Geothermal Heating

Over the weekend I went to a workshop on geothermal heating. Walking in, I was probably the most ignorant of the attendees, and so provided the leaders with a service of what it’s like to deal with absolute zero. But an enthusiastic AZ. IN Vermont, the biggest contributors to CO2 are driving cars and home heating with fossil fuel.

There were about 70 people in attendance, from all over southern Vermont; a third were contractors. The rest of us were home owners looking to get educated.

First, there is a distinction to be made from geothermal energy, which taps geothermal reservoirs, harvesting the steam generated therein for heat and electricity. Think of those lucky Icelanders swimming in outdoor thermal pools in mid-February. These reservoirs are generally near tectonic plates. There are some in the west, lots offshore along the east coasts of the Americas and west coasts of Europe and Africa. It’s expensive to tap.

Geothermal heat can be had from the relatively cool (but not frozen) ground as well. Even in New England, the technology has advanced enough to extract heat from either ground water at 50 degrees or from air at 0 degrees F, or with the newest variable speed pumps, even less.

Basically, (and I mean, really basic, here) in water-to-air transfers, you are sucking the heat out of water that is fifty degrees, by running it through a compressor like the one in your fridge (only in reverse, right?). This removes 10 degrees of heat per pound from the water. That heat is then pumped into your house, now toasty. My brain had to stretch around the idea of extracting heat from something that is, frankly, cool. But it can be done.

This on ground source heat pumps from good old Wikipedia:

Like a refrigerator or air conditioner, these systems use a heat pump to force the transfer of heat. Heat pumps can transfer heat from a cool space to a warm space, against the natural direction of flow, or they can enhance the natural flow of heat from a warm area to a cool one. The core of the heat pump is a loop of refrigerant pumped through a vapor-compression refrigeration cycle that moves heat. Heat pumps are always more efficient at heating than pure electric heaters, even when extracting heat from cold winter air. But unlike an air-source heat pump, which transfers heat to or from the outside air, a ground source heat pump exchanges heat with the ground. This is much more energy-efficient because underground temperatures are more stable than air temperatures through the year. Seasonal variations drop off with depth and disappear below seven meters due to thermal inertia.[2] Like a cave, the shallow ground temperature is warmer than the air above during the winter and cooler than the air in the summer. A ground source heat pump extracts ground heat in the winter (for heating) and transfers heat back into the ground in the summer (for cooling). Some systems are designed to operate in one mode only, heating or cooling, depending on climate.

The most important thing, Harold Rist, the presenter on water-to-air transfers, said, was to get a system designed for the north. Too many people don’t go deep enough and then resort to using hyper-poisonous dry gas to thaw out the slush running through their systems. That or they have to use bigger compressors that are more expensive to run.

Then there is air-to air transfer, which is particularly well suited to heating a few rooms. You basically have the air source heat pump, working much like that refrigerator, only backwards, to extract heat from cold air and pump it into your house. The unit is the size of a suitcase, can be set up right outside the rooms in question, as long as it’s a bit protected from ice-build-up so the fan can work properly. You have a fan unit on the inside that looks like a two foot baseboard heater, mounted on the wall.

Both of these technologies are highly environmentally friendly. They currently enjoy federal tax rebates, so you can install a system for (in the one instance we were given) around $7000.

The downside, in my view, is the reliance on electricity to run your pumps, an iffy proposition in my neighborhood. The power doesn’t tend to go out when it’s sunny and warm. So maybe a hybrid system, with a wood stove backup, is the answer.

The first thing I have to do is getting something blown into our walls, whose insulation has settled about six inches off the ground. No point in heating the great outdoors.

Now that you have eaten your spinach and you understand geothermal heating (sort of) I’ll try to upload the Frida and Na Balom pictures.

Getting Away

Getting Away

Travel is an exercise in controlled change. You research, plan and spring for tickets, get your shots, bleed your bank account and go. You choose, to the best of your ability, the settings, food, experiences, then rush off and enjoy them. Fiestas and new friends are welcome additions to the mix; mudslides and kidnappings are not. Travelers, of course, vary in their ability to tolerate novel experience. Some throw a fit if their soap isn’t wrapped; some don’t think they have really traveled unless they have lived with the natives. I fall somewhere between these poles.

I just had nine glorious days Mexico with my younger son. We spent most of our time in the state of Chiapas, visiting Maya ruins, many of them deserted 600 years ago; then we ended up in Mexico City, one of the largest (and reputedly among the the most polluted) cities in the world.

I worried about everything before we left. Would we get kidnapped in a taxi? Would we contract malaria, miss our connections, get lost? Would I lose our passports, tickets, and generally prove myself to be an incompetent duffer? How about all of the above?

Everywhere the people were gracious, courteous, relaxed, and amazingly patient with my Spanish. You catch someone’s eye on the street and he says buenos tardes, good afternoon, even in the city!

Here is what the Mexicans are great at:

1. Manners, see above.
2. Appreciating, guarding and showing off their amazing indigenous cultures. The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City is beautifully done, with the ancient cultures each having a room on the ground floor and their descendants on the floor directly above.

2a. Palenque, too, was astonishing. Coming upon it, in the middle of the 90 degree jungle, is like stumbling upon the Acropolis. I was not prepared for its beauty. Yaxchilan and Bonampak were both lovely as well, outstanding for their stellae and brilliant murals, respectively.

1. The plants! Coming from the land of maples, rhubarb and lichen, it was amazing to arrive in mango season (also banana, guava, orange, lemon and lime trees were loaded down with fruit. Sitting under a huge tree in Yaxchilan, I looked up and saw bromeliads, giant philodendrons, and orchids hanging off its branches. In fact ,you could have filled a florist shop with all the stuff growing on that one tree.
2. The colors. Many of the houses we saw in Chiapas were simple cinderblock affairs, but they were painted wonderful, exuberant colors. Looking down the street in San Cristobal was a delight for the eye.
3. The food, of course was wonderful. Great breads, great moles, ultra fresh fruit and vegetables were all a treat. What Mexicans can do with caramel alone (cajeta!) is mind-bending.
4. Las Artesanias--I loved the native crafts, the embroidery everyone seemed to be doing, the crockery, the tinwork, leatherwork, weaving, and wooden masks were all terrific.
5. Bus travel-- Mexican bus stations are fun, colorful, clean and busy. This is he way Mexicans seem to travel. We took a six hour trip from Tuxtla Gutierrez to Palenque. The first class buses are very comfortable, have movies and people coming on board to sell drinks and snacks at many of the stops. The only downside on our trip was a terrible movie (in Spanish only-- maybe I missed some of the subtlety) called Hellboy featuring a lot of really ugly droids and a blonde nogoodnik brother and sister who were chasing after magical doodads. Endlessly.

I was really glad not to be driving those perilous switchbacks. Maybe that’s why they have movies, so you won’t be tempted to look down.

We had a blast. We came home to cool temps, buds barely inching along, and two members of the extended family having been in the hospital. None of these changes could I control.

Photos coming!

Bee Post-mortem

It starts with February Fretting. This is when I start worrying in earnest about the winter survival of my bees. I scan the weather predictions obsessively, check the thermometer for the magic number, 55 degrees, at which you can safely open the hive and not chill the bees. They need their pollen patties, which provide the hive with much needed protein to jumpstart the queen's laying.

On a balmy day in early March, I was looking around for the cordless drill. I planned to take off the screwed in lath that held the insulation on our beehives. Once that came off, I could take off the top hive body, which only held the syrup jars, and give the girls the pollen patties right on top of their frames.

I made my way gingerly through the pass we cut in the snow to the shop. I looked over at the garage that held the wood splitter and heard-- I was quite sure of this--a bee buzzing.

My heart leapt. It could be one of the hive bees. After almost five feet of snow in late February, they could be, against all odds, alive.

I found the drill, rushed out the the chain-link enclosure, dug open the door, tromped in and beheld two hive almost buried in snow. That's a bad sign, because usually, even if I haven’t shoveled around the hives, they are warm enough to have melted off some of the snow around them. Also, there were no bees in evidence crawling around the entrance. I knocked on each hive. Usually a few guard bees will come out in all but the worst weather to check out the visitor. Nothing.

Even when I went out yesterday to perform the bee post-mortem, I still harbored a tiny bit of hope that I’d been wrong, and would find a few bees doing their merry circle dance in front of their respective entrances. But the only living inhabitants were two portly mice, who waddled away when I opened up the Amazons’ hive.

What went wrong? I was afraid it was mites that had weakened and killed off the hive. There was a strange pollen like residue on some of the bees’ bodies. There also didn’t seem to be many bees.

There was a lot of honey left, which sadly, does not preclude the bees starving. It’s all a matter of how far they can move out of their cluster to feed.They have to maintain the queen at 90 degrees, so form a basketball sized cluster, which they keep warm by flexing their wings in a kind of shiver. Bees are constantly rotating from the warm inside of the cluster to the more frigid outside, and back again. Sometimes, though, with honey just inches beyond the bees’ reach, they die.

There were several small clusters of bees, heads thrust in cells, and a few bees on those bees’ backs-- for warmth? This is the saddest sight, that these charming, assiduous creatures starve/freeze so near to their stores.

A lot of people lost hives this year, many of them better, more experienced beekeepers than I. The only thing I can do is to keep trying, avail myself of the collective wisdom of bee associations, suit up and go stick my nose in bee business more often so that I can trouble shoot a little better. I’m going to a Q&A session Wednesday to see if I can find out what went wrong.

And back in December, I ordered two packages of bees, with queens, just in case.

Images: the top image with the red is where mice have eaten the wax and honey, and added little bits of leaves for a nest.

The one in the middle is a top-down view of a frames, onto which I had poured some sugar as a desperate hold-over for the bees. Then the one on right-- bees head-down in the cells, with mold, since they've been dead awhile. I've have prettier images next time!

Miniature Ponies

Miniature Ponies

We long for the “olden days” because they come with an answer sheet. The present is always a bit scary. You don’t know what’s going to work out and what will later be seen as a colossal mistake.

When someone hears we’ve moved to Vermont and are slowly rehabilitating a farm, there is often a look that comes into his eyes, a dreamy longing for a sweeter, simpler life that has very little to do with the reality of country life and farm rehab.

When I see that look, I know I’m in trouble. Because usually the logistics of this person’s life preclude him from having to milk goats, or dock lambs’ tails. If I got goats and milked them, he would have a wonderful vicarious experience, without having to haul water in blizzards, or extract a goat from wire fencing at 4 in the morning, or pay to have the goat-trampled hood of a guest’s car replaced. The downside of living someone’s else’s fantasy is that you probably won’t do it the way he’d do it, and that his hearing is selective. He’s invested in the fantasy.

For instance, we get more eager advice on country living from urban friends than we do from our local neighbors. I have a dear friend who lives in suburbia and wants us to get miniature ponies. I don’t know why, except she thinks they are cute. The pictures I see on the internet are of very woeful looking little animals (some wearing sneakers, for some reason) being treated like dogs, or worse, like hairy children. The idea of horses too small to trample or kick you into next week (I’d wager they can bite, though) must appeal, hugely. The people in these pictures are clearly besotted, cuddling these animals, walking them like dogs, and actually tucking them into bed. These are some disturbing images. Somehow, for some people, it must be more fun to have a horse you can pretend is a dog, than to just go down to the pound and get a regular (but very grateful) mutt.

You knew it was coming: the phenomenon of miniature ponies is not unlike the fantasy of living in Vermont. The fantasy is a predictable, controllable thing. Vermont is maple syrup, covered bridges, people saying “Ayup” all the time--country living without getting your teeth kicked in. Whatever problems appear are easily solved, or so the fantasists imagine. There could never be real suffering, let alone disaster, in a place as pretty as this.

As a state, I think we’re lucky to have more than a few civic minded realists on board, ready to engage with the real problems that confront us, thoughtfully and carefully. The closing and decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant often comes up in conversation. While most of us southerners want to see it closed, we are also aware that we will have to find other sources of electricity, pronto, and conserve it better than we are now.

Last year’s Summit on the Future of Vermont put on by the Vermont Council on Rural Development drew people from across the state to discuss energy, communication, education, transportation, employment, diversity, agriculture and other topics central to the progress of the state. It was a committed, energetic, earnest bunch, clearly enamored of Vermont, but mercifully realistic. It made my heart glow for the future of my little state.

*This week’s blog has no pictures. I direct you to the Miniature Pony site for a real shake-up.

Spinning

Spinning

I seem to be working backwards, a Luddite-in-training. This weekend I finally learned how to spin. Fiber, not stationary bikes, or Sufi dancing; though it was a surprisingly inspiring, even spiritual, experience.

I went to a fiber sale at Maybelle Farm in Wardsboro. This is a farm in its seventh generation, with 34 sheep, chickens, a lot of fencing and some serious tractor talent. My friend has bags and bags of fiber from her 34 sheep, shorn over the past several years. The bags are marked with the name of the sheep, shearing date, weight and color of the fleece.

Since attending the shearing last spring, I have been thinking about Tinka’s fleece. She is a Coopworth mix; her off-white fleece shines. She’s also huge: her fleece last year weighed 17 pounds. That is a lot of yarn, surely eight sweaters’ worth, once it’s been skirted, that is, minus the debris that gets cut off before washing, carding and spinning.

The opportunity to learn how to spin was provided by Patty Blumgren, of Centre Artisans. I worked on a Louet with a single treadle, a Dutch wheel. I spun big, thick, gray yarn for a rhapsodic hour and a half. It was fun, calming, totally mesmerizing. My yarn was over-spun, i.e., too twisty, but I didn’t care. I rushed home, soaked my little skein in very hot water and then weighted it so it dried sort of straight. And there it hangs, proudly, in my kitchen.

I always wondered what people do with all the yarn they spin. Some people are such prolific knitters, spinning opens up the bottleneck in production and provides them with all the raw material they need. Years ago, my friend Janet bought a chocolate brown fleece for eight dollars, carried around in her trunk for awhile, then skirted, washed, carded, spun and knit it into a beautiful sweater fro her partner Ivy. The sweater is named Emmy, after the sheep.

Alas, I am not one of those knitters. I am trying spinning because I make rugs, and rug yarn is hard to find and expensive. I have cut up wool jackets I’ve found (and felted) from thrift stores; I’ve doubled up worsted weight yarns to use on rugs, but there is always this dry, panicky I’m going to run out feeling at the back of my throat when I think about rug yarn. To be able to produce it myself would be great.

This is the classic refrain of an addict, right? We’re on a slippery slope here. Talk to yarn hoarders

and you’ll find them a remarkably inventive and unrepentant lot. During a knitting group’s discussion of a Bernat tent sale (a big deal, trust me) I ventured that I had no room for more yarn. The woman sitting beside me (whom I did not know) laid a conspiratorial hand on my shoulder. “Darling” she said, “You put it in your luggage.”

The point is, even though there was something mystical going on at that spinning wheel, I’m trying to be practical. We do need to get animals into our pastures to keep them clear. Personally, I dream of yaks, angora goats, but sheep work too. As much fun as it would be to summon our wonderful, laconic vet and present him with an indisposed musk ox, just to see his reaction, sheep are probably the wiser bet.

When I really learn how to spin, the floodgates will be officially Open. Which of course, is how I like them.

Wifi in the Mountains

Wifi in the Mountains

Cabin fever isn’t what it used to be. Depressing as it can be to watch yet another snow/sleet/ice storm replace the snow I have been willing to melt (through great concentration, I might add), it used to be worse. Not all the seed catalogues in the world could change the fact you were hemmed in, locked up with yourself and your equally desperate loved ones. You were doing the same old things: dragging out your winter boots, which suddenly seemed to weigh a ton, getting up in the dark, shoveling, mincing you way along icy walkways. Almost every task became a chore.

What about all my pontificating about playing in the snow keeping one sane? If I had time to play in the snow, it would. But it took me two hours to get wood in for the upcoming week, since my dear spouse’s back is out. I tried to have fun doing it. I made a game of tossing the logs from the woodshed over an eight foot snow bank, loading them onto a toboggan, dragging the (now extremely heavy) craft to my car, loading that, driving that to my porch and unloading the wood. Twice. So now I’m too pooped to have any more fun in the snow.

The lack of visual novelty at the end of winter contributes to the problem. Nature is now predominantly white, black or mud-brown. I’m electrified by the red flash of a cardinal. I stand like an idiot in front of the flower store in Brattleboro whose window is full of orchids. I can’t imagine what Inuits do-- well, actually, a lot of them produce art they bring down to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. So maybe it would be a good idea to study them a bit more closely. But anyway.

Now, things are different, just because we have DSL /wifi. And not a day goes by that I’m not grateful to have it. I realize most people have made the transition from dial-up with less fuss. For them, DSL is sort of a snore. But being a thorough-going rube, I find the difference staggering.

My system doesn’t crash when someone sends me a picture via email. In fact, I welcome them. I can watch videos online-- I saw Doubt recently-- a wintery sort of flick, to be sure, but very good. My husband found an amazing interview with Peter Sellers. I’ve become addicted to actor interviews at the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton. These videos are what television promised to be but never quite achieved.

The educational potential of the internet is even more vast. Recently my husband watched a YouTube video on how to remove screws whose heads had broken off, or whose head groove had been stripped. (Didn’t you always wonder how to deal with that? Since I've left so many screws stripped, half in, crooked,making my project look like it had been made by a really impatient kindergartner, I was curious.) The video was made by a kid, maybe seventeen, who very matter of factly gave the list of tools you need, an a list of tools you didn’t need, and demonstrated the process very clearly--with none of the condescension one can encounter in hardware stores. It’s education without the attitude!

I have attended “Webinars”, learned how to wet-felt, watched the making of several DIY tumbling composters, my husband has attended virtual classes in business, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of what could be done.

Wifi makes Skype possible, which my son uses to have conversations with his girlfriend with video, I’ve been able to download political organizing materials to work for healthcare reform-- all from our isolated home. Suddenly we are not so hemmed in by our little hills, by the snow, ice, and sleet.

I can only begin to guess how it could transform the economic opportunities in Vermont.

Endurance

Endurance

My amusing husband thinks Ivan Denisovich had it pretty easy. He lived with a lot of snow, and he did physical work--big deal. We have snow, isolation, and physical work too. My husband would add to that unpleasant list ice fishing, which, he says would be declared torture if you described it to human rights lawyers.

You get a little hut dragged out onto the ice, see, and you stay in it for hours looking into a little hole you’ve chopped in the ice, into which you’ve lowered your ridiculous fishing line. Then, if you catch something, it will probably contain enough poison to knock off your entire party, if they’re not already frozen to death.

Even without ice fishing, endurance is a challenge to muster at this time of the year. Eight foot snowbanks shrink by inches in the most beautiful, miraculous-feeling spring weather, that is, actually, anything above 40 degrees.

Everywhere else, it’s spring. Of course, in Seattle, where I’m told the daffodils are in bloom and people are mowing their lawns, but also in Boston. Even in Burlington Vermont--no snow! In Amherst the other day, someone was playing conga drums on the green, people were stretched out on the soon-to-be-green grass. One young man was just spread eagled on the bare ground. All thoughts of having to mince across icy walks, or button up were long gone, if only for an afternoon.

When we returned, the landscape was pure winter, with roads a little muddy for all the melting that had gone on. But on the road, between the snowbanks, it was like a walk-in freezer, the snow threw such cold. We hurried inside and stoked the fire.

The question is, why do we do it? Plenty of savvy Vermonters head south in March and April, or at least to non-snowy destinations. Some stay there longer and only come back for summers. We can’t right now, but someday, we could, and might.

There is something though, about embracing what is going on now, however ambivalent you are about still having to shovel a path to the woodshed, the barn. The way we scan the fields for patches of ground (none yet) is certainly a form of love, though a bit on the conditional side. The way we stand on the porch on a windy night trying to find a ribbon of warmth in the gusts, willing the wind to evaporate the snow, is, though delusional, at least engaged with the natural world in some small way.

The way we look for any sign at all of spring is sort of touching, throwing our little hope out to world like a grappling hook, so that it will catch on anything, and hold. What’s the YIddish saying? Man plans and God laughs?

At least time will eventually cure spring fever, whether or not March dumps more of its customarily heavy snow and ice storms.