a year of commutes ll

One thing I noticed about my mileage in the time I kept track, was that even with the regenerative braking, mileage still suffers the more you start and stop. If I got out the door before traffic started filling in, and could time lights and coast to lights, I had much better mileage than otherwise. It is dramatic, and I think if everyone had instantaneous and daily mileage instrumentation, even without a hybrid car, they'd be shocked at how much their mileage suffers in stop and go traffic.

One day the mileage might be 56 or 57 MPG, and the next 45. That is a huge % variance, and just because of "bad luck" in traffic and maybe a cooler day with the defrost on.

Now that the administration has set some serious mileage goals for the next decade, it should be interesting to see how the manufacturers chose to meet these targets. We'll see more hybrids, but I think so much can be improved by better instrumentation, which I think will drive people's driving habits. I can't tell you how many times I'd see the light ahead turn red, start my coast, and have cars zoom around me to then slam on the brakes at the light. Sometimes, I'd even pass them up without stopping if I happened to be in the lane that cleared quicker.

preservation and eating local

Here is a photo I took representative of food we preserved this year. Left to right,

the pasta sauce was from our tomatoes, onions, garlic, and some CSA green peppers. Patsy did some large batches of canning this summer, boiling a lot of the tomatoes down to sauce, so we'd use less jars, and to be quicker to use.

The next, apples sauce, was from our big year for apples. We have lots of apple trees on the farm, but did not know which were good, and have only just begun to prune them back in to health. This was for reasons that I still don't recognize, a big year for apples in our neck of the woods. With the big year, we now know which are good for eating, and had so many we only preserved a fraction of them.

Apple slices, dehydrated and stored in jars, was another way to save some of the big crop. We don't bother with dipping them in some solution to prevent browning. Just doesn't matter to us. I will be interested to see how they taste when rehydrated, compared to storebought dried apple. So far we've been working on the frozen apple slices, and the apple sauce, so haven't tried the dried ones yet.

We grew entirely too many cayenne peppers this year, here is one jar of the dried peppers. I've made some fermented hot sauce that turned out well ( well, two out of three batches did) and I've ground some of the dried pods ( less seeds) to powder. We will grow more green and mild peppers next year, but a few cayenne as well.

Patsy has been experimenting with herbs. This jar has mint leaves, which she will try to use in tea.

Just making the seed list now for this spring, so it won't be that long till the lights and heating pads get set up again in the basement.

Oh yeah, the throne in the works

Working on the composting toilet, here it is drying in the sunroom after I gave the wood a good coating of urethane. Still making things out of left over materials from the prior projects. (I did have to buy the plastic buckets).

I have a small store of sawdust to get rolling, but need to secure a free, substantial source. Negotiations are underway regarding where exactly the toilet will be located........
Trial run was in the garage, which was rather chilly.

A year of commutes part one

Ok, actually around a year and a half. I drive a Honda Insight Hybrid for my commute, which for part of this time was 40.6 miles round trip, and 38.6 miles for the rest of that time. The Honda insight has great mileage, and the instrumentation makes it very easy to record both daily mileage as well as overall lifetime mileage. Once I learned how easy it was to reset the mileage calculation daily ( or hourly if you really wanted to) I thought it would be interesting to learn what cycles or patterns might show up to cause the overall average to be what it was.

I did not turn in to a hypermilage practitioner, but I did learn some things about the car and my driving patterns. Overall, I think it improved my mileage, since I did alter my habits a bit.
first entry
June 29- 2010: 43 miles, and 59.4 MPG
last entry
Dec. 22-2011: 46.5 miles, 50 MPG

These two entries point out one of the most significant findings. I thought I had noticed a seasonal swing in mileage before, but now it was quite evident, and I looked in to it and found three main contributors to this pattern. First, the engine does not reach full efficiency till it is warmed up above a certain temperature. I'm not an expert in ICEs, or even a car nut, but posts on Hybrid owner forums corroborated this. Second, the computer in the car had been programmed to keep the engine running at stops if the defrost was turned on. I presume this was a design decision that said visibility and safety trump mileage. Third, I live in an EPA ozone nonatainment area, meaning gasoline formulation changes between winter and summer. I have no idea how the Toyota engineers dealt with this, but it would be interesting to compare notes with a Prius owner. Anyway, just knowing these things changed my habits a bit. After my windows were clear, I was much more attentive to turn off the defrost until needed. One of the huge ways hybrids save gas is by shutting off the engine at stops, and if you take away that trick, mileage plummets. If all cars had instantaneous mileage gauges, and could easily track this, commuters would be up in arms demanding hybrids and better stop light algorithms.

I've never counted, but I would estimate my commute has around 30stop lights, and let's just say if I was an Xmen mutant, my special mutation was causing lights to turn red. Anyway, I'll cover other things I learned in future posts.

chipper

WE decided to get the chipper attachment for our BCS. We're getting the small one, as I think it will work better for shredding mulch for the garden, and we'll probably burn anything too big for it. With all the sumac and other brush which sprouts continuously, it will get plenty of use. I still think that as long as we make up for the nitrogen, putting wood chips in the garden will speed up improvement of tilth and organic content. Most people say not to do it, but I have read the occasional counterpoint.

Got a batch of rough cut black locust to finish the compost bins, and also got a good lead from the neighbor for buying large quantities of compost. In order to get our terrace garden soil up to speed quicker, we might do that.

Trading with another neighbor this fall, we got some yogurt they made, and 55 lbs of pork from the pigs they raised this summer. They got bales of straw from us for bedding for their two milk cows. We still need to figure out how to evaluate our trades, to make sure we all feel things are fair. I just don't know the going cost for some of the items and help we have been swapping.

everything goes in

Started building a compost bin. Actually a three section compost bin as described in the Humanure Manual. Everything will go in. We had already started a low maintenance compost pile, not much more than a midden really, but will work on balancing the green and brown, making sure water and air are in the right range. Hard to do from afar, but will do what we can while we are there next summer.

When we live there, we'll start livestock, and have manure, but until then, it'll be lots of plant and kitchen scrap based compost. The garden will expand some this next year, and we plan to try winter squash as well as some sweet corn. Our very first garden experiment was a failure on the corn, since we hadn't yet put up a deer fence.
Corn takes a lot of room and nitrogen, but since we did a lot of dry beans this last year, we have several rows which will have fixed some nitrogen.

permies

This on again, off again blog has not had much focus, but I think it will document our path toward a sustainable life on our farm. We are commiting to permaculture techniques, low energy input agriculture, and becoming part of a local food system. I'm finding websites and blogs with info that will help us avoid a few pitfalls, and recognize decision points as we come to them.

Apparently permies are people enamoured with permaculture. Others have called me a prepper or a doomer. Whatever. I'll list some of our plans and let that say what it will.

We will be planting chestnut trees and hazelnuts this spring, along the keyline ditches that are going in right now. We will have to delay livestock and other things till we move to the farm, but long term things like trees are starting now.

Finished reading both of Sam Thayer's books on wild forage foods, and I highly recommend them. We have a couple huge old shagbark hickories down in the ravine, so I gathered as many nuts as I could before the squirrels got them. I also gathers black walnuts from a youngish tree right near the house. Will practice cracking technique this winter, and hopefully get good at it.

In addition, after reading the books, I find I'm in a whole new world. Every time I walk outside, I'm looking at plants, and both wondering if they are edible, and realizing I need to pracice identification. I guess this spring, I will give the nettles and dandelion a shot, and work on from there.