Thanksgiving is just over a week away, which means one of my absolute favorite fruits are now being sold fresh in bags – often on half price sale – at grocery stores everywhere. For Thanksgiving I use just one of those 12-ounce bags to make my famous Crackberry Sauce (regular whole cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries added). But I buy as many as I can afford when they go on sale so I can dry them as “craisins.”

I’ve written quite a bit about how much I like drying food from the garden rather than canning. Which is a hot and expensive way of preserving things. But this time of year my handy-dandy home-made solar dryer is fairly useless, there’s just not enough hours of sun to make it work. So I use the oven, which can also be a relatively expensive proposition. Still, good craisins are expensive from the store in those little brand name bags, so it works out fairly. Even better, if you make your own craisins at home you can do some pretty spectacular things with them flavor-wise.

This year I’m doing the “Double-Dry” method for orange flavored craisins. It’s easy enough – just dry the craisins in single layers on flat baking sheets in a barely warm oven – I use the lowest setting, 150º – and keep the door propped open a couple of inches to allow the moisture to escape in natural convection. Takes awhile, and many of the berries retain their size and shape until they’ve cooled completely and wrinkle up into the ‘usual’ raisin-like form. I put these into a glass bowl and cover them with hot orange juice. Then cover the bowl and let the berries reconstitute. Then dry them again.

You could use any type of fruit juice to flavor your craisins, even wine or brandy if you want. Just be sure to label the containers you put them in so they don’t get mixed up. They are wonderful additions to holiday cakes, breads and cookies, or just as handy snacks. If you want your craisins to be sweeter, just thoroughly dissolve a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey in the reconstituting juice, it will get absorbed.

It’s cranberries this time of year, but drying and double-drying fresh fruit works any time of year, whenever the local harvest has big lots at the farmer’s market. I haven’t yet double-dried apples, as dried apple slices go so fast as snacks around here that it seems the hoards just stand around drooling to get them as fast as they can be produced. But if ever I did happen to have dried enough for, say, a Thanksgiving pie, I’d probably reconstitute them in spiced juice (mulled cider or even wine) just before putting them into the pie crust, using leftover juice as part of the filling. Just add sugar and corn starch to thicken.

Cranberries don’t grow in my locale, but blueberries sure do. I’m planning to dedicate several terraces on the upper yard slope to the ridge to blueberries, once I find a good source of thinned bushes I can get for free. Say, 4 100-foot rows of good producers, which works out to ~25 bushes per row spaced at 4′. Good producers will return ~5 pounds of berries per bush (some will give 10, but I’m being conservative here). Once they’re producing at that level, I’ll be getting an average crop of 500 pounds a year! That’s big enough to supply my family and friends as well as the local munchy market. Besides, blueberries come in high summer, which would let me use the sun instead of expensive electricity to do the drying.

As the hardwoods peak and shower our homestead with a bright blanket of multi-colored leaves, the resulting re-emergence of the surrounding mountains reminds me that cold weather’s coming fast and things here on the ‘stead have to be squared away for that inevitability. First on the list of things to do, of course, is woodstove maintenance.

Our woodstove is a custom job, came with the cabin when we bought the place. It needs to be blackened, as the surface does tend to become a bit pitted and rusty over a period of years. We could use a coat of gun blue, but we usually just get a can of good ol’ stove blacking from the hardware store and apply that. Once it’s on, it needs to be fired up to set, however. And that of course requires cleaning the stovepipe and making sure all the joints are sound (or get replaced, also something that has to happen every few years). And while we’re at that, cleaning out all the packed ashes leftover from springs last cold nights has to be removed, the lining bricks re-set, and all the grates through which the stovepipe passes have to be meticulously cleaned of accumulated cobwebs and possible flammables. A well-maintained woodstove provides reliable and welcome heat for decades whether it’s free-standing or a fireplace insert variety. Without said maintenance it’s a fire hazard for which you may find your insurance lacking.

So now that at least the start on the winter’s wood supply has been cut, split and stacked in a convenient location, here’s the basic overview of “How-To” do whatever else needs doing…

1. Checking the Pipe. The first place to look for needed replacement is at the connection of the pipe to the stove. This joint gets the hottest, and stovepipe is a thin sheet metal rather than a thick cast iron. It will degrade faster than anywhere else. You should of course also check the rest of the pipe joints for rust and thinning, and if anything looks weak go ahead and replace the entire thing. Along with the cap to discourage rain from getting in, and re-tar the flashing where it goes through the roof. Last time we replaced the pipe we got an extra galvanized sheet and wrapped it around the joint section, then fastened it securely with wire. This has allowed the pipe to last longer than it used to, which is cost-effective.

Our stove is in the basement, the pipe goes straight up through the center of the cabin’s living area and right up through the loft and out the roof. This arrangement is very energy efficient, as we get more “living” heat off the pipe than the stove. Being three stories tall, it also minimizes the carbon particulates in wood smoke that makes it all the way out, which is good even though I like the homey smell of wood smoke when coming home from an outing. The downside of the tall pipe is that soot and resin/creosote buildup tends to coat the inside of the pipe quite thickly. This presents a chimney fire hazard, so years that we don’t replace the pipe we have to ‘sweep’ it good.

First thing to do is get a stout stick or paddle and ‘rap’ the pipe starting at its highest point and working your way down to the stove itself. Don’t hit it hard enough to dent it, but do strike all the way around to loosen built-up carbon. You’ll hear it ‘raining’ down as you go, and yes you will have to get it out of the stove once you’re done. But once you’ve ‘banged the pipe’ down its entire length, go on up to the roof and do the interior job. You can purchase a ‘sweep’ (a circular stiff brush), or you can do it the old fashioned way. This involves tying a brick or good-sized stone into an old terrycloth towel and then attaching a rope so this can be lowered into the pipe as far as it will go. If it meets resistance pull it up and drop it down a few times to loosen the blockage. The old towel should be entirely trashed by the time this job is done, so toss it. Then check the sections and joints yet again to ensure that the metal is still entirely sound.

If your woodstove set-up has much shorter sections of pipe with elbows in it, you’ll have to dismantle those elbows and either clean thoroughly with wire brush or replace. These 90º turns pick up a whole lot of carbon and creosote, need extra attention.

If you’ve got one of those pretty fireplace insert stoves, you’ll need to not just clean the pipe but also the chimney. It can be worth it to go ahead and hire a chimney sweep for this purpose, who will also inspect your rock and/or brickwork to ensure the mortar is solid and your rain cap is functional without blocking air flow. A friend’s house very nearly burned down a couple of years ago when his brick chimney caught fire and sent flames and sparks out onto the roof shingles. Don’t let that happen to you, pay attention to your exhaust system!

2. Applying the Blacking. We get ours in a can from the hardware store, which is cheaper and more made-to-order than gun blue. It’s a sort of paint that you apply – just like paint – to the outside wrought iron surface of your stove. You can also apply to the interior, but we’ve never found that necessary.

Once it’s dry you want to open up every window and door throughout the house (so do this on a warm day), maybe crank up those window fans, and build a fire. The blacking doesn’t become ‘one with’ the wrought iron until it’s gotten good and hot. But the process does cause some obnoxious fumes during that setting fire, which is why the house must be open. We have birds, cats and dogs, all of them should be taken to somewhere outside for as long as the setting fire burns, and not brought in again until the fumes have been thoroughly purged by fresh air.

A good blacking job can last for 3 or 4 seasons before needing to be done again, so don’t bother with this unless the metal of your stove is looking rough.

3. Setting the Bricks. This is kind of a dirty job, but well worth the effort if you rely on your woodstove to keep things above freezing on long winter nights or for many hours while you’re away from home. The basic idea is that lining the stove with bricks adds a great deal to its thermal mass, helps it to retain heat even when its vents are shut very nearly all the way off.

We use regular old building bricks. The stove itself is rectangular, so these work very well and tend to stay in place. We set them one-thick to completely cover the bottom of the stove, then 2-high around the back and sides. This means the fire is set right on top of them. On cold nights we load it up with larger pieces of wood, let it catch well, then close down the vents all the way, then a quarter-turn back. Barely enough air to keep it smoldering, not enough for flames. The stove stays warm enough to save pipes, but the house is cold enough to need comforters and quilts on the beds. Who would want to sleep in a hot house in the middle of the winter anyway?

In the morning the vents are opened up a bit and some fresh wood is added, by the time coffee’s ready the stove is cooking away and it’s warm enough for showers and such. Don’t have to actually build any fire at all, as there are enough leftover red-hot coals from the night to fire it up automatically.

If you’re heating already with wood, you probably already know about putting metal or ceramics underneath and on any walls around your unit. These things can get red-hot, and can not only ruin any drywall, wood paneling or wallcoverings in their vicinity, they can also cause them to catch fire. We covered the wall nearest our woodstove with a sheet of that aluminum looks-like-stone skirting for mobile homes, because we happened to have a sheet from a salvage job we did years ago. But just like the brick trick, if you were instead to use stoneware floor tiling or even actual mortared brick, you’d be adding to the thermal mass of your overall heating system. More efficiency the better, and when it’s really, really cold every little bit of radiant heat is welcome.

And whether or not you have small children in the house, do put a ‘fence’ around any woodstove that is taking up room in the main living area. We don’t because ours is in the basement, but where the pipe comes up through the library we have a chickenwire ring-fence around it to keep people and animals away from it. That pipe gets plenty hot enough to burn if touched. We also have a nifty little magnetic temperature gage on the pipe that allows us to tell quickly when the fire’s too hot. Managing the temperature is easy enough to do just by closing the vents a bit, but it can get ahead of you if the stove isn’t right there to be seen and felt.

At any rate, I trust we’ll all have a safe and warm winter on our homesteads. More helpful hints for winterizing the place will be upcoming as the seasons change, so do stay tuned!

Andrew Burger at CleanTechnica blog reported Monday [September 26, 2011] that Westinghouse Solar has introduced new plug-and-play solar panel kits for do-it-yourselfers, which can be purchased off the shelf at Lowe’s. These kits come with built-in AC inverters, brackets, roof flashings and panel splices, connecting easily to each other. Each panel is rated at 235 watts, making the basic 4-panel kit (~$1500) come in at just under a kilowatt.

Homesteaders are nothing if not do-it-yourselfers, and most of us would dearly love to be supplying our own power. Maybe even selling clean green energy back to the electric company by generating more than we normally need! And since we tend to live out in the boonies… er, countryside, we are often last in line to get our outages taken care of after storms or other problems cut electricity. It would be great to have alternative on-site sources for at least some electrical demands when the commercial power’s out, preferably not a gasoline generator that uses petroleum, contributes to global climate change, and is loud enough to be a public nuisance.

The price of solar panels has been coming down steadily over the past few years, as more companies get into producing the materials for them, and with China investing heavily to develop their domestic industry. There are still state and federal rebates and incentives available in the U.S. to help cover the cost of going solar, so now would be a good time to buy. Those rebates and incentives won’t last long once the price comes down to honestly competitive.

About the most expensive part of these DIY kits is the licensed electrician recommended to do the actual wiring into the home electrical box, or the grid feed-in. Our electricity company is Duke Energy, and while they will facilitate a tie-in, it has to be done by one of their own electricians, and those make $30-$50 an hour. Pay-back depends entirely on how much your utility supplier charges per kilowatt hour. That cost isn’t coming down with fossil fuels or nuclear, so a homesteader could see pay-back in 6-10 years. If you’ve enough money (or credit) to install DIY panels on your barn and outbuildings as well as your house, you could be a net energy producer through the feed-in and almost break even right from the start.

Your own needs will of course come first. Check out your most recent electric bill. It will tell you how much you’re paying per kWh for juice and give you a feel for how much electricity you use per month (round high). Our conservation efforts here will make a big difference in how much roof you’ll have to donate to the generation project. It can take up to 64 panels to cover the “average” homeowner’s electrical needs, and given the size of these panels, you’d have to have several roofs or donate some land to the effort. But of course, homesteaders aren’t “average,” always aware of our consumption habits and trying to lessen our carbon footprint.

Thus to go completely off-grid you’d still have to be independently wealthy. And solar panels only generate when the sun shines, so while you could make a good dent in your own draw on the grid during the day, you wouldn’t be selling back to the grid while you sleep at night. Better bets for a grid tie-in would be wind and/or micro-hydro, both of which would generate ‘trines 24-7. The 4-panel solar kit from Lowe’s could be used to power a dedicated circuit in the house for a specific appliance – like, say, an energy efficient refrigerator or chest freezer – and a 12V battery charger. That way when the electricity goes out you could still maintain refrigeration and household lights, maybe your computer.

At any rate, this is great news. Solar is finally coming into range for the average property owner, even just as an assist to offset continual price hikes in fuels the utilities use for generating electricity. The more people who take advantage of on-site generation, the fewer new big plants – coal or nuclear – the utilities have to build. Check out some of the links below and start dreaming!

Links:

Westinghouse Solar
Westinghouse Solar Introduces Low-Cost DIY Home Solar Kits
Everything Solar: How Much Energy Do You Need For Your Home?
Energy Matters: Wesinghouse’s DIY Home Solar Kits

I read an interesting article on the “earthlodges” of Native Americans in the Dakotas the other day. I’d learned early in my life when the family moved from New York to “Indian Territory” – Oklahoma – that not all Native Americans lived in those portable teepee tents so prevalent on the plains. I knew the ‘civilized’ tribes of the southeastern United States were able constructors of log cabins for their permanent villages, and of course knew about those spectacular adobe pueblos in the southwest. And while I learned in junior high Oklahoma history about the sod-roofed shanties built by white settlers (and for which Oklahoma was famous), I’d never heard of earthlodges.

Earthlodges are large round structures from 20 to 50 feet in diameter which are built to be much more permanent than the yurts that basically amount to a Mongolian version of teepee for migratory people. Lots of people these days have deck-mounted yurts that are popular as camp cabins or gazebos, but they’re not really something stable or well-insulated enough to live in full time.

In contrast, the earthlodge is dug into the ground and framed with logs, covered with woven willow mats and then covered completely (except for a smoke hole in the middle of the roof) with mud and sod. Your basic hobbit house, but as its own hill rather than dug into a pre-existing hill. Of course, there are some modern earthlodge designs that combine aspects of natural landscaping and lodge building, which are actually quite nice if you don’t care much about windows. It would be quite easy to engineer one of these with skylights, so interior darkness can be alleviated.

Dakota State Historical Society

The original earthlodges were built communally, often housing between 15 and 25 people. They provided solid, very well-insulated shelter for harsh Dakota winters, and stayed naturally cool in hot Dakota summers. They lasted only as long as the palisade poles and main support logs lasted in the ground, about 7 to 10 years before they’d rotted enough to need replacing. Since it took only about a week for a group to construct an earthlodge from scratch, the old one would simply be torn down and a new one erected in its place. The old logs recycled into firewood made this village system quite efficient given that the Dakotas do not enjoy the thick, lush forests of the American southeast.

For a new homesteader looking for cheap, eco-friendly housing on a tract of raw land, it’s not difficult to see how the problem of ground-rot could be simply eliminated by seating the anchor and palisade logs in concrete. The thermal mass of palisade logs plus dirt/sod can be nearly warm in winter and cool in summer as 3-foot thick adobe walls. More modern – and fully waterproof – coverings take the place of those woven willow mats, and fewer palisade poles would allow for regular insulated walls or an opportunity to place windows and/or exits to porticos, or to build storage rooms or closets off the main structure. For a truly permanent structure, some research on new under-sod waterproof roofing material would probably be a good idea.

The niftiest thing about this kind of permanent shelter is that if your land is raw enough to need some clearing, the logs and poles can be taken as part of your clearing plans. These will have to be de-barked and dried above the ground, there are many good Do It Yourself books and plans out there for site-built log homes that have clear instructions on how to do this. If you’re planning to grow crops, the sod shouldn’t be hard to come by. Rather than a big central fire pit and large hole in the roof, a central wood stove with just a pipe running up through the roof will protect from the elements much better than the wicker baskets the Mandan people used to cover their smoke holes when it rained.

It also strikes me that the side walls could be constructed of straw bales and covered with mesh and stucco or adobe instead of mud and sod and still be as easy to heat and cool. Some may consider rock as well, if the land has an overabundance of those that need removing before crops can be grown. Any of these alternatives for some or all of the side walls would make for a very handsome home. The sod roof does have great appeal, I’ve always envisioned a hobbit house with wildflowers instead of just more grass to have to mow.

The interior, once you’ve got the central roof supports and planned your walls, can of course be framed and subdivided as you please for cooking sleeping and living areas, bathrooms and utility as you wish. The Dream Green link above also offers a plan for a ‘multi-lodge’ made up of several octagonal earthlodges connected to a front portico area. This idea offers the possibility for future expansion as the family grows.

So chalk this up as yet another eco-friendly green construction to think about if you’re new to homesteading or are planning to build more structures on your homestead than you’ve already got. A far less modern (more true to origin) version of earthlodge would make a very serviceable combo barn, root/wine cellar and tool/vehicle storage shed. For as long as you can keep the livestock from eating the walls and roof, that is.

Links:

Indians 101: The Earthlodge
Dream Green Homes Earth Lodge
Blue Ridge Yurts

Those of us homesteaders who have been hoping the cost of solar panels would continue to fall until we can finally afford them on our houses and outbuildings have been watching with some trepidation the news that solar start-up Solyndra has filed for bankruptcy. What does it mean in terms of the push to secure truly ‘green’ jobs here in the U.S., as well as our struggle to get our nation off filthy fossil fuels like coal and gas, and to phase out ill-conceived nuclear power generation before Megalopolis ends up a ‘dead zone’ for 300+ years.

The New York Times reports that Solyndra’s bankruptcy bodes ill for the entire solar industry. But does it really? While we can be sure King Coal and Big Nukes would dearly love that to be true, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is true.

Solyndra’s collapse marked the third time in as many weeks that a solar company declared bankruptcy. Evergreen Solar Inc. of Massachusetts and SpectraWatt of New York also filed for protection.

Three investment-heavy solar companies in three weeks? What’s going on? Some analysts loudly tout the idea that the solar industry itself is in trouble – and there obviously is some trouble – but how bad is it? According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, part of the problem is that the cost of materials to make solar panels has been falling drastically as more and more investment in the technology has materialized, and more companies jump into the fray. In such a situation some of the most heavily leveraged companies who got in when material costs were high are going to fail simply due to their debt load. Solyndra also produced commercial rooftop systems with a unique cylindrical collection system, and that system proved to be entirely impractical in residential applications. This, analysts say, indicates that the company badly misunderstood the marketplace they’d entered.

Solyndra also produced the thin film solar panels I was hoping to use on my metal roof, so maybe their leftover stock of that will go at super-discount price now that the company is defaulting on its more than half a billion dollars in federal loans. Worst part, of course, are than 1,100 ‘green’ energy workers are now unemployed. Hopefully they’ll be able to find new work in the field soon. German energy giant just announced that it is getting out of the nuclear business altogether, and will refocus on its alternative and renewable divisions. ABC News reports that the Solyndra bankruptcy is unlikely to hamper government investment in green jobs or renewable energy sources, so that’s some good news.

Besides, despite the loss of those 1,100 jobs at Solyndra, the solar energy sector is still employing more than 100,000 people and has added more than 6,700 jobs just in the past year. Green job growth appears to be healthy despite some start-up upheavals in non-competitive sectors. These are good jobs, we need more of them.

The bottom line is that Chinese governmental investment in solar production is the biggest factor effecting cost of solar panels, as U.S. companies just don’t have access to the kind of sweatshop, prison and slave labor that the Chinese government can deploy. Much as American corporations would love to pay workers $2 a day for 16 hours of daily work, that’s simply not going to happen no matter how long they drag out this 2nd Great Depression.

The government’s exposure on these bankruptcies should definitely not prevent the necessary investment in alternatives, especially given the recent dramatic breakdown of half a century’s empty promises that nuclear energy would be “clean, safe, too cheap to meter.” The price of those is going nowhere but up, and they already cost more in initial investment than any other energy source. I figure the solar market will balance itself out over time, and those companies that install and maintain solar panels on your roof that turns THEM into your utility company (at a guaranteed rate, something you’ll never get from a public utility) seem to be doing great.

At any rate, I’m still hoping that by the time we’ve got the money to invest in full energy production for this homestead there will be available technologies made right here in the U.S. of A. that are both affordable and will do the job with enough extra to sell back to Duke. Why, maybe Duke will get enough from that distributed generation to cancel any and all plans for new nukes nobody needs or can afford. You never know…

Links:

U.S. Solar Industry Job Growth
Solyndra Bankruptcy Unlikely to Hamper Green Jobs
House Judiciary chair: Solyndra bankruptcy
Solyndra Bankruptcy Reveals Dark Clouds

After heading down to the springhouse around noon today to patch together the badly jerry-rigged connection from the cistern so as to get the water going again (no, the new ram jet system isn’t there yet, but we did get the new cistern to bury on the ridge…), I was glad for the gorgeous, crisp and clear weather. For a change, the summer having been absolutely miserable hot and humid inch-a-day rainy yuck until the second week of August. It’s quite a hike, so I was resting in my chair being grateful for peace and quiet and gazing at the impossible Carolina Blue sky out my window.

Then I felt the shaking. I thought it was Starfish the German Shepherd scratching right under my chair and turned to look. She was laying across the room looking at me like it was MY fault. Then the china started rattling and knick-knacks on the shelves, and I knew it was an earthquake. It didn’t make that deep bass rumbling sound I remember from my childhood in the Philippines and California. Guess the piedmont here east of the continental divide is just too much mud and clay to generate those good deep basalt earth-groans.

Only lasted about 15 seconds or slightly less. Nothing broke, nothing fell, and all the trees are still standing. But the USGS now rates it a 6.0, centered under Mineral, Virginia. Little aftershocks continuing.

6.0 is a pretty darned big earthquake. Our very first experience with serious rural living was when my hubby got out of the Navy in 1975 and got a job at the North Anna nuclear plant just outside of Mineral. We rented a house on a 700 acre farm between there and Orange, some of the most beautiful rolling hill country anywhere. They hadn’t actually built the power plants yet, planned for four of them in a row on a big man-made lake they had to build for cooling. Deal is, they’d managed to site all four of their planned units smack dab astride a 15-foot wide earthquake fault they didn’t know about until they started digging. We got there just when the pit for the #1 reactor had reached its spec depth.

Now, you and I might reasonably suppose that if you found out your reactors were going to be suspended astride a fault, you might want to move them over about 30 feet in either direction so they’d be safely on one side or the other if the fault ever gave way. But alas, we are not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So on a tour one day I got a bird’s eye view from a specially built platform over the pit to see them busy like little ants attempting to wire the earth together with rebar. Really, I kid you not. Struck me at the time quite hilarious, and I’ve laughed about it ever since.

Hubby’s job consisted of going with another ex-Navy nuke across the lake every day in a nice utility company speedboat to change the paper at various seismic stations to monitor for earthquake activity. They found a floating slalom ski one day and took turns using it to get to the sites during that summer. It was all quite idyllic, but life intervened and we didn’t stay long enough for them to actually finish building that first plant. Only two ever got finished before the NRC wised up and nixed the other two.

Today that plant lost offsight power and operators had to manually scram, emergency diesels are operating to keep them cool. Power should be on before too long, but there’s quite a lot of damage in the area. Something to think about in the wake of Fukushima, as North Anna was identified years ago when I got that bird’s eye view as the nuclear facility most likely to suffer earthquake damage east of the Mississippi. There are of course more dangerous ones in California, right on the coast where tsunamis could wreak havoc as well.

Yet another reminder of how important it is for us to get serious about producing alternative power. For our homesteads and to feed the grid, all over the country. You never hear about horrible wind spills or solar meltdowns. When a wind turbine falls down it doesn’t make entire swaths of the countryside uninhabitable for hundreds of years. When solar panels fall off the roof it might kill whoever happens to be standing where it lands, but it doesn’t doom whole generations of children to gnarly disease and ugly death.

We homesteaders must be the backbone behind the vanguard. Today’s little shake-up is a timely reminder of that.

Now that my terminally wrinkled fingers have finally recovered from the tomato harvest – two bushels dried and half-dried, a third bushel variously canned and frozen – I can get back to enjoying the break (finally!) in this summer’s all-time record heat wave that had us here in the mountains suffering 95º+ temperatures daily for two and a half long, long months. Back to more normal now with low to mid 80′s during the day, mid 60s at night. I love all the seasons for what they have to offer, but readily admit spring and fall are my favorites. Because by February I’m darned sick of ice and snow no matter how pretty it is, and by August I’m more than ready for fall’s crisp clarity and cool nights.

Homesteaders tend to make real sacrifices for as much self-sufficiency as possible even while our most major projects proceed over a period of years in a perpetual “work in progress.” We like to tread lightly on the earth, though as the temperatures steadily rise a lack of air conditioning certainly can make summer a miserable season. So thoughts of course turn toward more necessary projects for energy self-sufficiency that are bigger than just completely redoing the water system for a ram jet and gravity feed. Solar panels are still too expensive for my family at this time, but I have discovered some nifty wind projects we could build on-site without the multi-thousands of dollars it takes to even think about solar.

That of course being a big project for sometime down the road (still working on the water), but please do check out the Homemade Wind Turbine Plans site to get yourselves dreaming in the right direction. In the meantime, there’s good news for Florida utility customers this week, which may even end up helping out utility customers in Georgia and South Carolina as well.

If you’ve driven cross-country in the past year you may have noticed that the vast American Midwest is sprouting windmills at a fast pace. Given this year’s nuclear horror at Fukushima – and associated nuclear unease across the entire planet – you may be happy to know that it became official over the past year that renewable energy sources now produce more electrical generation capacity in the U.S. than nuclear. The statistics are that wind, small-scale hydro, solar and biomass energy production came to 381 gigawatts of capacity, compared to nuclear’s 375 gigawatts.

The nuclear industry – which is multinational and ever greedy for more multi-billion dollar annual handouts from first world governments – had other plans for a “Nuclear Renaissance” before 3 reactors and 4 spent fuel pools melted down at Fukushima Daiichi in northern Japan this past March. That ongoing nuclear disaster has pretty much halted the planned renaissance in its feeble tracks as the public all over the world gets a rare opportunity to critically examine our collective plans for the future in the midst of global economic depression and punishing ‘austerity’ measures imposed by the mega-rich. Seems that one of the belt-tightening measures regular people have begun to take for themselves as money supplies dry up is to get serious about conserving energy usage. Thereby cutting their utility bills. A great many are also canceling their cable television and finding that the information and entertainment they can get from online sources gives them a satisfying amount of control, freeing them from the 24-7 influence of paid propaganda.

On the utility front, Progress Energy’s clever plan to charge its Florida customers an average of $50 extra dollars a month to pre-pay for a nuclear plant it planned to build in Levy County north of its Crystal River nuke is getting some scrutiny from the courts. Originally justified by an always spurious target date of 2016 for coming on-line, it turns out that Progress has conceded that the plant has no chance of even getting built before 2027. Construction delays, dramatic cost overruns and the changing regulatory and public opinion realities since Fukushima are taking a toll. It is becoming completely clear given diminishing demand for the power during this global depression and public efforts at conservation that the Levy plant, as well as new plants in Georgia and South Carolina are most likely to never be completed.

Thus the Florida state Office of Public Counsel, which represents consumers in utility matters, is arguing in an administrative court challenge that charging consumers extra money for decades before a new plant comes on-line is unfair. Depending on how this suit before the Public Service Commission turns out, similar extra charges in Georgia and South Carolina may also be stricken.

Relief for utility consumers is always welcome, but the extra charges have helped to spur speedier deployment of renewable sources of energy by cash-strapped homeowners. Rooftop solar panels are proliferating all over the place in “The Sunshine State” as well as across the south. Recent entrepreneurial start-ups that allow homeowners to ‘lease’ solar panels atop their roofs and still pay less on energy bills are taking off even in this lousy economy. Costs to the homeowner are minimal, and the panels produce electricity at a cheaper rate than big utilities charge per kilowatt hour.

One such company is SolarCity, which offers a range of capacities for businesses as well as homes and has been getting quite a lot of press coverage. Business is booming. An arrangement like this could greatly benefit homesteaders who live in sunny climes but do not have the money up front to buy and install their own solar systems. Energy from the grid isn’t getting any cheaper with or without new nukes, though the costs of alternatives is falling. If you’ve a good credit score, this leasing situation may be your best bet for the immediate future. Some plans allow for the homeowner to purchase the panels over time, assume ownership at the end of the lease for a minimal pay-out, etc. But the value of having installation, repair and replacement services as part of the lease is high enough to seriously consider.

At any rate, here’s to more and more renewable generation capacity large or small, everywhere across the country and the world. It’s a change we’ve needed to make since the 1970s, when Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof as an inspiration to the nation. The solar panels Ronald Reagan had removed as soon as he took office and dedicated the national treasury (and all our military might) to the project of stealing all the petroleum in the world first. After a full decade of dedicated resource wars in the Middle East ad Central Asia, it’s time we the people got back to where we should have been all along. As those Hippies used to say back in the day…

Power To The People!

One of the biggest long-range planning issues involved in making a successful transition from a seriously inefficient and wasteful fossil fuels economy toward a more healthy renewables-based way of life is the problem of our petro-based system of agriculture. Those huge tractors and combines that dominate the endless landscapes of Big Agri-biz operations can translate into an entirely unsustainable 10:1 ratio of fossil fuel use to food on the table. Obviously as the cost of petroleum fuels keeps on rising, our society at large must come up with more efficient alternatives. Fortunately, there are a couple of alternatives that bode well for the future.

Huge swaths of the American breadbasket where staple monocrops are produced by the square mile would probably be better off going with Rudolph Diesel’s engine which he invented in 1893 to run on peanut oil. The Big machines could be run on SVO biodiesel that could be produced in a centrally located co-op type operation from oil crops cooperatively grown just for the purpose. These could then power the growing of those massive amounts of staple crops like oilseed, sugar beets, corn and other grains needed for both humans and livestock that are most efficiently produced by agribusiness concerns. Less petroleum consumption for this purpose, combined with programs aimed at lessening big ag’s dependence on petro-based chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides would help a lot.

But is biodiesel the best alternative to the small producer? Smaller, more diverse farms, organic operations and homesteads that participate in Community Supported Agriculture programs and/or agritourism offerings don’t need those huge multi-purpose machines to grow just a few acres’ worth of truck crops, culinary herbs, grains, etc. Luckily for us small-timers, there’s electric tractors.

Electric tractors come in a variety of sizes and conversions from standard small farm size tractors produced by the usual manufacturers to your basic lawn-tractor sized unit that is mostly a glorified riding mower or 4-wheeler/golf cart. Such small units can easily handle the standard machine jobs involved in 1-5 acre fields, often able to plow, till or seed those 5 acres on a single charge. These machines can generally accept any of the standard tractor attachments that any similar sized gasoline or diesel tractor can accept, and while not exactly cheap, are generally not much more expensive than standard models.

Electric tractors actually get more oomph for the buck than traditional tractors or regular transportation EVs that need to be lightweight and go fast. This is because tractors are more efficient at their jobs when they are heavy and going slow. The trick for homesteaders is the power supply for charging the batteries, and of course that must factor into whatever power sources – solar, wind, micro-hydro, etc. – you are using to lessen your dependence on the grid. There are even conversions out there for your basic Small farm size Allis or Deere or Ford tractor that sport nifty overhead canopies (shade!) of solar panels that charge on-the-fly.

On more graded land such as we have here in the Appalachians, any kind of riding tractor or mower type machine is more dangerous than a walk-behind with low profile. And while power for that could be provided by a mule, it’s kind of exciting to find that someone on the electric implement front has already thought of that. Even better, these electrical implements make no noise in operation beyond the noise of the tines working the earth.

Below are listed some great links with lots of good information about electric tractors, tillers, mowers, cart-pullers and such that interested homesteaders will find useful. Several homesteaders I know who have livestock are already using rechargeable battery powered electric 4-wheelers to pull trailers loaded with hay and feed and such to their stock, haul logs cut at distance to where they are split for firewood, and to get that firewood to the furnace/wood stove. More useful actual farm implements attachable to riding mower type vehicles, or conversions of that old Ford might be a great project a homesteader who is already involved in CSA and/or agritourism projects could even find grant money to support.

Useful Links:

EEEVEE: Electric Tractors
The Natural Farmer: Electric Tractors
Permaculture: Electric Tractors
Modern Electric Tractors Incorporated
GE Elec-Trak E15
FreePower: Solar Gardening & Lawn Equipment
SunPony Charging Tiller

Following a useful group series called Living Simply: Zero Waste has me thinking about what goodies from the kitchen gets tossed into the compost pile and how much of it might be useful for some other purpose. The series deals with all kinds of waste, of course, the things that go into our trash cans versus what goes into recycling, etc. And readership includes mostly people who live in urban environments. Things like food packaging and general trash items, getting those down as far as possible by recycling things like used batteries, those ‘planned obsolescence’ disposable electronics, plastics, glass, etc.

We homesteaders who have to haul our own trash and recyclables to the “Inconvenient Center” whenever we’ve got time while the darned dumpster station is actually open are pretty good at doing the separating. Especially for things like metals that can not only be recycled, but which we get paid for by the pound. But the question of food waste is quite pertinent this time of year, as crops start coming in and spring beds are cleaned out for fall crop planting. Which I definitely need to do, and would have already done by now if it weren’t so blasted HOT. At any rate, let’s look at the various compostables for what they might be put to best use for, considering how valuable compost actually is for purposes of growing things.

Right now the peas from spring are done and the fall crop hasn’t yet been planted. But beans are coming in fast in large rushes. If you are growing pole beans like I am (take up less room, are way more abundant than bush beans), you may be growing varieties best purposed for shelled beans than your basic green bean. I have for many years tossed the pods from shelled peas and beans into the compost bucket, but it turns out you can fry them up into a nice finger food once you’ve removed the seeds.

Another good idea is to maintain a good tight-lidded container in the fridge to hold scraps from various vegetables – carrot, leek and onion tops and ends, broccoli and cauliflower stems, those pea/bean pods, tomato cores and skins, the tough stems of kale, collards and chard, potato and/or eggplant skins, fresh corn cobs, pretty much any actual food-food waste generated when processing for canning, freezing or drying. When the container nears full, put it all into a stock pot and boil it up with the addition of some fresh but less-than-presentable herbs (like older parsley, spotted sage, holey basil, etc.) for veggie soup stock. This can be strained and canned to keep all through the winter and used instead of water for meat-based soup stocks, gravies, etc., or just by itself as veggie stock for soups or for cooking dry beans and such.

You can salt it before canning so it’s ready-to-use, or omit the salt and add it later when you’re making something with it. Once the good flavor and valuable nutrients have been boiled out into stock, the leavings of course go right back into the regular compost. It’s like getting twofers from your hard gardening work, and well worth the effort. If you do the hot processing outside on the grill so it doesn’t heat the house, it saves energy and money as well.

If your homestead boasts some dogs – as mine does – you also know that dogs love vegetables as much as we do, and love leftovers even more. There are vegetables dogs shouldn’t eat, but about a quarter of their regular diet should be vegetable (and is in most dry dog foods). Vegetables for dogs should be cooked or steamed, though some like ‘em raw. Remove tomato and onion parts from your unsalted soup stock leavings and your dog will scarf it down no problem. Here’s a good source for pet nutrition, and another with info for home made pet foods.

When all is said and done, kitchen scraps can go into the compost as-is, along with the rest of the yard and garden trimmings, weeds and leaves in the fall. It all makes very good mulch and additions to our gardens, allowing us to grow more food. But the idea of us or our pets getting every bit of nutrition from our food crops is very good, and makes the entire system a whole lot more efficient.

As the economic situation gets steadily worse – the second recessive ‘dip’ is already upon us and once the economic indicators are recalculated we may already be in negative GDP territory. Now that the Congress has passed their very ill-conceived austerity program and put a “Gang of 12″ in charge of slashing and burning, we should be all the way into major depression by Christmas, with real unemployment pushing 20%. We need to be even more attentive than usual to getting the most out of our gardens and livestock, go ahead and plan for those winter crops we could grow in cold frames, preserve every last bit of food however we can, and hang on tight. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Toward that project, I’ll be blogging about grains this month. Grain is getting more and more expensive to buy, but few homesteaders without lots of flatland acreage and a tractor grow any of their own beyond sweet corn or field corn for the livestock. Grains being an important part of our (and our pets’) diet, I’ll be looking at the best and most productive grains to grow in the garden or along the edges of our yards and fallow fields, and how to process and use them. I’ll also be looking at wild grains that we may have access to, as well as local grains you may be able to barter for from a neighbor who grows wheat or barley. It will be important for us to have some poundage of whole grains carefully stored away to make it through until next summer. We are lucky, as many people will be going hungry before things get better. We have to be realistic, plan for this future, and get all our ducks in a row. So please stay tuned!

Useful Links:

Living Simply: Zero Waste
Foods Scrap Cuisine
Home Made Pet Diets
How to Compost Food Scraps
CalRecycle: Food Scraps Management
Frugal dilemmas: food scraps, or more food?

As the energy situation in this country becomes more and more frustrating due to a myriad of factors such as costs, aesthetics and a troubling amount of stonewalling by rich, organized fossil fuel and nuclear die-hards, it’s nice when research and development produces technologies that can answer some of the most frustrating objections to renewable energy.

Here in the western North Carolina mountains – where the wind blows stiffly enough on the high ridge lines to cause constant issues with the myriad tall radio transmitter and cell phone towers that mark them with flashing lights high above the tree lines, some pretty underhanded lobbying by rich developers and the Big Energy lobby (nuclear and coal from MTR mining) amended the state’s 1983 Mountain Ridge Protection Act to exclude the windmill exemption (but of course keeping the radio and cell tower interpretations in place). Now, the Act only applies to ridgelines over 3,000 feet in elevation, which would apply primarily to the Blue Ridge debarking the eastern continental divide and the “J” shaped ridgeline of the Black Brothers, including Mount Mitchell and several others among the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River.

We do not have any coal to speak of on here on the eastern side of the Appalachians, which means we aren’t suffering the environmental horrors Tennessee, West Virginia, Western Virginia and Kentucky are suffering due to King Coal’s wholesale flattening of whole mountains. Rather, our mountains are a $2 billion-plus economic boon for the ample tourism industry. Between the NC portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – which boasts 10 million-plus visitors every year – and the associated Blue Ridge Parkway that winds its way toward Virginia along the ridge. The law was intended to keep the greedy developers from building unsightly high-rise condos for the filthy rich on those high ridges. Having been locked out by the Act from doing just that, they were more than willing to help prevent wind development when asked.

The only other really feasible commercial siting for wind generation in our state would be offshore wind off the Outer Banks, which are much more expensive to install and maintain, and would no doubt run afoul of the protected status of the barrier islands themselves as well as THEIR ever so important views from North Carolina’s historic lighthouses, national seashores, etc.

Not everyone finds the graceful lines of big wind turbines to be “unsightly,” and many here in the mountains are very much for development of ridge top wind farming even if they make most of their annual income off the tourism trade. Heck, most of us don’t even believe the tourists would be averse to seeing big wind turbines along their drive. But the law’s the law, serious homesteaders and small-farm organic producers/agri-tourism entrepreneurs are content to use a combination of solar, small wind and micro-hydro.

My homestead is nestled in a sheltered cove on the south side of Heartbreak Ridge, which descends due east from Mount Mitchell. The property encompasses a section of a side-ridge as well, which gets some wind we’d like to tap. Luckily for us the elevation is less than 3,000 feet on these ridges in immediate vicinity, so we could do that on the side ridge – and even on the top of the knob that marks its terminal if we wanted to. But I keep looking at Heartbreak, which runs to the piedmont just outside our closest little town, and thinking how great it would be if the county would site some turbines along for power generation. They already get the power from a dam on the Catawba River that created Lake James, as well as the tourism dollars from the State Park and lakeside vacation homes that have been built.

So I have been looking into developments in Vertical Axis Wind Turbines. Verticals offer all sorts of advantages over horizontals, though until recently their inefficiencies have been an issue. Luckily, researchers have been on the job. At the CalTech Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy, John Daibiri has been able to increase power output of verticals by 10% and more. The turbines don’t require the height of horizontals, can be placed much closer together for more power per acre, and are as slender and unassuming a profile as your average radio tower – not even as ugly as a cell tower.

Thus there could be no objection under the Mountain Ridge Protection Act to these types of towers for commercial power production. At lower altitudes – like on Heartbreak Ridge toward my town – it would seem like combo units could easily be put to good use and supply much more energy than either vertical or horizontal stand-alone. Imagine one of those not very unsightly, very tall horizontals, the largest (3 Mw) size. Specially built vertical units could be placed on the tapered tower all the way to treetop height to gather wind as well, more than doubling the maximum power output of the installation.

Even better, there are efficient vertical designs any homeowner can build for themselves for less than $200 (plus the tower to put in on, lots of options there). Residential Wind Power has tested and reviewed some of those plans and kits, gave top honors to a nifty design by Earth4Energy’s design which can be built – with plans, videos and full support from the company – for about $150.

Some of the notable advantages of vertical wind generator designs are:

• No need to orient to wind direction. Vertical designs are ‘in the round’, always able to pick up wind from any direction.

• Will turn at much lower wind speeds, some even starting at 4-6 mph.

• Can generate energy much closer to the ground than horizontals.

• Can be sited in concentration much closer together than horizontals, even engineered to use waste energy from neighboring units simply by spinning in the opposite direction.

• Much lower profile and far less dangerous to migrating birds.

• With proper siting, wind generation provides a much steadier source of power because wind doesn’t just blow during the day or night.

So far the verticals don’t individually generate as much as the biggest horizontals, but efficiencies will continue to improve. But they could if certain site applications – like very tall radio tower size – making use of a stacked series of collectors to pick up air motion for the entirety of usable elevation. They could add wattage to the big horizontals by making good use of the vertical tower height. There is a whole direction in wind farming/harvesting here that is under development and definitely could be a big player in the renewable energy markets worldwide.

Any readers out there with experience in building, installing, or just getting homestead energy from wind are encouraged to respond with their thoughts. How difficult was it to build? What headaches came along with the tower, and how expensive was that part of the equation? How much average power do these things provide on a 24-hour basis? There is lots of information and testimonials on the internet about wind, some of them selling things, some of them just promoting certain designs. It would be good to get reports that don’t include the sales pitch, as well as individuals’ ideas on how to get the most energy from the buck (possibly with a little on-site re-designs and/or double-ups to take best advantage of the resources. Below are some links to good articles and manufacturer sites, so do your homework and get building!

Useful Links:

Mother Earth: Vertical Axis Wind Turbines
LA Times: CalTech FLOWE
Residential Wind Power Reviews
Clean Technica CalTech article
Century Wind Energy Vertical Turbines
Windspire Vertical Wind Turbines
Earth4Energy Vertical Wind Design