electric vehicles, local

Last year I ran across this video of someone close to our area who converted his truck to be an electric vehicle (EV). I sent the man, Bud Wren an email and he said that we could give him a call to stop out sometime.

A couple of weeks ago I was in charge of date night. I decided this was a perfect opportunity for childless focused time that would give us an opportunity to check deeper into EV's. Jerome and I went to visit Bud Wren on Campbell Island.

Bud did his truck from scratch, no kit. He did his own custom welding and used junk parts and some parts he had to order as well. He had a lot to say! Basically, there is so much more to learn . . .

I know that things can be a lot easier if you pay more for a conversion kit. You will get more distance and oomph if you use the expensive specialized batteries. There are so many options!

I know that from here I continue to read my book and watch videos online. I am also going to continue researching veggie oil alternatives. This seems like a much easier option for the warmer months. Also, when it is cold this can drain batteries.

I need to end this post because my computer battery is about to die! :)

to be continued, but watch the video at the link above!

its always inspiring to see local people trying something alternative, green, and stepping outside of the box.

heart

Persephone

Knowing something about the fullness of the world's sadness

and the fullness of the world's joy,

I don't know how to proceed

Nobody acknowledges a walk through fire,

still I run torched and sputtering,

laughing, let my mouth spill garnet seeds

I could be spring's wet rupture under a blossom moon

I want the momentum of birth after

a thousand deaths, I want to do

what I'm scared to do, to do what I love

to follow the embroidery of blood

mapping my grandmother's voice to where I have not been yet

The key to resurrection is to re-member

remember pain shooting through you wet and tender,

agonizing in your growing, the heart sharply green in its need

You never know who will split your darkest seeds,

and draw light from your eyes

Remember we are golden benevolence,

like spare change angels,

we all pocket some redemption

give in to one thirsty kiss

kneel at your heart and drink

--Ellen Crow Vodicka

Finding the contradictions in life

opening

deconstructing

building

accepting

resource management

Retro art. This picture was stretched already, we found it at the local Salvation Army thrift store. Why stretch a new canvas when there are all of these great artworks waiting to be updated? ;) Phoenix painted this on her birthday. The hearts were cut from the foil of a Newman's chocolate bar.
Our upper room is evolving! I love these couches that we found at the consignment store in town. They actually have mattresses under the tweed covers for our future guests. These are also on wheels! Oh, couches on wheels. . . I made a room divider out of materials from the Habitat For Humanity Restore. The divider behind the couch is made from salvaged shutters, hinges, and screws.
One crate full of leftover potting soil. We will be mixing it with compost to start seeds for our veggies.
Wooden baskets for gathering strawberries.
Trays and starters for veggies to be. We are stacking these and moving them to a particular corner of one of the greenhouses.
Flower pots. These were outside in a crate. I moved them inside one of the greenhouses so that they didn't get too weakened by the cold weather.
More starter pots in the hoop house. Some of these had remnant of tomato plants past. We pulled out the old dried out plants and had fun burning them in the fireplace. The leftover potting soil we dumped back into a crate in the hoop house.

We put in a wood burning stove downstairs and have the fireplace in the upper room. Recently some friends of ours nearby that own land told us that we can have as much wood as we want by helping to manage their woodlands. We obtained a chainsaw from one of places we found on craigslist. One of their buildings had collapsed on a chainsaw and broke it. We were gathering bricks and tin from the rubble and they said we could take the broken chainsaw as well. Jerome got it fixed up and has begun teaching me to use it.

Bottles Bill Mccabe has been saving from his bar for us. We will be using these to build and make bottle bricks. I have fun plans for bottle bricks in tires and adobe around the fire ring, but I have to wait until Spring.

~ * ~

Mike Reynolds got my attention when he said (in the video Garbage Warrior) that trash is a natural resource of the world today.

Lately we have been doing a lot of resource management. By this I mean lots of cleaning and organizing. When we bought our land there seemed to be trash everywhere. The owners were cleaning it up and throwing it away, but we told them to just leave it! What appeared to be trash was a were a lot of slightly used and highly disorganized resources. Since last June we have been slowly sorting . . .

honestly to start our CSA most of the resources are already here. There are so many flower pots and trays and smaller starting pots that its hard to imagine

using them all, especially if we continue to reuse.