Mary Cook

He had all kinds of machines, but the only one that intrigued me--that looked better than doing it by hand--was the thresher. That's what I've had the most trouble with in growing grain. Well, that and grinding the grain into flour.

I really disagree with Brandon. Some people's situation won't accommodate solar, but the idea that you have to nix out your power bills within a few years for it to be worth it...is going to look very quaint in a few years when solar panels may not be available or affordable--unless you live in China, maybe--and the grid may be going down more often, grid power may be climbing rapidly in price...whereas panels are quite cheap now. The whole system, especially if you go off-grid, is not so cheap, especially if you have to pay expert installers and red tape fees, but could well be worth it.
We installed 4 panels in 2009; my husband is an electronics experts, so he did it all himself and since it's off-grid, there was no need to pay anyone or to argue with an electric company or government person. That system had eight golf-cart-type batteries, and the total cost was $9070. The capacity was 880 watts. At that time both the US and my state of West Virginia had 30% tax rebates for solar, which cut our costs in half. Those batteries are good for 5 to 7 years--we replaced them in the seventh year with some tubular lead-acid batteries that should still have 80% of initial capacity in 20 years, $4000. We also added two new panels. The first four in 2009 cost $600 each and were 220 watts; the ones maybe eight years later were virtually the same dimensions, 315 watts each plus more efficient in low light conditions, and cost $200 each.
Around here the grid goes down pretty much every year, usually for a few hours but sometimes it's a week in a widespread outage. Our system went partially down once in 17 years; fortunately it was the first year when the inverter was still under warranty. A lightning strike damaged it via the AC system. The company replaced the relevant part of the inverter free, and we set up a system where we turn off the AC switches except for the refrigerator when it's stormy or potentially so, and if a hellacious thunderstorm is raging around, we turn off the fridge one too. Last year my husband did a test and could not detect any efficiency loss. The idea that panels are only good for 20 to 30 years is false.
The key is that you do NOT need to power your house at typical first-world levels of indulgence and waste. Before sizing your system, figure out how to minimize power use. We use about 2 kilowatt-hours a day, barely 10% of what is typical in the US, and have two laptops, a refrigerator, blender, toaster and microwave, power tools and vacuum cleaner, and a well pump. Most of those things we use occasionally; some we use only when the sun is shining (because there is efficiency loss when power goes into the batteries and then comes out.
Incidentally, our panels are not on our roof. We built the house next to tall trees on the west side, so we are in total shade from noon on in summer--hence we don't need AC and don't even use box fans except for winnowing grain. For cooling we have several tiny fans made of a pair of desktop computer fans soldered together--these use like 5 watts, and there is one next to where I read, one upstairs when my husband sits at his computer, and one over the bed for those few hot nights. But this means the house roof is not ideal for panels, so they're on a yard mount my husband designed (details at spectrumz.com/going solar). 60 feet from the house. So no need to make holes in the roof, changing the angle of the panels seasonally is quick and easy, and scrubbing snow off the panels sometimes more than once a day--when we need the watts the most--does not require walking on an icy roof or hanging out a window when it's 12 degrees.

We had free range chickens for decades, but in recent years he predator problem got to be too much so we built an enclosure. A fence almost five feet high has worked very well--in part because the orchard is within their run so there are lots of hiding places from overhead predators. We close them in the coop at night. The thing we changed is that we built a box within the coop we  call Chickland, for a hen sitting on eggs so the other hens can't mix their younger eggs in, and to keep the hen and eggs safer; the hatched chicks stay there for about ten days. It works, but if we had planned it from the start it would be easier to clean and less dark. A plan for setting hens and young chicks is a good idea unless you're going to use an incubator. For us, we have off-grid solar and avoid constant electricity draws; but also, if you use an incubator you have to continue to warm and tend the checks for weeks after they hatch. If you let the hens do it, they know what to do and take care of it all.

I incorporate the manure and bedding from my chicken coop into my garden compost piles, which are in a pair of bins just above the garden, within the chicken run. One item is maybe not a hack but part of initial planning, inspired by permaculture principles: locating the coop above the garden so when I drag a tarp full of chicken bedding, it's a short distance downhill. And these primary piles for my main garden work faster because I have two bins, and after a pile has been turned into the other bin, the next turning is onto the ground. My chickens peck through all of it but the pile on the ground gets further working from them. The hack is to do the turning coincided with cleaning the coop; I turn a layer, then drag a tarpload to the pile and add it, then turn some more on top of that, add another tarpload, and put the last of the old pile onto the top, thus incorporating the manure and bedding into the pile. I also use a mask for this chore as chicken bedding, especially when dry and dusty, does a number on your lungs.
Here's a gardening one: I have a series of permanent, slightly raised beds. The beds are all twelve feet long and 2 1/2 to 4 feet wide. Each year I pick a new bed to put T-posts on the ends of, and run some field fence between them, down the middle of the bed. I plant peas on one side, usually in early March. Then about the time the peas begin producing, I plant pole beans on the other side of the fence. Thus, when I rip out the dying pea plants in early July or so, the beans are coming up and can take over creating this wall of shade. On either side of this fence, I plant things that like some shade: broccoli, celery, spinach & lettuce& radishes, maybe chard.
Another one: if space is at a premium, plant onions or garlic in places where when these come out--about July 1st here--the space can be taken over by growing plants. Examples would be a grid pattern with two rows of the alliums down the middle of the bed and short lines to each side around squares where peppers, tomatoes or sweet potatoes will grow. or planting them throughout a bed except for two large holes toward either end where winter squash will go. By the time the sweet potatoes, squash, peppers or tomatoes are elbowing the alliums, the alliums can come out and mulch can be put in their place around the long-term plants.

One thing I do when I have too many eggs and have given my neighbors and friends all THEY need, is freeze eggs so I don't have to buy them in December. It took some learning to do it successfully--freezing them in ice cube trays simply didn't work, greased or not, plastic or metal. The egg would stick to the ice cube cells until it was half thawed. So then I tried cracking two eggs (our usual breakfast ration) into an eight-ounce plastic dip container, lightly beating it, and freezing. The next day (or later), take it out of the freezer, remover the lid, let it sit a couple minutes, run a little water over the bottom, and then I can pop it out of the container. I stack these frozen egg disks in a plastic sleeve, which I sometimes put inside a half-gallon cardboard milk container--this holds about a dozen. A couple of these will get us through the low-egg season (this year there never was a low egg season despite a cold winter, so I gave them away).

One quibble. I don't want to save my own tomato seed, or to buy seed from tomatoes grown in my area. I mostly buy from Pinetree and Fedco, both Maine-based companies, which is likely not ideal for my West Virginia garden...for them the issues are length of growing season and chill hardiness. Not issues here. In the Pacific NW, the issue is summer coolness and dryness...not issues here. The problems I have are mostly because we have plenty of summer heat and summer rain (most years)--and so fungal infections are my biggest challenge, and one I have to deal with every year in tomatoes. Some of these can be carried over on the seed, so I want seed grown somewhere that's either dry in summer, or barely warm enough. Maybe I could learn to sterilize my seed in a way that reliably kills the fungus, without killing the seed. Then I could experiment with tomato breeding...although my top goal is blight resistance, and the most resistant ones are hybrids.
Also I note that other growers in my town don't necessarily have similar conditions--I have clay soil and my nearest neighbor a mere 700 feet away has sandy soil. We are on the ridge and people in the "hollers" have significantly different challenges.
My current breeding experiment is with corn--after reading about how potent hybrid vigor is in corn, two years ago I grew two compatible varieties in alternating rows--Bloody Butcher and Blue Clarage. Last year I used my flat ground for blackeyed peas, but this year I plan to plant the crossed red and blue corn seed, hoping for a vigorous corn in shades of purple. If it works I'll probably just keep planting seed from the best ears.

It happens that expanding a hugelkultur is my project for today. But mine are not huge mounds; I just dig a foot deep, maybe a little more, throw in half rotted logs, then add in a mix of the topsoil, sand, peat moss, manure, rotted leaves, and smaller branches and cover with soil. First I tried this with elderberries in orchard, and they thrived until deer ate them to the ground. But when I moved my blueberries to a new location, I tried putting them on a hugelkultur bed, WITHOUT concrete blocks at the base of their bed, and they've done much better. I don't worry about either rodents or freezing. I do mulch them heavily with leaves every fall. Now I've decided I need to expand my blueberries, since that's one fruit my husband will eat, and likely good for my macular degeneration, so I'm digging a new hugelkulture. For blueberries a lot of the additional matter needs to be peat moss as that's the only thing I know that's sufficiently acidic.

Jen--couple things. I tried using wood ash for traction and wondered if it was a good idea but now you've endorsed it.
And, I've read that when composted, coffee grounds are no longer acidic. I've also read this about oak leaves and even pine needles. But I throw my coffee ground, still in their convenient paper filter, into my blueberry bed starting in February--a reminder it's time--and ending about September. I'm in West Virginia, so my February is your March or possibly even April. Today we're going to tap maple trees. I think the coffee grounds help, but I've been using sulfur too--actually I use it about everywhere as a soil test showed it as my one deficiency.

Okay, sorry if this is too gross. We have a composting outhouse. In late summer, there are some little worms that hatch in those buckets somehow (how do the flies get in?) and crawl up onto the seat sometimes, and onto the lid (which doesn't change while the buckets do). Sprinkling wood ash beats them back, so we save as much as ten gallons of wood ash for this purpose.

I thought I'd already posted on this. Now I'll have to settle in because I have a lot to say.
In 2001 my neighbor died suddenly. Because I had a Death and Dying course, I knew that there are virtually no laws restricting burial here in West Virginia; but because he had no history of heart attack, though he was 75, the sheriff had to sign off before the coroner could be allowed to release the body back to us. Meanwhile my husband organized a gravedigging crew, my neighbors didn't go to work (or came back in one case) or school, we began cooking and another friend put together a simple wooden coffin. Unfortunately the sheriff was tied up in court till 5; we were all gathered and ready by then.Two of us accompanied the new widow to the coroner's to wait on release of her husband's body I remembered being on edge from the sound of an unseen two-year old's crying, and thinking afterwards that the usual funeral (my father-in-law died two months from that time) was as artificial as the plastic cherry tree blooming near where we waited. Finally we were on our way; as we climbed a hill and came around the bend at dusk, to suddenly see 50 people with candles--a moment I'll never forget. The coffin was borne to the grave and lowered on stout ropes as we sang Amazing Grace and Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and recited a Buddhist prayer (this couple had been part of a meditation group).  The widow told me later, "I felt borne aloft by the caring of all those people," and "I didn't know how I'd get through the rest of my life without Ted, but I knew then that I wasn't facing it alone." And I thought: Doing this the simple way our ancestors did it for thousands of years is a comfort; it's like we're connected to those people, however unknown. And I thought--what the undertaker adds is an interfering stranger in the midst of a group of people trying to come together around a hole that has opened up in their midst. And a big drain on the family's finances.
There was a book I learned a lot from Called Your Final Act of Love, which spelled out the reasons it's best to do everything for a dead loved one yourself, and what the laws were in all 50 states--it's probably out of date. But it emphasized a point I want to lean on hard here: the time to find out what the laws are where you live, and where your parents live, and to have conversations about what people want for when they die, is NOW. If you're unprepared, and suddenly someone is dead, you're vulnerable to that funeral director saying he'll "take care of everything<"--which he will, for several thousand dollars. It's overwhelming to deal with these decisions on the worst day of your life. But if you've already made these decisions, then you just have to carry them out, and the most stricken persons will be assisted by more peripheral people in doing so. They want to help, they just don't know what to do. Sarah told me she had trouble convincing Ted to have this conversation; finally she said, "Ted, let's just pretend for the moment that you're mortal, so we can talk about this," and that worked.
Since that time, a neighbor and my sister died, and we dealt with it the same way. My husband built coffins for both of them, and the funeral home (Involved because they had to transport the bodies from hospitals) said they were the best simple coffins he'd ever seen and could he get the maker interested in building more--also said when someone else made Ted's coffin--but in neither case was there interest, they were willing to build a coffin as a gift but not to do it as a moneymaking operation. And when I go, my request is no coffin at all just a sheet will do.
So. You DON'T have to hire funeral director, or have embalming or an absurd, horribly expensive coffin to interrupt the body's return to the streams of life; it need cost very little; and you should look into the laws, and the preferences of your loved ones, now.