Step Two - Wait some more...

I've been waiting a long time to be this 'green'. Actually, it's that I've been waiting a long time to have the opportunity to do something much more right than what I've been doing. I've been waiting a long time to be in and have a more sustainable frame of mind and way of life. Now I need the patience to endure the next couple of months of trials I know I'll face, new things I must learn quickly, well, and without fail.

Update to the last:

The boiler is in the driveway secured under a standard Alaskan-household-issue blue tarp (held in place with a scrap of rope left over from the treehouse project...), 1,316 pounds of cast iron, boiler plate, ceramic, and stainless steel waiting for the boiler house to be built... (The 1,316 pounds also included two quarts of Maple Syrup from New Hampshire - home to Tarm USA (clicking noise with tongue, points finger like gun, winks suggestively)) Last year this time we had budding trees, warm nights, and the moose were pelletizing the front yard... And while the spot is cleared for the boiler house, the ground is still frozen hard just 3 inches below the surface - just barely below the thin layer of humus that those evil dandelions seem to thrive in.

The pellet mill hit the credit card this morning - hard enough to wear off a couple of digits a little right of center. The funds are poised in my bank account waiting for the points system to catch up so I can pay it off in one go - gotta have that 'free gift', right? The pellet mill hitting the card means the truck is underway - they say 11 days from them to me, provided they get the boat schedule just right and hand it off at the dock in Tacoma... Can't wait - I've been collecting chips off the lathe and from the planer all winter - I'm thinking they need a little compressing before I drown in them...

The chickens were hand fed freshly caught mosquitoes today - what a life...

My T's are free until fall - just need to get the R's back now and there will be much progress and rejoicing...

Off to dig a little, scrape, pickpickpickpickpickpickpickpick..........

Step One - refinance your house...

OK, so in the recent refinancing of the house I downloaded some money to be able to:

Big Stuff:
1 - Add a boiler house/pellet house/studio out front.

2 - Add a pellet-fired boiler to the boiler house.

3 - Add a pellet mill to the boiler house to make pellets to fuel the boiler to heat the house, shop, and the boiler house... (We'll talk barn later... And chicken ranch...)

Immediately this will cut my heating bill in half (or more), dollar-wise, since I won't be using oil, though it will increase the work I must do in order to heat everything as wood takes some processing from tree to pellet (1). Yup, I won't be buying heating fuel 'drilled out the ground' any more, except in small quantities, and then only as a 'fallback' in case we run out of trees soon. The whole system should pay for itself in 6 years or less (at current rate of inflation for fuel, maybe only 4 years, if the Fed keeps messing about maybe only 2 years...) and, if anyone wonders, will reduce the ‘carbon footprint’ of my household to almost zip... According to the literature, during a burn the pellets produce as much smoke as that from a cigarette. I have yet to figure out how they got the test pellets to smoke a Marlboro... I’ll get back to you on that... With all the hot water I hope to have, there may be winter hot-tubbing...

Smaller Stuff:

4 - Put in some yard box raised bed garden thingies of dirt and hopefully raise some veggie things more successfully than I did my old rock garden. (The rocks kept dying...) Yeah, I know, that didn't cost much in the big picture, but it was not money I would have spent normally... Let’s see if the cukes survive next to the carrots and icicle radishes next to the spuds...

5 - Raise chickens. (OK, so far that part has only cost me about $82.50, but then there's only a dozen...) I could go on all day about how cool/cute/amazing/smelly/etc. they are, but I won't. “Hangin’ with my peeps” has new meaning for me...

6 - Build some alternative transportation/power generation type machines. More accurately I could now buy the tools and materials to make them. First up is a HPV quad 'bike', but I'm not against some electronical-recharging um, contrivance. Yes, I'll still be buying gasoline for a while - until I build my 1952 gasification-fired 'Coupe-de-Still' with a flathead V8. I figure I could park a wood cracking plant in the trunk and still carry half a cord of 'fuel' alongside the groceries. I can hear me saying it now, "Went to Chitina last weekend - cost all of three fenceposts and half an outhouse I found on the highway..." I'll have to kiss the old auto-start goodbye though – unless I can get someone to fill the block hopper, start the draw fan, light off the cooker, wait for the hot smoke, and then start the engine to let it warm up...

The boiler house is half-ordered - waiting for a concrete slab...
The boiler is on a boat just now, motoring it's way northward...
The mill is on a truck someplace in Illinois, waiting...
The boxes are waiting for dirt to come next weekend...
The chickens are doing what chickens do and watching out of both sides of their heads at the same time...
The quad bike is in process - I may have most of the frame done up in the next 2 weeks - this IS the last week of classes and I'll have my T's and R's evenings free next week...

I hope to be updating this blog during the course of construction - links, pictures, thoughts, problems, solutions, recipes, and pictures of chickens in various stages of life...

Ya'll be Green now, y'heah?

Toodles~




(1) Actually I’ll be pelletizing anything I can get my hands on – trees, willows, leaves, garden leftovers, paper, old cotton fluff – anything that came from a plant, really... Laurels, fig leaves, olive branches...