I am setting up this BLOG (special thanks to Sue B for teaching me the basics) as a platform to enable more participation and multi-directional communication within our community. Please feel free to comment and to add your ideas! And, if you know how to BLOG, please help me set up the infrastructure.
I am very new to this, and the past year we have been very involved in the FRACKING Debate. Thank all of you for your support to learn more about horizontal high-pressure hydrofracturing, and the potential long term effect(s) on our environment. A special thanks to Audrey D for her work. But FRACKING is just one environmental issue. Perhaps you have an interest in solar or wind energy, a concern about water, soil or air, want to learn more about organic gardening techniques, genetic engineering, or perhaps want to set up a car pool... hopefully this BLOG will help us get connected, hoping that different interest TOPICS will manifest. I have posted a list (add your own) of Action Topics in the column to the right. Please comment, share URLs, even RANT, but please follow the etiquette of our Protocols, listed below.
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PROTOCOLS
Be Polite. Speak in "I" terms, not "YOU...". Agree to possibly disagree; every opinion is important.
Please remember...
Is it TRUE?
Is it KIND?
Is it CONSTRUCTIVE?
Is it NECESSARY?
If NO to any of the above, then DON'T POST!
Now, please share your passion, areas of expertise or concerns ... I guess I'll go first.
I strive for self-sufficiency, hoping to get off the grid, build a zero-carbon home out of materials mostly gathered from my land, and live a simple but fulfilling sustainable lifestyle. I have been an avid organic gardener for years, am a certified Master Gardener through the Cooperative Extension Service, and am pursuing different permaculture techniques in the design of my homestead. At the present I am building hugelkultur raised beds combined with terrapreta concepts. - Jeff Barr 207.229-6630 cell
Janey Wagner: In 1988, my husband and I bought a partly finished house that was located in the woods in a rural area of WNY. The house was ¼ mile from the road and was not connected to the power grid. The only heat sources were a wood stove and a solarium, from which we harvested passive solar heat on sunny days. We finished the house and installed photovoltaic panels on the roof, mounted with a sun-tracker.
ReplyDeleteWe moved in with our three children on a cold December day in 1989. We had a storage bank of deep-cycling batteries and a back-up gasoline generator. During the winter, we sometimes used the generator to charge the batteries because the sunlight was insufficient to give us power for lighting the house in the evenings. We retired early! I remember the lights growing dimmer as the winter evenings progressed, and we sometimes used white gas lanterns or candles.
Our refrigerator was a gas model that was retro-fitted for propane use. In winter we could keep frozen foods in a plastic or metal cooler outside, or refrigerated foods in a cooler in the “mud-room.” Any electrical appliances or tools we used had to have DC plugs or an AC-DC converter.
Our water was supplied by a hand pump at the kitchen sink for 5 years. We had to pump 80 strokes to wash a load of dishes (never more than once a day), heating the water on the propane stove (in summer) or the woodstove (in winter). We had a 20 gallon stainless steel storage tank with a spigot on the woodstove, which my husband filled with water from the pump nearly every evening during the winter. This provided bath water for our weekly baths, as well as hot water for cleaning. The whole family took turns in the tub, just like in “Little House on the Prairie.” During the summer, we would fill sprinkling cans with water and leave them in the sun. They heated up and could provide a shower with advance planning. After 5 years my husband installed a DC water pump with an on-demand propane water heater, which didn’t work too well.
We had a composting toilet, but we also had a regular toilet that we flushed (only after BM's) by hauling a bucket of water from under the kitchen sink drain. I remember flooding the kitchen floor quite a few times by not keeping a close enough eye on the water level in that bucket when I dumped the dish water.
The first night we moved in, we didn’t have any lights connected yet. Our daughter, whose fourth birthday was the following day, threw up in the dark several times that night. Cleaning up a young child’s vomit by flashlight without running water is a chore, but left us with an unforgettable memory! We also used cloth diapers. Fortunately, a Laundry was only a few miles’ drive away, and my parents lived about an hour away, so we did laundry and took showers at their house often.
We moved because of a change of occupation, after seven years and the birth of one more child.
My husband has been involved for many years with organic gardening and with natural and whole foods. We ran a natural foods store after he served as coordinator for our local food co-op for years.
We entertained the idea of starting a business retro-fitting diesel vehicles for waste vegetable oil as fuel, but were too busy with family and community to get that off the ground. My fondest wish is to have access to inexpensive vehicles that do not run on fossil fuels. So far we are still using gasoline or foot power.