Powering a homestead

one off-grid energy option...no power

This time of year always brings with it a certain dilemma...do I hang wash outside, or use my energy-hogging electric clothes dryer inside?  You see, even though we live on the Central California coast, in the land of rhone wine grapes and sunshine, we still get more than enough winter days of "marine layer" cloudiness and short days, when there's a distinct lack of dry and/or warm air about.  There have been plenty of days recently when I dutifully hung the wash in the morning, then pulled it in at around 4:30 pm (sunset in these parts), still damp.  Talk about a waste of personal time and energy.

These days also have me thinking about finally buying a generator, now that my husband has his Christmas bonus in hand and we can afford it.  In summer, we could easily live without electricity -- the days are warm and sunny, but the nights are always cool, which makes the house a pleasant temperature most of the time; we have a solar oven and a 3,000 gallon tank of water which is gravity fed into the house if the well fails -- but winter is another story.  Again, we bust through yet another California myth:  Not only is there not eternal, warm sunshine, it also gets damn cold here in winter, especially at night, where it often freezes.  That's not North Dakota cold, but it is cold enough to make a long night much longer, if you have no pellet or wood stove, fireplace, or central heating to help you through.  

another off-grid energy option...limited power

Anyplace where it's down in the '20's or teens and you're in an emergency situation, you can always survive by putting everyone to bed in an extremely small room, sealing the doors and windows securely, and letting your combined body heat warm the room.  With only three of us here full-time, it would work.  But the question becomes....who would want to do that if there were another option?  It's a last resort, at best, suitable for only the worst survival situations. For us, another other option is a gas or propane generator, capable of running the fan on the pellet stove and therefore heating much of the house up before we retire each evening.  

I know it's odd that I loathe using an electric clothes dryer and regularly imagine scenarios where we actually have to do everything without electricity (in which case the clothes would remain on the clothesline for two or three days in winter until they finally got dry).  The fact is, I like having  back-ups in place to grid-dependent appliances -- and knowing how to use them, because what you think is never gonna happen seems to have a way of happening, even if only for awhile.  When the 1971 Sylmar hit near my childhood home, our power was out for four days.  Not an eternity, but long enough.

And if you need to imagine a closer scenario, how about Hurricane Sandy.  There are some folks that are still without power from that storm, almost two months later.

Another off-grid option.. really expensive power.

I freely admit I also hate giving an ever-increasing amount of money to PG&E each month, but I'm not sure solar panels or wind turbines would either a) make us more independent or b) save us money in the long run. The most expensive type of system is one in which you're off-the-grid most of the time and storing power in batteries, but have grid capability should you need it.  Those batteries I just spoke of cost a fortune, as does the technology that make it possible to charge them.  But with all that technology comes dependence of another sort -- on repairmen and parts shipped from far away, since no technology will work forever without need of replacement parts. 

So today I will use the electric clothes dryer....because I can, and tomorrow I will go out and buy a generator, because someday I may need it.  And when it's warm I'll hang  wash outside and use my solar oven, and when it's raining I'll stay inside and use my household appliances.  Right now it's the best of both worlds, but should one of those worlds become dominant, I'm hopeful I'll be able to function in either of them.

Double Duty

People start doing homesteading-type activities for many reasons. A couple of the main ones are frugality and a desire to simplify life. In these bizarro-world economic times, no one can argue that frugality (especially if it's virtually painless) makes for a nicer number when looking at your bottom line at the end of the month, after paying the bills. When our family started taking things back to basics, our main reason was to disconnect from being consumers only, and to begin being producers, specifically producers of the things we were going to use.  But after a few months we noticed a marked increase in our savings, so frugality was a nice and very much appreciated side effect.


Outside right now, I have a lasagna cooking in the solar oven and a load of wash on the clothesline, meaning the sun is currently acting as both my stove and my dryer.  We have a lot of different sized mason jars laying around that see duty as canning jars and drinking glasses.  They're also food storage containers.  In the refrigerator, I use them instead of Tupperware containers, to preserve a cut up onion, a half-used jar of tomato paste or leftover spaghetti sauce.  I use them in the freezer, saving chicken broth, limoncello and peach syrup for making sodas with. In the pantry, large half-quart jars hold all our flour, pasta, rice, etc..  Don't get me started on the mason jar thing.  I'm fairly obsessed.  And my point is that the mason jars can do many things successfully, which increases their value to me, as well as their cost-effectiveness.  


Many things can do double duty, if you're willing to get creative. I just ate an orange and now the leftover peel is sitting on the stove simmering, along with a half stick of cinammon and some cloves, to freshen the air in the house. I like it better than any air freshening crap they sell in the store, and I'm sure breathing in the scent of real oranges and cinnamon is probably better for me than whatever's coming out of the spray can or the  liquidy goo plugged into some power outlet.  


Occasionally I peruse the Sunday ads and am amazed at the number of appliances which 1) serve no other purpose than the one advertised and 2) are so easily done by something else -- something most of us already have around the house.  Two great examples are appliances I saw advertised last Sunday.  One was a self-contained cupcake maker, and the other was a quesadilla maker.  These were both stand-alone devices, using their own supply of electricity and taking up either valuable counter or shelf space in the kitchen, 365 days a year.  


I know now why modern man keeps needing bigger and bigger houses -- it's not because we need more space in our bedrooms or family areas -- it's because after a few years we run out of space to keep all our cupcake maker, quesadilla makers and other assorted -makers that have accumulated through the years.


I have a cupcake pan that goes into either of my ovens (solar or conventional) and a Lodge pan that does the same thing.  With these, I can make cupcakes, muffins, quesadillas, and about 100 other things.  


People might say I'm sounding preachy about this, and maybe I am.  So I'll preach it. Do we really need this much stuff?  What might life be like without cupcake makers and canned air freshener?  Damn good, I'll tell you.

Blowin' in the wind

Now that our trees are smaller and trimmed up nicely, there is a lot more sunshine and breezes in the back yard. This means on nice days I can use my absolute favorite appliance -- my solar clothes dryer, a.k.a. the clothes line.  This sounds pathetically commonplace until you realize how few people dry any of their clothes outside anymore.  Some suburban HOAs even have rules against using them, claiming it makes the neighborhood look too "ghetto" (this is not how they say it, but c'mon, you know it's what they mean). The average electric indoor clothes dryer is one of the biggest energy hogs in a household, second only to the television and air conditioner.  And when you're drying clothes for a family of five like I do, that adds up to a lot of kilowatt hours. Seriously, go outside (to wherever your electric meter is) sometime and then have someone inside start the dryer. The little energy use wheel on your meter will begin whirling around faster than an over-caffeinated spin aerobics instructor. If we weren't moving soon I'd definitely be looking into solar panels, but for now we'll take Mr. Sun's warming rays for all we can, using what we currently have.