Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch ....

Our wind sock is currently hanging on for dear life. Must be spring in the desert:

 

 

I intended to update this blog on March 14, the one-year anniversary of our move to Montello, but we've discovered that for some reason, the cell phone (and internet) signal is very unreliable at this time of year. "You *can* stop the signal, Mal!"

 

 

For those of you who have been asking our daughter, "Are your parents still doing that thing that they were doing?", the answer is yes, we're still doing "that thing." We call it homesteading. And I'm happy to report that we apparently survived the worst winter in recent memory. It required more gasoline to run generators than we would have liked, but Serenity's propane furnace and the vented propane heater in the studio kept us reasonably comfortable through a month of sub-zero cold (yes, even in the daytime), and our Simple Pump kept us in water. We were actually better off than our friends in town, who had to deal with frozen pipes and no water for extended periods of time, plus occasional power outages.

 

Here is more proof that it's spring. We planted these Australian Willow trees last year from cuttings, and they're putting on a new coat of leaves. The largest tree is nearly six feet tall already. This is the beginning of our windbreak, soon to be augmented with ten Colorado Blue Spruce seedlings from the Arbor Day Foundation. We now know where the snow drifts, so we're planning the windbreak accordingly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bunny Barn/Chicken Coop is finally finished, after many cold winter days of Greg installing one board, then coming in to thaw out for a few hours, then adding another. This was built entirely from salvaged materials, with the exception of the hardware and caulking. Inside, you will find this:

 

 

 

When we made a trek to Elko (200 mile round trip) last month, the feed stores had those harbingers of spring, baby chicks and ducks. Of course we brought some home with us:

   





 

 

The chicken house now contains six Buff Orpingtons, six Rhode Island Reds, two Silver Laced Wyandottes and two White Pekin ducks.

 

The bunnies are happy in their new quarters, and hopefully will soon provide us with zillions of babies.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A passing comment from a friend made me realize I need to clarify something with regard to our Nature's Head composting toilet: this is our second "facility," not the only one. We have a regular RV gravity-flush toilet inside Serenity, so there's no running outside at -15.

 

Another thing I wanted to mention, since we had seen nothing about it in researching off-grid power, is the fact that the solar panel systems and wind turbines one can buy *do not* include the wire. There is no way for the seller to know where your various components will be located, so you must provide your own wire. Once Greg mounted the solar panels, we had to measure the distance from the panels to the battery bank/charge controller, etc., and purchase wire. That required two strands of #10 wire, each 40 feet long. Not a huge investment, but still an unexpected expense. The wind generator was the real zinger: by placing it as close as was reasonable (30 feet from the battery bank, so that if the tower should fall in a gale-force wind it can't destroy anything), it required three strands of #4 wire, each 60 feet long--that cost nearly as much as the generator itself. Just something to be aware of for anyone considering going off-grid. (We had no choice in the matter, as it would cost more than $84,000 to bring electricity the two miles from the nearest power lines. We could power the entire valley with solar/wind power for that much!)

 

 

Oh, yes, remember the Mystery Object?

 

 

 

We showed it to Don one day, and he immediately said, "That's a root cellar." Then he went home and got his copy of "Putting Food By," and showed us the photo in this classic food preservation guide, of a barrel buried in the ground, with root vegetables wrapped in newspaper and straw, and the cover then put on to keep them through the winter. We haven't tried it out yet to see if it works, but we did buy a copy of the book.

 

 I'm waiting as patiently as I can for the weather to stabilize enough to start planting a garden. I have two raised beds ready, one outside the studio window and one beside the chicken coop, both filled with compost and other organic goodies. But it will be next month before the overnight temperatures stay above freezing.  

 

Time to go see what other mischief I can get into. Hope you all have a good spring (when it finally arrives in your neighborhood, I know some of you are having an extended winter this year) and I'll try to keep you posted on progress.



 

They Don't Call it the Cold Desert for Nothin'!

I've had a request from a friend (hi, Pete!) to post some photos and information on winter here at the corner of No and Where. We live in the Great Basin, aka the Cold Desert. Hot and dry in the summer (though not as hot or dry as the Chihuahuan Desert we lived in before moving up here), cold and dry in the winter. We had our first snow about a week before Halloween, although it didn't amount to much and didn't hang around very long. We've had a couple more light snows, which melted off in a day or so. Then, in early December, we finally got The Real Thing:

This snow arrived on Christmas Eve. Some of it is still around, although it's compacted into ice in places, and has disappeared in others due to sublimation. When it snows, the first thing we have to do is check the solar panels. They don't provide any electricity in this condition:

Rosa the Desert Dog is not a happy camper, she prefers to lie in the sun when it's 110 degrees out, but Gypsy was born for snow.

She bounds through the drifts and buries her nose in it, probably in search of her pile of bones.

As the temperatures dropped toward zero, Greg built an airlock around the front door, "the Montello Way," using whatever he could lay his hands on at the time, including dog food bags to cover the gaps. It may not look like much, but it slows the wind down. Gypsy loves the snow, but prefers to not have it in her food bowl.

Two days after Christmas, we had another snow, which added six inches of white stuff to what was already there.



The sun came out, the snow started melting, and then the temperature dropped, resulting in some really interesting icicles and other effects:

We made the rounds at this point, knocking down the overhanging snow and ice so it wouldn't fall on anyone. We haven't had any more snow since December 27, but we've had about three weeks of freezing fog. Sometimes it looks like regular fog, making it difficult to see very far. Other times, it lifts or even burns off, but still leaves behind enough cold to crystallize any moisture in the air. I should mention that during that time we haven't had highs above freezing, and the overnight temperatures have been as low as -15 here. Some folks in town have reported as low as -28. I describe the crystalline air as living inside a snow globe. It's magical. I had hoped to get a picture, but the crystals are so small they don't photograph well. The crystals stick to the snow and icicles, though, and look like this:

The forecast is looking rosy for the next few days--lows above zero and highs above freezing! (That is, 33 or 34 degrees.) We're having a heat wave! Greg has been slowly working on the Bunny Barn, one or two boards at a time. First he has to dig them out of the snow, then cut them to length and attach them. By the time he's done that once or twice, he's too cold to work outside any more. My outdoor exercise has mainly consisted of chopping the compacted snow out of the various walkways to keep them from becoming solid ice. And, of course, pumping water and feeding the bunnies. Indoors, I carve wood, knit, surf the web and plan the location of the garden. We both read and watch Dr. Who DVDs. The two additional batteries we bought this month are keeping us in electricity, with a daily boost from the generator. And we're working on a "by next winter" list of improvements. Serenity has kept us warm enough, although condensation has been an ongoing battle. We've had to move clothes out of the closets and regularly wipe down the windows and the insides of the cabinets. Just one of those challenges (or, as our friend George would say, "opportunities") for improvement next winter.

Keep warm and stay safe.