Category: Sustainable living

Are you ready for power failure?


⬆︎ My solar panels can produce, at most, a modest 150 watts of power. That’s enough to keep some deep-discharge batteries charged at all times. The solar power also is a supplement to my small generator.

Clearly the risks to the power grid are growing. This is true not just in the United States. Just two days ago, France issued a warning about winter power failure. Whether in summer or winter, power grids can become overloaded (and, these days, often do). For some strange reason, right-wing terrorists seem to be targeting the power grid. The vulnerability of the power grid to cyber-hacking is well known, though no doubt too little has been done about it. Even solar events such as coronal mass ejections could shut down the power grid and damage major components of the grid that would be very difficult to replace.

Being prepared is not necessarily just a matter of comfort and convenience. In some cases, lives depend on it. Everyone needs a plan. In rural areas such as where I live, short power outages (three or four hours) happen many times a year. I’ve never been through an outage that lasted for days, but that’s always possible.

Getting equipped with backup sources of power and heat is not necessarily something that must be done all at once. Being prepared is expensive. And not only are the things you need expensive to buy, they require maintenance, or they won’t work when you need them. Here at the abbey, I’ve gradually built up my ability to weather longer and longer power failures. Each power failure is a kind of test that lets me figure out what my next priority for improvement should be.

The first big question is: Would your heating system operate with the power down? Few systems would these days. I have a heat pump, which is of course all electric. For backup, I have a propane fireplace and a tank that holds 200 gallons of propane. The fireplace provides a helpful amount of heat, but it can’t compare with the house’s main heating system. Kerosene heaters make me nervous. But if you’re careful with them, they can be a safe source of emergency heat.

How would you cook if the power went out? Here at the abbey, though I can boil water in small quantities on generator power, my emergency solution is to cook outdoors using propane. The gas grill, also propane, is always available.

Refrigeration is a biggy. That’s a problem that can be solved only with electricity. My solution at present for refrigeration uses two battery-powered power inverters. The 1000-watt unit can run the refrigerator for five hours or more. I have two such units, so that one can be recharged from the generator while the other is powering the refrigerator.

Lighting is not a big deal. Flashlights and candles are a given, with better light sources if you have the power. You’ll also need to think about water. Even if your water is city water (as opposed to a well, which I have here), frozen pipes could be a problem in extreme cold, especially if the power is out.

For me, communication is a major issue. Cell phones aren’t enough. I also need to be able to keep my computer and WIFI running in a power failure. How I do that is shown in the photographs below. And because I’m an amateur radio operator, I also need to keep all my radios running, if they’re needed. Amateur radio operators are always about community service if a disaster strikes, not only for communication with the outside world but also for providing a means of staying in touch with one’s neighbors.


⬆︎ This small inverter generator is enough to power my refrigerator, computer, radios, and some lighting. I am wary of larger generators that cannot produce pure sine wave power.


⬆︎ You can’t have too many batteries. These batteries are kept charged by the solar panels. On the right is a power inverter that attaches to the batteries. The inverter can produce standard 115-volt house current as pure sine waves. The inverter also can charge USB devices. My solar power goes into my garage, not to the house. And speaking of the garage, that’s my Jeep on the left. It, too, is a nice thing to have for winter emergencies.


⬆︎ The front panel of the power inverter, with its three USB outlets as well as house current. These days, keeping USB devices such as phones charged is a high priority.


⬆︎ Fortunately, inverters like this made in China are fairly affordable. If you’re not clear on the difference between “modified sine wave” inverters and “pure sine wave” inverters, I’d recommend reading up on that. Pure sine wave inverters are more expensive, but I would not want to run electronics or expensive items such as refrigerators on dirty power.


⬆︎ These two devices contain batteries. Their output is house current and USB. They are expensive. I use these devices mainly to keep my refrigerator running — a high priority that I deem worth the expense. One can be charging while the other is powering the refrigerator. Both can be charged from my solar panels, but charging from the generator is much easier as long as the generator is running.


⬆︎ Maybe someday we’ll be able to live without gas-powered engines. But, until then, you’ve got to have fuel. I never store gasoline, kerosene, or propane indoors, and I insist on the safest possible containers.


⬆︎ Propane for emergency cooking, outdoors. I also have a propane grill.


⬆︎ Kerosene heaters scare me. But they don’t scare me as much as a cold house when it’s 5F outdoors, which happened as recently as last week.


⬆︎ This uninterruptible power supply can keep my computer running for hours. But when the power goes out, I get the generator out of the basement and put it in a safe place outside the basement door. I plug the cord from the generator into a receptacle in the basement that terminates at the red outlet that you can see in the wall behind the UPS. When I built my house, I installed the wiring for that. This is a heavy commercial UPS that I’ve had for years. Its batteries have to be replaced every five years or so.


⬆︎ My radios run on battery power at all times. The batteries are kept charged by the trickle charger in the photo below. In a power failure, by moving a plug, I can keep the batteries charged with the generator.


⬆︎ The trickle charger that keeps the radio batteries at full charge.


⬆︎ I sometimes joke with my neighbors that, in a catastrophe, one reason why they should keep feeding me in spite of my age is that they can count on me for communications during a catastrophe. I have had an extra-class amateur radio license for years, and I take very seriously the responsibility to provide emergency communications for the people around me, not only long-distance communications but also local communications using handhelds, of which I have a great many.

New trains!

The Washington Post has a story about yesterday’s announcement by Amtrak describing the $5 billion worth of new trains that Amtrak is buying. The trains will be named Amtrak Airo, and they’re beautiful.

Yes, the trains will be made in America — Sacramento — though the company is German. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg is not mentioned in the story, but I suspect that he, and the Biden administration, had more than a little to do with this.

It was interesting to read some of the comments on this article. Train lovers are pointing out that the United States is still far, far behind other countries in its train infrastructure, not least because of the poor condition of our tracks. In Europe, everybody loves trains, and everybody rides them. In the U.S., liberals have never seen a train they didn’t love, and Republicans have never seen a train they didn’t hate. I wonder: Don’t Republicans ever travel abroad and ride the trains?

The recent railway strike that almost happened helped expose just how much fixing our railway system needs, both for freight and for passengers. About 30 years of successive Democratic transportation secretaries might do it.

Ken’s story lives on …

In many ways, it seems like just yesterday that Ken’s Walden on Wheels was published. That was May 14, 2013. The book continues to sell well. The book earned back Ken’s advance from the publisher several years ago and continues to bring in money for Ken. Ken wrote Walden on Wheels here at Acorn Abbey. I’ll never forget the day I finished reading Ken’s second draft, after he had made some revisions to the ending. He was working in the garden that morning. I walked up to the garden, quite aware that it was a beautiful book that would do well. As I recall, I said to Ken, “I can’t believe that I just walked up the hill and spoke to the person who wrote that book.”

Ken subsequently published two other books, with three books under his belt by the age of 35. He’s a lucky dog, living the life of a successful author. Ken is on another college speaking tour at present. A couple of stops are nearby — N.C. State University in Raleigh, and the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He’ll also be here at the abbey for five or six days. I have long wanted to visit Williamsburg, so I plan to meet up with Ken there. We’ll have a long and bookish discussion agenda for his visit, and probably a litle Scotch to go with it. Knowing Ken, he’ll probably also clean up my messy garden.

The video above was made by an online content producer, Seen Stories.

Garden chowder

It’s really too hot for soup. But I’ve been making some fine chowders out of summer vegetables, centered around fresh corn. As always with my cooking, there is not an exact recipe. Just use what you’ve got.

Coarsely chop some onion and mild peppers. Sauté them in olive oil with a little butter. Add corn fresh cut from the cob, and sauté the corn with the onions and peppers. Five minutes of sautéing should be enough. Add water. Cut a fresh tomato in half and drop the tomato into the pot. Add a cup or so of precooked white beans, if you’ve got them. I’m not ashamed to use canned beans when I need beans quick.

Simmer all that, covered, for half an hour. Remove the chowder from the heat and move the tomatoes to a saucer to cool. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, remove the skin and put the tomatoes back into the pot. Whiz the chowder with a hand blender. Season it. My secret ingredient for seasoning soups are the vegetarian versions of Better Than Bouillon. Add a little cream.

As a concession to summer weather, serve the chowder warm instead of winter hot.

Planting pumpkins

I’ve written here previously about the nearby farm where I’m buying most of my summer vegetables this year. They sell the vegetables for $1.50 a pound (mix and match) from the shade of an old barn right beside the fields. You can see in the upper right of the photo that the corn will be ready soon. The crew (they are from Mexico, and they are very good) are planting fall crops — three varieties of pumpkins including what I call pie pumpkins, and sweet potatoes.

I first observed this planting protocol from commercial strawberry fields. The plastic, of course, keeps down the weeds and preserves moisture. A drip irrigation pipe runs under the plastic in each row. The water for these fields is pumped from a pond just below the fields, but rainfall has been good here this summer. The soil look pretty terrible, doesn’t it? But it is typical of the soils in the North Carolina piedmont and foothills — very red. The high white fence is to keep the deer out.

The mountain in the background is part of the Saura mountain chain. It’s the location of Hanging Rock State Park here in Stokes County, maximum elevation about 2,500 feet.

A haul from the farm stand


The vegetable gardens are to the left behind the tractor.

Here in the middle of nowhere where some people consider Dollar General a grocery store, the best thing that has happened in years is the new farm stand. Two years ago, they started with strawberries. This year they expanded to include summer vegetables. Strawberries and vegetables are picked in the morning. The farm stand, which is right beside the fields, opens at 10. They sell all their produce into the local market. People flock in to buy it. By sometime in the afternoon, everything for that day is sold out. The fields are irrigated from a rain-fed farm pond. Vegetables are all $1.50 a pound. The tomato crop should start coming in next week. The produce is not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

The economic model makes so much sense that I don’t understand why it took so long. We have plenty of land here and lots of ponds for irrigation. We have the odd farmer’s market or two, but those are poorly attended, the prices are too high, and with some items such as tomatoes I’m skeptical that the sellers actually grow what they sell. In the past, though most have gone out of business, we used to have produce stands that sold trucked-in commercial produce. The quality was poor, and nothing was ever fresh, partly because it was never refrigerated. A farm stand eliminates all sorts of expenses and impediments to quality. There are no transportation costs and refrigeration costs. When you sell out every day, there is no waste. Everything is fresh. Not only do you meet the farmers, you see the fields. I hope this is a trend that is growing, nationwide.

The farming work here is done by a crew from Mexico, on visas for seasonal farm workers. The farm provides the workers with housing. From the quality of the strawberries, which were perfectly cultivated and perfectly picked back during May, I knew that the summer vegetables would be good, too, because the farm workers know what they are doing, and they work the fields every day. For example, a common mistake in gardening is to pick vegetables such as cucumbers and squash after they’ve gotten a little too big. Late picking increases the weight of the crop, of course. But the vegetables aren’t as good because they start to turn dry and seedy. These vegetables are picked on just the right day for maximum quality in the kitchen.

The blueberries come from a nearby farm. While peaches are in season in South Carolina, they’ve been sending a truck to South Carolina once or twice a week to bring a load of peaches. The peaches, they say, sell out almost immediately. The best peaches in the United States (sorry, California) come from South Carolina and Georgia.

The fall crop will include pumpkins. They assured me that, in addition to those horrid bright-orange pumpkins that people use these days for Halloween, they’ll also have “pie pumpkins.” That’s a huge deal for pumpkin lovers like me. I haven’t had much luck growing them, and besides they need a huge amount of space. For years, it has been difficult to find pie pumpkins in the fall — a terrible cultural failure if there ever was one. Even most country folk these days make pumpkin pies from canned pumpkin. Never in my life have I done that, and I never will.

I still have my garden, but this year I’ve reduced its size, given how much easier it has become to get fresh-picked summer vegetables at a reasonable cost. I’m growing tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers.

If you’re in this area, Manuel Farms in on Stewart Road northwest of Walnut Cove, North Carolina.


My haul, after I got home

Cooler summer cooking, outside

Even if cooking on the deck didn’t keep the heat out of the kitchen, cooking on the deck would still be worth doing. Cooking outdoors is as much fun as eating outdoors.

I have long used my gas grill for cooking on the deck. But not everything wants to be cooked on a grill. Today I tried out an iron Dutch oven on an induction hot plate. It worked great. The Dutch oven serves perfectly as both an oven or a frying pan, depending upon whether the cover is on it.

I bought the induction hot plate a couple of years ago as an audition for an induction range. I ended up liking it far less than I expected and easily made the decision that an induction range is not for me. Part of the decision was related to the kind of cookware I use. I have several well-loved copper pots, as well as glass cookware. Only steel and iron, of course, will work on induction stoves. So the induction hot plate ended up abandoned, at the bottom of the pantry. As for the Dutch oven, that’s an essential kitchen item. I have a both a glazed and an unglazed Dutch oven, both made by Lodge.

In the photo above, the chicken nuggets are Impossible’s vegan chicken nuggets. You can get them at Trader Joe’s, and they are very good, probably the best of the new fake meats that I’ve tried. Potatoes like nothing better than hot cast iron. The broccoli likes it, too, as long as you give the broccoli some steam during part of its cooking time.

I could have done a better job of regulating the heat. The Dutch oven got much hotter than I expected, even with the induction plate set for 400 degrees or lower. But that’s OK. The slightly burned bits gave everything that mysterious campsite flavor, which I suspect can only be achieved outdoors.

Strawberry preserves

… Or maybe it’s more like strawberry syrup. Though I reduced the sugar a bit, which is probably what made the preserves too thin, I did cook the preserves until they reached 220 degrees. I greatly prefer preserves that are slightly runny, even if this batch is a bit too runny. To my taste, it’s a crime to use pectin in preserves. Runny preserves are better than any recipe that uses pectin. Many store-bought preserves contain not only pectin, but added water as well. Homemade preserves are much better and much cheaper.

A gallon of strawberries made just over five pints of preserves. If you’d like to make strawberry preserves now that it’s strawberry season, there are many recipes on line. The recipe I used called only for strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. After boiling the mixture until it reached 220 degrees, I put the preserves in jars and used the water-bath method. That is, I boiled the jars for ten minutes. All of the jars sealed nicely.

Not a seascape


The morning after the storm. Click here for high-resolution version.

If I were a poet, I’d try to write a poem that captures how forests and the sea are so much alike. Both are dark and deep and full of creatures. Both can be quiet and peaceful, but both are violent and dangerous in a storm. In a storm, they even make the same sound. The sea has its gulls. The woods have their crows. It’s funny how they sound so much alike. I would love to live on a high, heather-and-grass promontory above the sea. But, since I can’t, the woods are the next best thing.

Last night, starting before dusk, there was a tornado warning as a long train of violent storms passed through. Here at the abbey, as I sat by the upstairs windows and periodically checked the weather radar, the worst of the storms just missed us. Lily sat with me and watched the storms unless the thunder got too loud, then she would go hide. A tornado actually touched down about 12 miles to the east. Sometimes the window had to be closed because of the rain. But, during lulls in the rain, both Lily and I are greatly entertained by the wind and wild sea-sounds through the open window.

In the wind of a storm, the trees around the house billow and toss like the sea against rocks, with all the right sound effects. When there is lightning, I count off seconds to measure how close it is. A huge bolt of lightning hit the ridge just after dark, and a clap of thunder sent Lily scurrying before I could say “one.” I could almost imagine that I’m in a lighthouse on a tiny island, just above a roiling green sea.

Agricultural entrepreneurs: Yes!

Here at my latitude, strawberry season has started. As of last year, acquiring strawberries got a lot easier for me. A new strawberry farm started up last year only a 10-minute drive from here. They pick the berries in the morning, then sell them for $10 a gallon under the porch of an old barn right beside the fields.

But the situation is getting even better. The strawberry operation has been so successful that they’re putting in 10 or 12 acres of summer vegetables, watered, like the strawberries, from a nearby pond. They’ll sell the vegetables the same way — pick them in the morning and sell them at the barn. The price, they say, will be $1.50 a pound for all varieties of vegetables. They’re not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

Strange as it sounds, even though I live in farming country, the northern part of this county is considered a food desert because of the distance to grocery stores. Few people have gardens anymore. For me, a source of reasonably priced just-picked summer vegetables changes things. I’m planning to downsize my garden and concentrate on things that the farm won’t sell, such as basil (of which I use a great deal).

The investment this farm has made is considerable, and it’s obviously paying off. Not only is it a highly appropriate form of economic development for this area, it also supplies fresh food to the locals while saving them money. The family who own the farm work alongside a Mexican crew that obviously is experienced both at cultivating the crops and at picking them.

Progress! Now if we only had broadband.