Morning Thoughts

7/18/07 - 2nd Day - Before Breakfast. Up at 5 to greet the second day of milking. Holga did great today, and we probably doubled the amount of milk we took from her. She really does well. She has been patiently waiting at her milk stall in the morning, and what is even nicer, her calf isn't even worked up about the nightly separation. Danielle, Tracy, and I have been getting up to do the milking. The younger children, who were so fired up a year ago to get up at 4:30 and milk, haven't even asked if they can partake in the pleasure this year. That's strange.

Ok, so we've been having additional fun because our generator is currently dead, and we haven't been able to get it into the shop. So even for an “off-grid” family, we have been particularly off-grid and agrarian, and it has actually been quite interesting and enlightening. By the way, I recommend that every family planning to someday live a more off-grid agrarian life, should schedule “off-grid” test times. You should start with a 24 hr. day, and you should increase that test time as you move forward in your plans. Shut off the power completely to your house for 24 hours. This will begin to teach you what you need to do to succeed and thrive without grid power. Eventually, work up to a week or even a month without power. We derive all of our power from two sources. We have a solar powered trailer, and from a generator. The solar trailer (3 110-watt solar panels with 20 6-volt batteries and 2 3000-watt inverters) provides almost all of our “daily use” power – such as lights, fans, battery charging, etc. The generator provides all of the “special use” power, including running the small refrigerator and the freezer for 3-5 hours a day and adding additional power into the solar trailer. With the generator gone and only partly sunny days, we have had to cut way back in our power use. The last two nights we have unplugged the cabin from the solar trailer (basically cutting all power), which means that we haven't used lights, fans, etc. overnight. This means we use flashlights and lanterns in the morning, and we don't use any other electric power until the sun comes up and starts charging the solar system. So our milking has been done by flashlight and lantern – which has been very interesting and even educational. I can always find Danielle in the morning because she has one of those flashlight systems that fit on your head. So you can find her anywhere on the land, walking about in the dark at 5 a.m. Anyway, this has given me an opportunity to rethink our needs yet again – and to consider how much power the world uses for really mundane things. Now, our power usage during regular times is shockingly low. We have two 13 watt compact fluorescents in our cabin and one compact fluorescent on the porch. We run two ceiling fans almost all day and night in the cabin, and we also power the wireless radio Internet system which gets a signal from about 8 miles away on the Santa Anna mountains. During the day, if we have good sun, I can run the freezer for several hours. Then, usually at close to sundown, we fire up the generator for 3-5 hours every night to give the solar trailer a good charge and to run the freezer for that amount of time as well. So the last few days I have had to improvise. Yesterday, I ran the freezers off of the pickup truck. Several years ago I bought a portable 1500 watt inverter at Sam's Club that I have only used once. It came in a hard carrying case with cabling to hook it up to the truck battery. I hooked this unit up, started up the truck, then plugged in the cord which runs the freezer and refrigerator. I ran this for an hour or so until we had a time of really strong sunlight. I then plugged the freezers into the solar trailer for a couple of hours – so we were able to keep the freezers frozen with not much problem. These are all problems that should go away as we continue our trek towards Agrarian independence. We hope to do eventually do away with freezers entirely, or at least mostly, with the only freezer power running entirely off of solar. For this to happen, we have to increase our storage and root cellar capacity, and we have to can and preserve a larger portion of the meat we produce on the land. Eventually, if the Lord wills, we will build an icehouse which will allow us to store some meat frozen or really, really, refrigerated. For all practical purposes, we do not NEED a freezer. We could can, smoke, dry, etc. all of our meat. But my flesh really, really, really likes things like pork chops, a steak once in awhile, hamburger, etc., so we freeze a large portion of our everyday use meat. Anyway it is an interesting exercise in Agrarian thinking, to consider that we are “off-grid” compared to most of the world, but we are still somewhat dependent on electricity. Lord willing, we should have a huge sow to take to the butcher in about 4 weeks, and once again we will be making decisions on how to preserve the meat increase. Our intention is to continue to learn, study, and practice, the old-time preservation methods, and to learn and practice our own butchering so that we can better utilize the product we produce without using so much electricity.

By the way, the 6 piglets are doing great. Luella (the momma sow) had them out and about yesterday, and they are really growing fast.

Right now I am typing this blog entry while sitting on the front porch in the dark. The internet is off as well, so I will not upload this until after the sun comes up. I charged the laptop last time we had the cabin plugged into the power. Danielle made some wonderful coffee on the propane stove (by flashlight), and I am sipping coffee and blogging in the cool morning air on the front porch.

Today we will continue working on fences, and hanging new gates. Danielle is going to town to get me a new pair of boots. The steel toe boots I buy only last me about a year, and the year is up and the ones I have on are shot. So hopefully she will successfully procure me a pair for another year. I think if I bought better boots, they might last longer, but I don't know that for sure.

I don't know if I told you that Tracy, Robert, Jennifer, and Sarah completely tilled the garden by hand and planted the fall garden all by themselves. They are excited and are praying that we get a good fall harvest.

I preached a sermon on Contentment last night. I hope to have the written text available to you at BiblicalAgrarianism.com and Lazarusunbound.com sometime today. Since I didn't have much power, I didn't charge the digital mp3 recorder to record the sermon, so we will not have an audio version of it available. I also hope to get the written text of the Meekness series posted today or tomorrow.

Well, the light is beginning to break off to the east, and the last of the stars are just beginning to fade. The rooster is crowing and I can hear the cattle heading out to pasture. It has been a glorious morning, and I thank you all for sharing it with me.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker