Cool “Eco-Tourism” Ideas for Homesteaders

I’ve been looking around at vacation ideas, delighted to discover a nifty partnership and grant program involving folks like the Ag department, the cooperative extension services, the park and forest services and even state and local arts councils, which they’re cleverly calling “Agritourism”. It’s really quite the innovative way to put some capital and ideas to work in the rural sector. Innovative, that is, unless you’re old enough to remember the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal.

I know that a lot of committed homesteaders spend their vacation time working on the ’stead instead of jaunting off to ski in Switzerland or tromping through the Amazon, but it’s really nice to take a few days off and at least get off the property for awhile. And the best part of supporting initiatives like agritourism is that it’s really, truly Green!

Even better, it’s Green without costing a bundle. It always seems kind of funny to me when things show up in my searches (this time it was “green vacations”) that simply don’t apply to anybody I know or hope to know in the idle rich jet-setter category. Ah, well. Maybe “Green” jet-setting is a new fad like bottled water - you know, the dumb things people do to look really cool without a thought to whether it’s actually cool or not. For instance…

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Energy Project: Solar Panels for Free?

In my 3-part series on energy independence (parts 1, 2 and 3) I talked about both solar and water as readily exploitable sources of ‘free’ energy here on my NC homestead where wind isn’t an option. With a water powered ram jet I can solve my water pumping problems and get gravity feed to the house to boot, and there are also possibilities for making electricity directly with a water turbine if we care to go that far into re-engineering the creek.

As with my plans for solar panels on the homestead roof, any electricity we can generate will most likely be returned to the grid via one of those “backwards meters” big energy companies (like ours) are required to provide if you do generate power on your property. That way they have to purchase all the excess energy you produce. The purchase price is of course always less than the retail price you pay for the energy you are using, so the best you can hope for is a seriously diminished electricity bill - use less energy than you sell, you might even come out ahead every month!

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Ready, Willing and Able: Part II

What Kind of Emergencies Are We Preparing For?

In Part I of this series on being prepared for the storms of nature and humanity that may require us to take care of ourselves and our families for days or weeks at a time, we looked at the idea of “Survival Kits” and where those should be kept so that we’re never far from them if ever we need them.

On a scale of likely types of emergencies or disasters homesteaders (and the rest of society) might face, it’s best to be prepared for the ones that would present the most significant survival challenges when planning on what to put into our survival kits. That way the lesser emergencies will seem positively trivial in comparison, and the whole family will become ‘expert’ at getting through tough times. Some examples on that scale -

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Ready, Willing and Able (to Survive)

Making sure you can weather the storms: Part I

It took the government six days to get water to storm refugees in New Orleans while people were dying. How many people know that many sectarian relief organizations were trying hard to get into the city with trucks full of supplies, food, water and preparation trailers the moment the rain stopped? FEMA wouldn’t let them in, confiscated the supplies and sent the volunteers home. I recall wondering at the time if perhaps the government was doing this on purpose - using the opportunity of the Katrina disaster to teach us all a lesson about taking care of ourselves. Then I came to the conclusion that they were simply incompetent and just didn’t care. THAT, I strongly suspect, is the most valuable lesson any of us can learn!

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Energy Independence: Part III

A River Runs Through It!!!

One of the most desirable characteristics of a chunk of land that any determined homesteader looks for when purchasing is water. Wells are expensive to drill and getting more expensive, so a good many people in appropriate areas of the country will be seeking either an already developed spring-fed system or a piece of property that boasts springs that can be tapped. But for energy purposes it’s more important to have a creek or two running through the property, as these can be developed to produce power for either the household water system or for the entire homestead.

Our homestead is lucky to have two creeks, one on each side of the north-south ridgeline that divides the property, both of which drain the National Forest on this south-facing slope of mighty Mount Mitchell, and both of which run all year long without freezing over. These are small creeks unless it’s raining hard in the high country, and the one on the house side of the ridge boasts more springs and greater downhill grade than the one on the nearly inaccessible ‘other’ side.

Our water system originates from a spring bubbling up among the roots of a gigantic tulip poplar tree near the creek. A depression collects more water than silt, and this water is transferred through 2 quarter-inch copper pipes slightly downhill to a small, capped cistern made out of a 4′ tall section of 2′ wide concrete pipe with a concrete lid that can be removed to de-silt when necessary. The bottom of the pipe is buried about a foot in the ground and is not sealed because it doesn’t have to be. This allows it to be mostly self-cleaning, as the silt slowly percolates out and back into the creek. 1″ pipe from the top of this first de-silting stopover takes water to a large, 750-gallon concrete cistern (that is sealed at the bottom and lined), around which we built a spring house enclosure to protect the pump wiring and cistern itself.

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Energy Independence: Part II

There are more reasons to be energy independent than just to save money or avoid the hassles of what happens when the electricity goes out. The American Energy Independence organization lists some of them on their web page, that every homesteader should read for no other reason than to spur them into immediate planning and action.

As I write this post on the second day of 2008, oil has hit $100 a barrel on the NYMEX [New York Mercantile Exchange] exchange, sparked by concerns about violence in Nigeria. We’ve lost more than 3,000 of our brave young soldiers in Iraq, a war of aggression launched almost entirely over control of the world’s second largest petroleum reserves. Combined with news last week of a looming world-wide food shortage being pinned mostly on the eagerness of bare subsistence farmers to produce more lucrative energy crops (like corn and soy for ethanol and biodiesel), the more that we can do for ourselves, the better we’ll weather the coming storms of necessary change. We can lead instead of follow.

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