Restoring Irving Gill's "Williams House"

Adios, Senor Gallo

Frederick and I took a stroll down to the chicken coop to free the hens from their quarters. I opened the door and stood back as the flood of girls headed to the new green grass, to eat contentedly and to add rich fatty acids to the yolks inside of them.

Frederick, aged "three and three-quarters" (as he would report to you), stood about 10 feet away. I turned to join Frederick and noticed the rooster heading our way. The rooster looked determined to do something and before I knew it, my calf provided the shield between him and my preschooler son. I reached down to swoop up Frederick as I shielded him with my body. I let out a sharp scream. The rooster lunged at us again, met my foot in a swift kick, and scratched my shin through my pants.

I was reminded of the time back in grammar school when a friend brought over a rooster to assist our hens in populating the world. Our friend Henry failed to mention that the bird was a retired fighting cock. No one stepped foot in that backyard until Henry returned to collect the bird.

I decided that our rooster missed his calling as I headed up the driveway, carrying a screaming child and turning around to administer kicks to this persistent rooster. Sander happened to be taking a bag of trash out at the time and, in a he-man fashion, threw the bag of trash at the rooster. That cooled down the rooster.

And in my he-man fashion that greatly disappointed my friend Veronica, I invited my dad over for burgers. He just needed to bring his gun and his good eye as a hostess gift.

“What? You didn’t do it yourself? Aren’t you ‘Mandy, daughter of Jeanie’ who can conquer all challenges?”

“I was tired and my dad offered. And besides, I displayed my strength as my dad got ready to fire. I used my strong legs to run far up the driveway because I am desperately afraid of bullets ricocheting across the property.”

“And what about dinner? Didn’t you even eat this guy?”

“Come on, I was tired. And he did end up in the food chain. After he was shot, I went down and, with my great strength, I managed to throw him another 10 feet down the hill.”

But the toughest question didn’t come from Veronica.

“Mama, where did the rooster go?” asked Frederick.

“He went to somebody else’s house.”

“Whose house, mama?”

“I think his name was Jesus,” I responded, pronouncing the name “Jesus” in Spanish.

Sander overheard and added, “Are you sure he didn’t go to Diablo’s house?”

Electric usage down over 60%; bill down 68%

Since early June I have been on a campaign to slash our electric bill.  I looked at our bill in early June and saw that we had used over 40 kilowatt hours (kwh) per day in April.  Past months were even worse.  We changed appliances, notably removed a 60 cubic foot commercial refrigerator and recycled several decades-old refrigerators and freezers on the property.  We purchased a new Whirlpool Sidekick refrigerator only and a 20 cubic foot Frigidaire freezer for the porch, both energy star compliant.  We replaced our 14-year-old electric water heater with a new propane model and we replaced a 30-year-old electric dryer with a gas dryer once we realized that propane costs 2.4 less than what electric costs here.  Of course, with gas prices on the rise, that ratio will change.

Eat Locally Challenge

I just read about an August challenge to eat locally, sent out to all bloggers by Life Begins at 30 and organized by the Locavores.  We’re game, just a bit late.  We’ll stick it out for a month, starting today. 

We have been working on integrating more locally produced food into our diet for some time.  At least 75% of our diet is locally grown.  Currently, we have laying hens to provide our eggs and we have at least 2,000 square feet of garden space for vegetables.  We have just acquired a head of beef, to the tune of 455 pounds cut and wrapped.  It was grassfed about 2 miles from our home. 

Electric use down 51%, $104 savings

I have never been in a household that looks forward to receiving its electric bill.  The bill arrived yesterday and we excitedly opened it to discover a pretty decent savings.  We’ve been working on reducing our electric use by switching out old appliances, particularly a commercial refrigerator.  We have also installed a gas dryer and water heater after discovering that propane costs half as much here as does electricity to create one BTU of heat. 

Sun-bathed raw almonds

We’re cleaning the freezer making room for a head of beef and have a lot of almonds to use.  Check out this great, energy efficient way to roast almonds:

Soak your raw almonds overnight in warm salt water.  I use a tablespoon of salt to about 4 cups of almonds and I cover them with warm water a few inches above the almonds.

Where’s the beef?

My husband Sander tells me that it is highly unusual and even strange for a family to buy a whole head of beef.  “But Sander, we had a whole head of pork in the freezer one year when I decided not to show my pig Anemonie at the fair, that can’t be weird.” 

OK, perhaps our behavior is not entirely mainstream.  And it gets better.

Energy Efficiency: Gas vs. Electric

I have to admit that this energy efficiency project of ours has been very empowering.  It is simply empowering to learn about a topic, really any topic.  But this topic allows you to have more power over your finances.  That’s always a cool thing.  Someone asked me about the cost of gas versus electric, so I thought I would post it here.

I had always heard that gas was cheaper than electric, but then there was always the side comment “but check, because it really depends on the price you pay locally for gas and for electric.”  And we are on propane which is much more expensive than natural gas, so that really muddies the water.

Electric use down 45%

The arrival of the SoCal Edison bill brought a pleasant surprise:  this summer’s 20/20 program.  If you reduce your summer usage by 20% over last summer, you will get 20% of your summer bill back as a credit in the fall.  We will very easily make this goal.  On our recent bill ending July 11, our usage was down 26% over last year and the primary difference was the removal of our commercial refrigerator, though toward the end of the period we had replaced a 20+ year old freezer, in fact we recycled it as part of another SCE program, and recently switched to a gas water heater. 

Appliance Recycling

July 11, 2005 

Southern California Edison runs an appliance recycling program and will pick up old refrigerators and freezers and provide a rebate of $35 and $50 respectively.  In early June I visited the SCE website to sign up for the pick-up:

SCE Recycling Program

The website gave me the “choice” of July 11.  Other communities might have multiple choices, but we are in an isolated area and I was tickled to get a pick-up date at all.  We actually had two freezers and two refrigerators to recycle, but SCE would not approve those pick-ups.  All households can get one pick-up a year. 

Electric Bill Update

July 8, 2005 

On June 18 I reported that we have been paying an obscene electric bill over the past year – an average of $230 a month.  This is a large bill considering we do not have air conditioning in the summer and have wood stoves for heat in the winter.  We have purchased a new energy star refrigerator to replace the behemoth commercial refrigerator that we had in our kitchen.  We are replacing our 20 cubic foot freezer with an energy star compliant freezer, we are recycling the old one and have given away the smaller freezer that we had as well (with a warning about the energy cost).  We have a new dryer that will soon be installed, though we have been drying our clothes on the clothesline.  We will soon have a gas water heater as well which will be more efficient and, on top of that, will cost about half as much to run for each BTU.

The Clothesline

July 6, 2005

I love drying clothes on the line.  You cannot get clothes to smell this fresh with any of the detergents, additives, or dryer sheets.  Our towels were starting to smell musty, even washed in warm water and well rinsed.  They are heavenly again with some time on the clothesline.

But there are drawbacks:

Beating the heat

July 1, 2005 

It was 102 degrees in the valley today and in the mid-90s here.  When we lived in Visalia it would have definitely been an AC day, but here we don’t have that option.  There is no way we could cool this 6,000 square foot house with air conditioning.  Our living spaces are scattered across the first story, so even cooling certain sections is not practical.  So, what we have done is adapt our lifestyle to the heat.  My mom and I woke up early and headed to the garden before breakfast to move compost and plant seedlings.  By 8 a.m. it was just about too hot to work in the garden.  After the necessary outside work, we returned inside to work on our for-pay projects.  At the peak of the summer we find that it is too hot to return to work in the late afternoons and as it does cool down, we are invaded with mosquitoes.

Electrical Usage

We have talked a lot in the last year in this house about becoming more energy efficient and, perhaps, reducing our dependency on the electrical grid by installing solar panels.  Our enormous 6,000 square foot house has the capacity to burn a great number of kilowatt hours.  In the summer we have increased water needs in our garden and have to pump the water up over 250 feet out of the ground.  In the winter, water travels in ice-cold pipes to the water heater where it is challenged to heat the water enough to run it through another series of cold pipes before hitting my shower.  Furthermore, we “inherited” a 60 cubic foot commercial refrigerator when we purchased the house, vestiges of the former retreat house days of Hilltop House.  All of these extraordinary features of the house led us to accept our $200+ electric bill each month and defer any decisions about efficiency.  And for no reason in particular, I asked Sander on Friday to give me the latest bill from Southern California Edison and thus began my challenge to reduce our usage.