New Lines

When we were out buying more wood for the Recycle Pallets into a Deck project I picked up some retractable laundry lines. I had quite a few lines up before but we had to take them down to build the bunny hutch and with the new walkway we, well...clotheslined ourselves on the hanging ropes. Often. 

I bought 40' lines (there is very little chance we will ever use all forty feet in this house, mainly because our property is only 30' wide but they can be taken down and moved with us) and put them up this afternoon.

It came with screws I felt were grossly inadequate for the job. See shiny screws on left? Bad. See my replacement screws on right? Much better.

I had to predrill holes into the hundred year wood that holds our house together. I stood on a chair to get the lines up high enough to walk under but not so high I needed a stool to put up the laundry. I also hung them above the airconditioner so when it kicks on the hot air will serve an actual productive purpose.

On a side note, I'm resisting the urge to paint them to look like fish. Tell me I shouldn't.

All in all, it took about fifteen minutes to screw in all three lines and the hooks on the opposite side. I also predrilled a hole into the fence before screwing in the hooks. I really love my power tools.

It was rainy today; sprinking off and on. So I have to wait to try them out. These give me a ton more linear feet of drying space than I had before and they retract. A huge bonus when various spiders spin webs across lines every single night. I used to take a stick and swipe it across the lines every day last summer before I could hang clothes. Some looked like tiny crabs with red spikes on their backs. Eewe. Plus these lines are coated so they won't get mildewy or wet.

I'm very pleased with the quality of the retractable lines even if they cost about a bajillion times more than the simple loose hooks and length of rope I initially had in place. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be airing my clothes outside!

The Beaches

I'm a little late on the topic, I know. I have a tendancy to not read the paper or watch the news. Ever. I knew there had been an oil spill/explosion/whatnot but never looked into the details. I just couldn't, I can't. I'm sorry.

I'm trying not to be like that. But it's hard.

There is so much bad in the world. Not just talking about this crisis but everything as a whole. Most of the time I just can't take it. The death and destruction roar in my ears. It makes me want to run for the hills (or at least my little piece of land) and cut myself off from humanity. Shelter my kids under a cloud of unawareness and live out my life in ignorant bliss. It's wrong, I get that, but every fiber in my body still wants to.

I posted a photo of the beach we went to in March. A beach that might not be safe to use soon. A beach that's white sand won't be white, the water not that wonderful deep blue-green. It'll be barren of little bare feet and much more. So, so much more.

I'm not a beachy person. I don't enjoy laying in grit, cooking cancer into my skin. The vitamin D I absorb I'd rather get from being hunched over in the front yard, digging in the Earth. But that doesn't mean I don't want the beaches and waterways.

The other thing that worries me about this whole thing is how it will impact the already precarious situation we have with our Florida Manatees. While the ones in the photo won't have to worry, the others do. Cordelia's favorite animal is the manatee. My favorite quote of her's is "I wish I was a mermaid, so then I could marry a manatee." Which one of you would like to break the news to her when they're wiped out?

It's such a mess. Everything is so twisted; I don't know how to extract myself from the sticky, oily web. It makes me want to rethink our entire plan for the farm, driving me to drastic measures since it seems the little ones I try and enforce daily aren't making a difference. I want to chuck out the car and live without central air. I want to scream at people that drive, single person in an SUV and use those stupid little plastic produce bags at the store. There is a problem without a clear solution. It drives me nuts. My whole emotional framework is exacerbated and intensified. Put on a sharp edge of fear and uncertainty. Which is the entire reason I stay away from watching the new and reading the paper.

There isn't much I can do right now to fix this particular problem. I think a lot of people are just holding their breath, waiting to see how bad it will get. Rob might get called up for Emergency Guard to help our state in whatever way he can. Others are starting to mobilize. The only thing I can do right now is pray.

So, please, please, please, whatever God there is where ever it lives and however it's called upon, let us fix the beaches.

Solar to Sustain Us?

One of my favorite They Might Be Giants kids songs is "The Sun" (quoted in italics below). It's actually a song I can listen to without wanting to stab someone for it's idiotic repetitiveness  quite catchy tune and is about science. So, its basically awesome.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas,

A gigantic nuclear furnace,


Where hydrogen is built into helium,


At a temperature of millions of degrees.

This homesteading thing isn't about us building a spec home on a large sodded lot. It's about changing our lifestyle and reducing our needs outside what we can harvest and grow outselves. Harvesting the sun for energy is just one of those ideas. Looking at our recent electric bill...well, lets just say it looks to be a daunting task. Can seven people live without the lines of The Electric Company hanging over us?

We need its light,



We need its heat,


The sunlight that we see,


The sunlight comes from our own suns,


Atomic energy
 
I'd like to think we could. But I'm not sure. We're reading about it, researching, pricing out panels. That's what this whole huge life is about: learning. Last month we used on average 81 kwhpd. Oh. My. God. It fluxuated over $125 from December. Ouch. Granted, we're sitting in a house built in 1922 that literally had holes in it where you could see daylight. We have no insulation besides the minimum in the attic. There are places the only barrier between us and the outside is an almost a century old panel of wood. The AC/electric heat unit put it has one single duct to the downstairs which makes us need multiple space heaters running constantly to keep the chill down. I wore gloves to type during the freeze snap we had. Even with the heaters running full.
 
The sun is hot,



The sun is not,


A place where we could live,


But here on Earth there'd be no life,


Without the light it gives.

It's hard to determine what our energy consumption would be if we lived in a house that didn't have these flaws. I love my old house but I do not love anything at all about owing the electric company exorbitant amounts of money each month and the overhanging threat of being turned off if we can't make the payment. Even with the insulation we'd still need to climitize the house, see for homeschool, cook, wash laundry and heat water. On average I estimated we spend between $3000-5000 a year on electric usage. That's a lot of green for being very un-green.We're learning though. I really want to do this right from the beginning. Not go back and redo work because it was easier to hook up to the main line for power. I want independence and freedom from monthly bills and non-renewable energies be them my own works or burning fossil fuels. We'd have to piece-meal the system together based on our needs. Building an off grid house we don't get the luxury of walking in and plugging in. But that's okay. That's what I want...if we can figure it out.

The sun is far away,



About 93 million miles away!


And thats why it looks so small,


But even when its out of sight,


The sun shines night and day.