Vertical Wind Growing [Straight] Up

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.

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Do It Yourself – Discouraging Words

I was somewhat surprised on one of my web surfing jaunts to see a blog dedicated to ways of saving money weigh in against the notion of doing odd jobs and building projects yourself. Because for my homestead – and very likely yours as well – if we didn’t do our own odd jobs and building projects, then no needful jobs or building projects would ever get done. So I’ll take the opportunity presented to offer a rebuttal to some of the objections logged in the Money Bucket blog.

The article is Saving Money – Or Not – With DIY Projects, and it’s worth a read if you’re genuinely unsure of whether or not you’ve got the ability to tackle a project on your own. Of course for big projects it’s very important to understand going in exactly what will be necessary – time, tools, materials and a certain degree of skill. Homesteaders already know about budgeting their time toward the “work in progress” that describes our way of life, as there are always a dozen or more projects and repairs that need doing. Most of us, if we’ve been living this way for some years, have amassed more tools than many city-folk even know exist. In fact, for most projects the primary concern is coming up with the money to purchase the materials, and making sure we’ve got every little nut, bolt, pipe, sealant and extraneous parts before we start.

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Human Pedal-Powered Power

As part of our plan to revamp our water supply system to get rid of the energy-sucking 220 pump and replace it with a ram jet, and concurrently installing geothermal collectors to supply a steady supply of cool air in summer and warmer air in winter, I’ve been checking into other ways of cutting our grid energy use. It will be years before we’re in a position to purchase solar panels or a wind generator to get the homestead off the grid entirely, so every little bit of electricity we don’t use from Duke Energy helps our bottom line.

A friend in Arizona long known for his bicycling prowess sent me a link to David Butcher’s Pedal Powered Generator website, which is chock full of information about getting a little exercise while charging up some batteries used to operate things like LED lights, computers, televisions, electric motors on your assisted transportation (Moped), even a washing machine. Though that last takes some real muscles for the spin cycle. I’ve often thought that as I’m sitting here at my desk surfing around on the internet I should be pedaling a stationary bike to power the machinery that lets me do that.

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Barter Networks: Deal or No Deal?

I received a $100 coupon the other day to cover the cost for our home-based business (family entertainment) to join the Hometown Barter Network in our area. Now, we rural homesteaders and small producers in several counties here in the southern Appalachians have been practicing informal bartering since forever, negotiating our trades of goods and services for other goods and services without any formalized valuation system. Meaning that what a person who has something I need will take from me in “fair trade” is something we work out for ourselves the old-fashioned way.

This has worked well on many occasions, and we’ve even been known to make good use of the area’s Freecycle network and even Craigslist freebies when we can. But things come and go on those lists and I still haven’t been able to obtain the metal fence poles I need to properly repair bear damage to the garden fence done two years ago.

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Disconcerting: Tom Vilsack at USDA

As President-Elect Barack Obama has been very busy selecting key cabinet people and meeting with House and Senate leadership to ensure everyone’s ready on January 20th to begin implementing the Changes he promised, some of us out here on the active lifestyle progressive fringe are not happy with a few of the important choices.

By appointing Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to head the USDA (Department of Agriculture), committed homesteaders, small landholders and organic farmers like me now have to be concerned that efforts by our own government to make us extinct may NOT change when the leadership in DC changes hands.

In the diary Tom “I Heart Monsanto” Vilsack, This One’s For You, kossack OrangeClouds115 lists everything that’s wrong with GMOs and Monsanto Corporation’s tireless efforts to own and control every aspect of agricultural production in the world. Note I said “world,” because it’s not just Big Corn Country like Iowa and Nebraska and Indiana that Monsanto seeks to own with its grotesque genetically-altered cultivars. It’s everyone’s ability to obtain seed and farm the land, from the US to Canada and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia as well as Australia. They want it all, they don’t need it all, and right here in Homesteading-USA we are the front and foremost line against this obscenity.

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Letter to the New Farmer in Chief

There is a resurgence of hope across America in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Democrat Barack Obama as President, promising a new direction of change for the future of our nation. Those of us who have been paying attention to the global financial meltdown, increasingly severe food shortages in the wake of global warming, and the outrageous poisoning of our citizens and livestock/pets by corrupt Chinese producers (a glaring example of globalization’s failures), are hoping that a new dawn in America will bring with it the serious changes to our agricultural policies that have grown increasingly necessary through decades of decline.

Now, politicians don’t generally talk much about agricultural policies while they’re stumping for votes in big cities. And they’re often so ignorant of agricultural issues that even rural dwellers – actual farmers – get nothing but pablum and platitudes in response to their questions. Luckily, journalist Michael Pollan wrote a great ‘open letter’ in the New York Times in October entitled, Farmer in Chief. This is a must-read for all of us committed to self-sufficiency, locally grown foods, the viability of family farms and homesteads, and the future health of an environment we all depend upon for life.

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Preparing for Winter

After the hard rains of leftover hurricane Fay flooded the basement and caused hubby and I to have to sleep on the living room floor on a fouton (and we’re still there, since it’s just us for a few more weeks), we got our first real cold front yesterday. Nights are down into the 50s and scheduled to stay there for at least a week, reminding us that it’s now time to think about winter heat.

So in between harvesting concords and muscodines, I’ve prepared the stove pipe cleaning mechanism. No, it’s not a nice English chimney sweep brush, it’s an old holey towel tied around other old rags and a large round river rock, onto which I tie a long piece of rope. We get up on the roof and remove the chimney hood, then drop this thing into the pipe so it will scrape down any accumulated soot. Which falls into the stove in the basement. The pipe runs straight up through the main floor and loft, so there are no bends and kinks. This is good if you’re heating with wood, as bends tend to accumulate more creosote and are difficult to clean. The tall pipe is the “central” part of our central heating system, giving off a lot of heat when it’s cold and making the single wood stove very efficient.

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Home, Home On The Range…

The picture at left is from Architectural Digest, which did a photo layout of one of John and Cindy McCain’s Arizona homes in 2005. Here is the full slide show. Nice place.

Not exactly like our homesteads, which more often look sort of spliced together from this and that as we attempt to grow our personal independence and self-sufficiency in an increasingly hostile economy. Heck, many of us dedicated homesteaders have had to invent some creative ways just to pay the mortgage, which does tend to bite into time for completing the goat barn or installing the solar panels or building the sluice for the water turbine or… well, suffice it to say that for most of us, our homesteads are a forever work-in-progress. We wouldn’t be doing it if “Home” were not the most important asset we have in the world, on which we lavish our time, toil and love unconditionally.

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Are You Prepared to Survive GW?

Many modern homesteaders became modern homesteaders in a “back to the land” movement geared toward greater self-sufficiency in all things the average citified automaton expects government, corporations and society to supply. As government, corporations and society have begun to fall short of those provisions – either during exceptional circumstances or generally failing to provide goods and services cheaply, safely or consistently enough to be counted upon – we left to carve for ourselves a life where we can be primarily responsible for ourselves.

Now, it’s a long-term project. Unless you’re very rich to begin with, getting your homestead up to real self-sufficiency (and fully in your own name) can take decades. Maybe a lifetime or two. We can grow some of our own food, but probably not all. So we develop relationships with farmers and other homesteaders in our regions and learn to trade and barter for consumables. We can slowly but surely develop our own power sources (or learn to do without), but will likely remain tied to the grid or some other out-supply until the technology is developed and affordable enough for us to go off-grid. Etc., etc., etc.

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EVs: Hope for Rural Transportation?

Yeah, I know. EVERYBODY is starting to dream about a whole new generation of cars and trucks for getting around in the 21st century without fossil fuels. But those of us who live in the wider countryside inventing wider, self-sufficient lives as homesteaders usually have to plan a bit farther out than city dwellers. Who, when push comes to shove (or just $5+ a gallon gasoline), can always ride the bus or take their bike or even hitch-hike on crowded roads full of mostly empty vehicles at a near standstill any time of day.

I’m a big fan of Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight, but the hybrid technology isn’t really where it needs to be for my desire to somehow translate someday homestead energy self-sufficiency to transportation as well. For that, I’ll need all-electric. And something a lot more stable, dependable, useful and warmer in the winter than a glorified golf cart.

Something big enough to carry at least a couple of people, safe enough to protect us from bad drivers, fast enough to use the interstate, with enough range to get to and from the nearest regional farmer’s market – that’s about 60 miles round trip – without having to buy someone else’s electricity. Grocery store and other such amenities are in closer, smaller towns, 5-7 miles away (less than 15 round trip). I’ll need either a pickup-style bed – with sides and tailgate – or large luggage space in order to carry tools, machinery, trash (we have to haul our own), groceries (only shop once a week) and general ‘stuff’. Like logs for firewood and lumber for building and… well, you know what I mean. And something that charges in a short enough period of time (whenever gas stations start offering paid by-the-hour 110 and 220 volt chargers) to get 500 miles in one day on occasion.

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