Maybe I'm Just Stupid

It's a tool like anything else. You can master the tool or let the tool master you.
Even though we are "on gird" and both our home and farm we are trying to structure things so we are not dependent on the grid.

We just got our first electric bills for the farm (We have a 200amp feed and a 100amp feed) and they both showed zero kilowatt hours for 5 months. I guess you might say we use electricity down there pretty sparingly. We basically use it to run a small refrigerator and a flourescent light. Now once we start processing nuts this fall I expect to see a slight jump in usage.

Mike

Oh, Echo, I had goosebumbs reading your post

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Gee, Mike how will you ever afford it? LOL

__________________
Thumper/in Okla.
Growing a Homestead from the dirt up.

save the grass, eat a cow
C.L.F.
{chlorophill liberation front}

I do understand what you are saying, however, even if you powered everything with a windmill, you are still dependent on the wind! If you have a job, you are dependent that you can get gas to get to work. Or be able to buy tires. If you make your own clothes, you are dependent upon the fabric store. Unless you weave your own cloth. Even being "self sufficient" to a large degree, we are dependent in some areas.

I live as close to the earth as I can... I can not,for myself,rationalize electricity ,which is genereated by either nuclear,massive damns,or the burning of hydrocarbon.......Do I need that electricity badly enough that I am willing to destroy part of gods creation so that I can sit on my ass and be comfortable?? Yes,as I sit in the library using this computer ,I am using electricty.,When I leave i'll get in an old vehicle and burn gas;yet I have for many years done without both quite happily....I guess the real question that irks me is what do you really need to survive and ,I might add, be happy....? We as a society seem to be under the impression that what we need is more more and more.!!In the process we leave less less and less for each generation that follows:"we are eating the flesh of future generations".Ask yoursel what is truly necessary for life ???? I'll give you one hint it is a lot less than you think....I might also add that electricty at 50,000 if I dug the trench s. That was 10 years ago

well...I would be dead if not for electricity. If the appendicitis at 14 hadn't gotten me, my first kid would have. I guess it can be argued that surgery can be performed without electricity but I really like the fact that they can monitor my vital signs and stuff when I'm under. They can also easily cauterize bleeding arteries and veins...and they can see with all those lights. If I survived the 1st c-section....I doubt my luck would have held for all five.

My son would be dead, definitely...hard to do brain surgery without electricity! I suppose they have hand drills to get through skulls, but I think electric ones are better and when it's his brain...I'll take it.

My dad would be dead, as he is dependent on 24 hour oxygen at this point...and no he was never a smoker...he was a firefighter! Of course maybe he wouldn't have damaged lungs because he would not have been able to fight all those fires because he wouldn't have known about them.

Um....if farms didn't have electricity there'd lots of starving city folks. Of course they would have died from thirst before they had a chance to starve because there would not be the means to get water to them.

So yeah...I do think electricity is necessary for survival. Happiness? I don't know...I'd wouldn't be very happy with a dead son and dad, but then I would have been dead anyways. Are dead people happy?

Sure it can be wasted and I don't think TV is necessary for survival, or a radio, or even lights (most of the time)

Jena

greetings from montana. i sit here typing on my computer powered by our gas generator , while the water i hauled in today is being heated on my propane stove so that i can take a shower and get off all of the pitch i picked up today cutting trees with my gas chainsaw so the chickens could have a home too. I dont especially want to be connected to a power company but i sure would love to have full time electricity from wind or sun via battery bank. i have lived both ways for extended periods of time and find that as i get older i enjoy being able to watch a movie once in a while or email a distant friend from my own home.

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www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

yeah, anyday now the wind conservationist will be lobbying congress to limit wind use, we could run ot of it ya'know.........

Windmills pump water, or mill grain, wind generators make electricity, they then run that elect, to a battery bank which with proper planning will last weeks for your essential items, how many places does the wind not blow for weeks at a time?

In much of the USA, a hybrid system of solar and wind and even hydro, will give more than enough over lap, to meet the short falls of one power source.

In contrast, when the power lines go down, you got nothing.....well maybe some ruined food in the freezer.

.......along with no livesaving grid dependant equipment....

Oklahoma and other states have had weather damage so sever that lives are endangered and poeple die because of loss of power to hospitals and home care machines too.

Why risk your life on a power source that is so exposed to loss? demonizing elect, isn't what I got from the orginal post, it was a slam on the system. That mind set and way of life that makes you so dependant that you can't get along without that same system.

It's expencive yes, it is but when you buy it, you have it,

but maybe the wind will stop blowing when you get it installed.

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Thumper/in Okla.
Growing a Homestead from the dirt up.

save the grass, eat a cow
C.L.F.
{chlorophill liberation front}

Where can I get a wood fired 'puter?

I dont consider electric and running water evil or whatever you all are fussing about (sorry i did not have time to read the whole thread), but i do think the price of having it is gettig to be evil. my goal is to lessen the expense if i have to go completely off grid to get it to a bearable level then so be it if my future projects could power my house and still have enough to sell back to the grid then so be it
oops got to go out of time

one of my biggest objections to the mindset of electricity is the true cost.....I live in an isolated area in which the cost for running the umbilical cord would be 50,ooo dollars. Okay,now what is the true cost of running those lines???50,000,;as a landowner it would mean that I would have to cut and sell aproximately 80 loads of saw logs,basically selling all the merchantable trees on my place and a lot of the residual stand. So for electricity I would be denuding 320 acres of creation so that I can have a computer ,television,and all of the conveniences of the modern world. Do you like being able to walk in a forest that is trash or a plantation?well,like a lot of Montana,my place would be a disaster since I would Have to take the merchantable timber out.....Say I went solar(Not very practical in the location in which I live)that would run me 12,500 for a very modest system around here. Thats about twenty loads of logs;better ,but how about the real cost again...when I sell my logs another mill buys them,employs people to processs, them sell ,the product truck etc..So,if I sell 20 loads of logs for my electricity ,via solar,the money that I make will also indirectly spoil things that I cherish,love and hold sacred since ev eryone else will want electrity,which means they want the ability to buy it and all of the conveniences.. The part that I have problems with.....
As a young man my father and I bought the ranch that I call home...there where no places that you could see another home or building when you stood on it..there was a one road to it and an old logging railroad grade accross it.There were no roads around it.
I have spent my life on this place learning and cherishing the experience.
Now there are six roads withinn 20 feet of the boudary line....all of the timber that was on Plum Creek property is gone,(although mine is still standing)That is what is called progress...yet was it really necessary ?instead of the suv ,boat,fishing vacation helath club 10,000square foot house etc etc.,don't you think we could have spent a bit less. Money comes from somewhere and naturual resource are a main commodity. That electricity you want comes from a nuclear or fossil fuel burning plant,oor the water imponded behind a ----.
You need to understand something to really see this as I do.. itsa called a sense of place and time.....
In Illimois the settlers(and I mean only European,and not the Indians) and their children have been dead for generations. I knew several people who homsteaded the valley that I live in ... their children are still alive. (I relate much more easily to them( since I am homesteading )than I do the people of my own generation,since they can describe what the land was like before we inflicted ourselves upon it(I,to am guilty,on a lesser scale than most people,of this infliction)) I can see all of the changes from primeval forest to nuclear forestry. the question that I always ask is did we need to take as much as we did?there are two answers:societies and what I have learned . Yes progress insists ,along with our economy,that we do for all the reasons that you listed Jena....What have I learned ?I can survive without electricity and thrive,not destroying the land of which I am the steward.... I can leave things in a better situation for the next generation who will have a whole lot less forest to live in and experience... I can find out what it takes to live with the land instead of off of the resouces that the land posses,my contribution is sweat,blood and a great deal of love for this place I call the ranch...
Jena,as someone once said,you have to live delibeately,choosing and paying the price for what you take,for each time you take,you destroy a smaller or larger part of creation. That, Jena is one of the immutable laws . Life consumes life. How much do I need to take , to consume, in order to live.Do we really need as much as we take when half the world starves???
Jena,I have a welder generator,I run it about 110 hours a year fixing and building equipment....I cant avoid that much usuage of the generator,the cost of the generaor and the gas and oil that goes with it.That is what I put food on my table and food for my animals... my life is easier than most since I do what I feel emotionally and spiritually compelled to do... more people could make do,happily ,with a lot less. I will not allow the umbilical cord onto my place since I don't need it and refuse to be any more guilty of the destruction that it causes....Lee

Aahhh, you jest!... but it can be done, wood fire to steam generator, to inverter to computer. I think a small one would be neat to have for short term use.
But they cost$$$$$$

__________________
Thumper/in Okla.
Growing a Homestead from the dirt up.

save the grass, eat a cow
C.L.F.
{chlorophill liberation front}