Eating from Storage

18 March 2009

Since DW and DS6 were both sick with colds today, I made dinner. I made it from cans of food we had in storage. That made me realize two things: the cans of food we have stored would not last long at all; and I really need to learn how to cook.

I used five cans of food: Del Monte Peas and Carrots, Turkey Spam, Chef Boyardee canned pasta, a tin of sardines, and canned grapefruit sections for desert. Five cans for one meal! If we did that two meals a day, those cans in the basement would be gone in less than two months.

The other, related, point, is that the dinner was pretty awful. I was glad two of us were sick so they couldn’t taste it very well.

We do have almost 300 lbs of wheat in storage, and in a true survival situation we would use that. But we haven’t been using it much so far, and we need to start doing that. Also, I should be thinking less in terms of cans, especially for the main course. A can of vegetables and/or fruit is great to add to a meal, but trying to get the main course from a can is problematic.

What else could I have done? Something with potatoes, maybe. I remember this cheesy, peppery dish my mom used to make in the oven that was good. Or maybe some kind of chicken (or other meat or non-meat) pie, with a Bisquick crust on top and baked. Those things would have taken longer, so if I have to cook I need to start sooner — there are few, if any, heat and eat meals that are going to be any good. But the main points are that I need to plan ahead and try to be more creative and start using some of the staples we have.

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Cutting Wood

17 March 2009

Today when I got home from work I dragged my sawbuck out of the greenhouse, set it up next to the stack of big branches I’d cut from the big elm I just cut down, and proceeded to cut some of the already-dead branches with my bow saw. (The bow saw came with the house and it’s hung on the wall of the garage for the last 13 years.) None of the branches I cut were more than 5″ diameter.

And it was slow! I cut maybe 3 hours worth of wood in 20 minutes.

One problem was that since they were smaller branches they wouldn’t stay still while I cut them, and I had to either hold them with one hand and cut with the other or put my foot on them. Either way, not easy. Maybe bigger logs would stay in place better, and next time I’ll try that.

But this little experiment did nothing but increase my respect for the people who used to heat with wood and did not have a chainsaw.

Here’s a pic of my sawbuck. Made it a couple of years ago, and it’s really handy for holding wood for chainsawing.

im003659

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Seedling Update, etc.

15 March 2009

Fertilized the tomato and other seedlings with Miracle-Gro today for the first time. There’s quite a forest of them now, we have to think about thinning. Clearly, I am not a “pure” organic gardener. I believe that the benefits of “chemical” fertilizers outweigh the costs, especially when the plants are still inside. I think arguments against fertilizing vegetable seedlings you’re going to transplant to the garden are arguments for ideological purity and have little to do with practical reality.

I don’t fertilize the whole garden plot, but feeding individual heavy-feeding plants is worth the cost. I think the best way any gardener can have a better garden is to improve their garden’s soil using organic methods.

Barring emergencies, I draw the line at chemical herbicides and pesticides.

Naturally, after I used the fertilizer, DW told me that she had been planning to sell them as organic tomatoes to her employer, where she  works in the kitchen. Oh well.

I think the echinacea is starting to come up today, and there’s probably a pepper coming up. I’m not sure if the stevia is up or not. There are some seedlings in their pots, but they could be weeds.

I cut down that big elm tree I’ve been dreading today. It had about a 24″ diameter where I cut it, 4′ up (bigger lower down). It came down exactly where I wanted to, so that was good. I was a little nervous about it — that’s a lot of tree, and if I had messed it up there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about it except fix whatever it broke on the way down. You should have heard the boom when it hit the ground! We’ll get a lot of bad firewood out of it.

I want to try cutting up at least some of it with a bow saw. That makes more sense to me with lower-quality firewood — cutting it by hand means less of an investment in fossil fuel and money in the firewood.

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The Sandhill Cranes are back

14 March 2009

Heard one this morning. They nest in the immediate area of our home, and I’ve seen pairs in their courtship dance. To me, they’re special wildlife, for their grace and beauty and strange, primordial voices. Although I have nothing against hunting in general, and I hunt myself, it’s unfathomable to me how anyone could want to shoot sandhill cranes, as some in Wisconsin do. I have rigid definitions in my mind of what are game animals and what aren’t, and there’s no way a crane could be considered a game animal.

Sandhill Crane

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Electricity

11 March 2009

We’re trying to reduce our electricity usage for several reasons:

  • It costs money and we’re learning frugality
  • It won’t be as cheap or reliable in the future, so we’re learning to do without it before we have to do without it
  • We want to use no more than our global share; we want equity of resource use with the world. It’s just right.
  • More electricity used means more coal used which means more mercury in our water and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Wisconsin produces about 60% of its electricity from coal-burning power plants).

What we’ve done to reduce electricity use:

  • We’re burning wood instead of using the furnace (the fan on the furnace uses quite a bit of  electricity)
  • We put a blanket on our water heater (we had already turned down the temperature on our water heater for child safety)
  • We’re trying to use less hot water by:
    • Washing hands in cold water
    • Rinsing washed dishes in cool water
    • Taking shorter, cooler showers. This is the toughest one for me in the Winter.
  • We put power strips on the television, stereo, battery chargers, shut them off at night and turn them on when they’re next needed.
  • Aggressively turn out lights

We started making this effort last fall. For October through December, we received one bill, which averaged 521 kWh/month. January was 549 kWh and February was 613 kWh. I was happy with 521 kWh, but we don’t know why it’s going up since then.

What we plan to do:

  • This Spring we’ll be moving our freezer from the garage to the basement. The garage gets hot in the summer, the basement doesn’t. Of course, the basement is also warmer than the garage in the Winter, but I think there will be a net savings. I also want to consider gradually phasing out the freezer by doing more canning. There are also much more efficient models than the one we have now.
  • Minimize A/C use
  • Put a timer on the water heater. Could shut it completely off for at least 6 hours a day.
  • Make a solar shower for summertime use in the back yard.

Posted in Conservation, Electricity, Energy | Leave a Comment »

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