The Best Laid Plans

Yesterday's day without electricity was a day of getting stuff done. The Pirate had vowed to have plants in the ground by end of day yesterday, and true to his word, he's got kale, chard, lettuce, beans, and something that ends in "choy" that isn't bok choy.

The new garden is in the old chicken yard and therefore already protected from deer, and when he put the raised beds in, he lined each one with hardware cloth (heavy-duty screen) so that the rats can't burrow in. The new garden is a mere 6 feet or so from Cistern Joseph-Ann, and the plan is to use all that rainwater we harvested during the rainy season to water our plants now when the rain isn't so frequent.

We're not sure how long 1100 gallons of water will last us, but if we are wise about our usage (water early in the day so less evaporates, water directly into the ground near the plants and not on the leaves) we can make it last a little longer. Depending on how long it lasts, we may end up investing in a second cistern (and I'm voting to name this one after my aunt the nun, Cistern Rosa). Considering that it took us all of 3 days of good hard rainfall to fill up a single cistern, filling two every season is well within expectations.

Speaking of gardening, I've been cooking up a plan. I've mentioned before that I'm alarmed at the number of my friends and neighbors who are out of work and therefore leaving town. I'm sure even more would love to leave town, but even moving costs money and they just can't afford it.

The first inkling of my plan came when the Pirate and I saw all the vacant land near us and thought "wouldn't it be cool if we could get people farming that vacant land?" But there are some steep barriers to entry, the first of which is that being on someone else's property is trespassing and you can be arrested.

The second inkling of my plan came when I realized that there's a lot of space to be had here. Most people live in houses on large lots, so for most people I know, room to garden isn't an issue. What's an issue is both the know-how and the materials. Here came my second idea. I've approached the owner of a local farm & feed store about giving me a discount on gardening stuff - potting soil, seedlings, etc., that can then be donated. Without hesitation, he said yes. Further details have yet to be worked out, but the first step has been taken - I have a supplier. YAY! Now I just have to get with the local charity organization, Valley Churches United Missions, to get help finding the folks who need the donations.

But not all of the day went as well. My chore was to prepare a part of our yard (a word which here means "area in front of our house," not in any formal sense of the word) for the spreading of wood chips. I finished scraping the rest of the vegetation off it, I burned off the more recalcitrant stuff, I raked, I did a small burn of the stuff I raked off. The hardest part was that I had to dig down and find the cover of the septic tank and build a box to go over it so that in future, we don't have to go digging around for it.

I dug and dug and dug until I uncovered a wooden cover that the Pirate said was put over the actual metal cover. I measured carefully and constructed a lovely redwood box to put over it - 26" x 13". And then we started digging for the metal cover, which was another 2" further down under more soil, and was actually 26" x 26". I was a little annoyed, but at the end of the day, the box I built will solve our problem - that of not knowing where the cover is and not being able to get at it readily. Sure, the next time we have the septic system pumped, we'll have to do a little digging, but at this point it's very little and we won't be accidentally digging two feet to the left because we don't remember accurately where the stupid thing is.

So, it's a fail, but not a total fail. The important thing, as always, is that we got this stuff done. It's on the list of "achieved," rather than on the list of "someday."

And, to reward ourselves, I made a nice pasta salad and the Pirate made some gazpacho. Mmmmmm...gazpacho.

Guerilla Gardening

I've been having some subversive thoughts. And when I say "subversive," I mean "cool, but could get you arrested."

I'd kind of like to go back to school. I'd like to study economics because I really, really would like to solve the problem of keeping small, insulated communities like the one I live in safe from large economic fluctuations. Right now, families are moving out of the area taking their incomes and spending habits with them. Every family that moves out means that money is being taken away from our locally-owned grocery store that employs 20+ people, away from the four restaurants in town, away from our locally-owned pet store, barber shop, coffee place and gas station. Essentially, everyone who moves away takes money away from their neighbors.

I'm trying to figure out how to fix that. Given what I have (not a whole lot) and what I can do (considerably more), what can I do? And then I started thinking about all those parcels of land nearby that have been sitting vacant because housing purchases have fallen off. There are whole organizations in places like Detroit that are taking foreclosed homes and matching them up with homeless families who are willing to move in despite the possible legal repercussions.

What I want to do is a little less invasive. Instead of moving into empty houses, I'd just like to be able to cultivate a little empty land. I was thinking about how great it would be to get folks who are still here and out of work to get some garden plots going on vacant land, and then set up a small-scale farmer's market where they could take their surplus produce and sell or swap it.

I think that idea could work not just in lean times like these, but in good times too. Imagine if people who are currently day laborers or temporarily unemployed could work at a cooperative community garden where they could grow food for themselves and their own families, and have the chance by their own labor to earn a little money.

One of the problems that owners of vacant land face in these parts is that pot farmers are likely to come in and cultivate unoccupied land. If the pot farm is found, the landowner is liable for the consequences. If we got permission from the property owners, legal food gardening could discourage illegal pot farming because the land would have people coming and going constantly.

I think it could work, but I also don't think that I know enough to make it happen. It would be cool, though. I just have to do a little digging, ask a few questions, talk to some folks.

When Bills Are Good News

As I've mentioned in previous posts, one of things we wanted to see in our "Day Without Electricity" experiment was how much we'd save by doing without electricity for one day each week.

The way that our rates are structured, the more electricity you use, the more you pay for each kilowatt hour (Kwh). Here's how it breaks down for us, according to our latest bill:

• Baseline Quantity = $0.11531 per Kwh


• 101-130% of Baseline = $0.13109 per Kwh


• 131-200% of Baseline = $0.25974 per Kwh


• 201-300% of Baseline = $0.37866 per Kwh

When you start cutting down, you start saving at the top of the range. It's possible to make a small cut and save a fairly large percentage, which turns out to be exactly what we've done. It turns out that a 13.3% cut in our overall usage added up to a 42% savings on our latest bill.

As I've said before, environmental advantages aside (and there are certainly those), we're saving over $100 per month just by shutting things down one day a week. That's more than $1200 a year. What can we do with $1200 a year? I can certainly think of a few things!

Bird Brain

Today's Day Without Electricity was one of the most relaxing days I've had in a long time.

I mentioned earlier in the week that we got two new baby chicks from a friend. The first obstacle we had to overcome was the fact that for the first week of baby chick's life, it has to be kept at nearly 100 degrees. We've got kerosene lamps, but they give off a lot of vapors that I was afraid would hurt the chicks. We decided in the end to keep a fire going on the wood stove. The added bonus was that we loaded the top of the wood stove down with pots of water that we used later for washing dishes, etc. The chicks passed the night and day on a chair covered in a blanket next to the fire and appear to be none the worse for wear. YAY!

I spent the day doing landscaping. I got a chance to test out the torch the Pirate bought me a few weeks ago, and it's everything I was hoping for. It attaches to our 5-gallon propane tank, and it's both fun and scary. Last week, the Pirate had taken RoundUp to the patch of overgrown grass along the walkway up to the house. We intend to put down wood chips there, but have to kill the grass first. By today, it was dead, brown and dry, dry, DRY. We touched the torch to it and it went up just as you'd expect dry grass to.

I sort of thought that I'd walk along with the torch and touch the fire to the grass, which would wither and burn and then stop burning. That's not really how fire operates. Fire touches this bit of dry grass, and the dead leaf powder between the bits of dry grass, etc. I only touched the flame to the grass once at the top, and then stood there with the hose keeping the fire heading in the direction I wanted it to go.

After the grass burning came the cleanup of the path up to the house. It had become covered in leaves and dirt so thick that it had grass and periwinkles growing in it. While I was shifting wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow-full of dirt, I came across two - count 'em TWO - juvenile Norwegian rats. I dispatched each of them with the shovel, and now I'm starting to worry. If they're walking down the driveway bold as brass, how big is that midden?

The bright spot of the day was standing in my bedroom and watching a steller's jay trying to build a nest on top of the security lights mounted on the side of the house. He would fly off, then come back with a stick that he would carefully place on the top of the pair of lights, but by the end of the day, his little nest didn't look any more impressive.



I went outside to take a closer look and saw what the poor bird had been doing all day.



This is the roof of the shed just below the security light. There are NO trees near it. All those sticks are the ones that the poor bird had been carefully placing on the lights. Well, I'll give him this - the little guy was persistent.

Then inside to hang out with a good book and to make dinner. I'm off to bed now, and after all the stuff I got done today, I'm going to sleep like a BABY!

Shift on the Fly

Yesterday, our household had a little mishap. No big deal - a miscommunication that led to someone not being where they were expected. The "someone" was our 17-year-old, who realized that going home rather than staying at the orthodontist meant that she would *not* be going out to dinner with us, and who was put out by being told that she would have to make dinner for herself.

After we got home and talked about it, I explained that part of being an adult is looking at the situation in which one finds oneself and taking responsibility for yourself in it. Nobody went to bed mad, and I think this particular lesson might stick with her.

Cut to today. Today was the day we took our 7-month-old kitten to the vet to get fixed. The Pirate was supposed to have picked her up and then gone on to pick up the 17-year-old from physical therapy, but the kitten wasn't going to be ready in time. No sweat - I left work early (in the middle of a process), stopped by the vet and picked up the kitten and then came home. I put the poor woozy fuzzball into the spare room and went to go find a catbox to set up for her and bring up the rest of the stuff from the car. On my 87th trip through the garage, I realized that my phone (which was still in my car) was ringing. It was the Pirate, but I didn't have hands to answer it.

When I finally did call, the Pirate wanted to know if it was okay that he had taken on two day-old chicks from a friend of ours. We're not currently set up for new chicks. We've got a recovering kitten to take care of. Um....and then I remembered all the times that *I* was the one calling him and saying "Honey, I'm bringing home..." and the fact that we just told our kid that when you're an adult, you take the situation you're faced with and you figure it out.

"Sure," I told him. "Bring 'em home."

Normally we get our chicks in groups of 25, and we set up our brooder in the garage with several heat lamps, etc. What to do for two? Here's our solution:

What's that? you cry. That's right. It's the cat carrier. With shavings on the floor and the chicks' feeder and waterer. The heat lamp is suspended from a cupboard door above. I figure they'll both stay in there for up to a week. After that, it looks like I'll be surrendering my parking spot in the garage in favor of a couple of baby chickens. They're Barred Rocks, my favorite breed for temperament and laying ability, and it'll take 4-5 weeks before they're fully fledged and ready to meet the other hens. Even at that, we may let them hang out a little longer - they'll be much smaller than the other hens.

This brings our little brood up to 23, although it's too early to say whether these two are boys or girls (or one of each).

Now, I'm off to figure out how we keep them warm on Saturday - our normal day without electricity. Don't worry - I have An Idea!!