1800 gallons per year!!!! Propane currently costs 2.69 per gallon. I have no interest in spending $5,000 to heat our house this year. Fortunately, I don't think we'll have too.
We stayed chilly for most of last winter, and between mid January and now we have used 600 gallons of propane. We did manage to insulate 80% of the ductwork (Makes a big difference). We also lined some of the windows with plastic shrinky wrap lining (Huge help there!!!). JoAnna also made curtains for the bedroom (kills those drafts quite nicely!). INstallation of a new programmable thermostat was also a big plus. Despite all of this, I still feel as though we're probably getting less than 50% efficiency out of our 80% efficient furnace (we only turned one on for most of the season). Lots of heat wasted still.
Fortunately, we have wood, and 2 stoves to burn it in.
I recently surveyed the trees of our property, here is what I learned:
Our property is slightly more than 8 acres, half of which is a field. The remaining half has trees. I measured every tree on the property with a DBH of greater than 4 inches. We have 438 trees of this size. There are an additional 3-400 saplings of 1-4 inches DBH. The average DBH of the trees on our property is 9.6 inches. The largest tree that we have is a Silver Maple with a DBH of 43 inches. The second largest is a Sugar Maple with a 36" trunk. We have 197 significant Black Walnut trees, 28 of which have a DBH of > 16 inches. The predominant species on the property include Walnut, Sugar Maple, Black Locust, Cherry, and Mulberry.
After reading material from a variety of extension agencies, I am estimating that our trees make up about 115 cords of wood. I am also estimating that 4 acres of woodlot trees can produce 2 cords of wood per year.
Here are some other fun factoids:
1 gallon of propane = 14.6 pounds of wood.
1 cord of walnut = 218 gallons of propane. A cord of Black Locust is the BTU equivalent of 275 gallons of propane. A cord of our least favorite tree, silver maple, is only 188 gallons of LPG.
Let's normalize these somewhat and assume that we want to burn the equivalent of 750 gallons of propane per year - this approximates to ~3.1 cords of firewood, give or take. In the extension materials that I have read, this seems like a reasonable amount of wood and is in line with the experience of others. This may be beyond the sutainable yield of our woodlot though, by about a little more than a cord per year. In 90 years, our woodlot will be a field of stumps. Lesson learned - We have enough wood for our lifetime!
We want to keep trees though, so we need to take a sustainable yield.
So this year, I would like it very much if we did not have to use our central propane furnace at all.
This spring we dropped 4 trees that were interfering with our barn, as well as a large dead walnut tree. We also chopped up a large Sugar Maple that fell in a severe thunderstorm. Our labor earned us a little over 2 cords of walnut, locust and maple, ready and waiting for the first chilly evening. I don't know if 2 cords will be enough to make it through the winter, but I have to believe that anything is better than burning propane in our central furnace, including space heaters.
A 1500 watt space heater will do an acceptable job of heating a room. Left on for 8 hours, it consumes 12 kilowatt hours of electricity. We pay $0.07 per kilowatt hour (for now...). This translates to 84 cents per day per space heater. Even if we run 3 heaters 8 hours each per day, we are still looking at 2.52 per day, or about an extra 75 bucks on our electric bill each month. Even if we doubled that to be an extra 150 bucks per month, and assumed that we ran them for 6 months, we're still looking at less than a thousand dollars worth of electricity. I wonder how this compares to the cost of electricity for the blower on the furnaces. In the winter with the furnace, our electric bill last year was over 200/month. In the summer, it has been 80-100 bucks per month. The only thing not on now is the furnace...
This, coupled with our wood stoves seems the way to go. As fossil fuels become more and more scare, we need to go full circle, back to wood stoves, the way this house was heated when it was built, 152 years ago.
Anyone wanna buy 2 propane furnaces and an A/C compressor?
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