Monday, December 6, 2010

The Walrus



I am he as you are he as you are me
and we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun
see how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man you've been a naughty boy
you let your face grow long

I am the eggman
they are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Mr. city policeman sitting
pretty little policemen in a row
See how they fly like Lucy in the sky
See how they run
I'm crying
I'm crying, I'm crying
Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog's eye
Crabalocker fishwife
Pornographic priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
you let your knickers down

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Sitting in an English garden
waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come you get a tan
from standing in the English rain

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Expert, texpert choking smokers
don't you think the joker laughs at you
See how they smile like pigs in a sty
See how they snide
I'm crying
Semolina pilchard
climbing up the Eiffel tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking
Edgar Allan Poe

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' goo
goo goo g' joob goo
juba juba juba
juba juba juba
juba juba juba juba
juba juba


John Lennon

December 8th 1980.

http://wikileaks.nl/

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tree Huggers on Easter Island (updated)

It seems easier to get started this year.
Looking back over our seventeen years in the bush here we can see the dramatic ways our environment has changed.

Nobody had lived here for several years. The small cabin, with all its windows shot out, had been taken over by swallows and mice. A half dozen wrecked vehicles dating back to the fifties, dilapidated outbuildings, and old, weathered garbage strewn throughout.
But aside from the small stain of human's existence, this spot on earth was peace.
We cleaned, patched up the cabin, re-used the wood from the outbuildings, but kept the wrecks around for parts and art.

We're coming out of a very long winter. Spring is here but slow. The lake is still covered with ice. The garlic and parsnips coming up slowly. Fruit trees are showing signs of life. Should be a bountiful season.

Seventeen years ago we camped on the land. For a cool, rainy week in September we relaxed here. The mornings were enveloped in mist. There were hundreds of ducks and geese sliding through the mist, into and out of the reeds that surrounded the small lake. We were going to stake as a place to live. Isolation.
Around the lake there was a mature lodgepole pine, spruce and Douglas fir forest and there was an incredible display of mushrooms. Enchanted. Easy forage for oyster mushrooms, boletes, field and horse mushrooms.There were dozens more we could not identify.

Since then pine beetles and the mills have taken all of the mature forest. Left a few mature firs here and there. The mushrooms, bats and now the moose have mostly disappeared with the forest.
The province has a bounty on wolves. Anyone with a hunting license can shoot a wolf any time.
The science behind the wolf cull is so flawed. It's all about votes and money.








No



doubt we’re are going to burn every drop of oil and burn every pound of coal. A forester once told us, when we were trying to stop the mill from cutting the forest around the land we live on, that there is not a safe stand of trees in Canada and that it’s only a matter of time before they’re all cut.

10% of the world population owns 85% of the world's assets and half of the population of the world owns barely 1%.

Terrorism, fighting for freedom…We haven't seen the worste yet. Blaming it on fundamentalists and extremists while hanging onto our decadence.
You would fight to save yours and who exactly are the extremists.

Our standard of living was built on the backs of slaves.The Conquistadors.
It’s not complicated.

Tree huggers unite but watch your backs



or you’ll get eaten.




Aki and Scott

Our business.
http://www.caribooblades.com/




Sunday, January 17, 2010

Moving and Static Photovoltaic Systems.

By static I mean solar panels mounted on your roof, facing south and angled at 20 degrees. They don't move. Controller, battery bank or grid tie, inverter, your load...your demand. If you know how much electricity you want it's fairly easy to calculate the photovoltaic equipment you will need. There is so much information out there.

Pretty much maintenance free. Electricity generation on your roof top. Simple and 1/2 the cost of what it was. Now solar equipment is inexpensive and oil is cheap/life is cheap. Everyone is a bit scared of cloudy days.

This kind of system is replacing or enhancing your connection to the grid.

With the sun, taking advantage when the sun is shinning we track the sun manually as we work. Our main system is 416 watts of panels tracking the sun from a manual tracker that stands 20' high beside our cabin.

Tracking systems can be manual or automated, single or double axis and mounted on a pole or track. Some trackers use movable mirrors and concentrators rather than moving the panels themselves.

(picture is of our
panels and our dish to the internet).


We built a tracker with two axis and for years diligently tracked the sun at tilt and angle. We recently put a steel roof on our place and now track the sun only by turning the tracking pole leading the sun from the time it comes up until it goes down. The steel roof reflecting sun light on the panels eliminated the need to tilt.
The practice of tracking has increased our energy production by 45 %.


Tracking the sun sounds like a chore but is far from it. We work and live in the same location and the tracker is located on the way to our shop. We have become in tune with the sun, always aware of where it is in the sky and adjusting the panels leading the sun by an hour or two on either side. In a 15 hour high demand day we adjust the angle 4 or 5 times. A high demand day maybe a couple of loads of laundry, working with a tablesaw for the day, four hours working on the computer, a couple of lights for the evening and watching a dvd. Since we do all the heavy demand work during sun up our batteries still around 65% in the morning. Most days the batteries are hovering between 80 to 100%.

The pole swivels for angle, as the sun moves across the sky, on its base of 1/2" plate steel set in the ground with concrete. This mechanism, as shown below, is a "T" of larger diameter pipe slipped over the pole end and welded in place. Sliding a smaller diameter pipe through the top of the "T" accommodates tilt.




Click on pictures for larger images


We drilled a couple of holes through one side of the larger pipe at the ends, welded nuts over the holes and then screwed bolts snugging against the smaller pipe within to control the tilt.
We use to tie a rope to the top and bottom of the panels to adjust tilt and a cross on the pole to move with the sun across the sky.

If you snug up to the smaller inside pipe with the bolts you'll have complete control of the tilt with the ropes. It is very simple and effective.
By using standard bolts, there is very little wear. For the 10 years we've operated this tracker the bolts have worn off paint. We figure in about 100 years somebody will have to shift the assembly over a 1/2".

This method of tracking the sun may not be for everyone. There are many solar trackers on the market.
Using recycled scrap pipe our photo-voltaic panel tracker cost us $45 and a days work, installed.

We started living here in 1997 with no electricity and slowly built our system as we needed it.

A second action we perform happens on winter days. On a perfect solar energy filled winter day there are only 6  1/2 hours of sun here. After a couple of dark days in December our batteries are hovering around 20%. First thing when the sun begins to peak over the horizon we'll charge the battery bank for 20 minutes with our  S-10's 2.8L engine. We installed a 200 amp altenator. (*update: since 2015 we've used a generator) While the engine is on we'll pump water, charge batteries for the drill, computer etc... Our batteries are discharged to low levels in the winter. There is resistance that develops in the batteries from discharging, preventing them from accepting a charge. The low amperage the panels produce in the morning is not sufficient to wear through the resistance in time for a good charge during the short days. The higher amp and voltage charge from our charging system is sufficient, breaking through the batteries' resistance and allowing the panels to do their job. During really challenging no sun periods we'll disconnect half the battery bank (undoing a wing nut connection), charge half the bank to 60% then reconnect. A sunny winter we may burn $40 of gas. A dark winter we may burn $200. We are in a good spot on the planet as far as exposure to sun light. On average we are burning 80 - 100 litres per year for our fix of electricity.
This method of energy maintenance has increased our battery charge up to 70% on the darkest days of winter.
This all sounds like a lot of effort but it is not. With a bit of modification it could be simplified further to just flicking a switch. It is a fit that will become standard.

From March until mid October we have more power than we need.
Supposing that the whole point to this endeavor is to find the point at which we find what we need.


For more information on our sun power system and our back up power system please visit, 


Enjoy the sun.

Aki and Scott



Sunday, October 25, 2009

Pink Salmon & Dandelions

Our gardens have been tucked in for the winter.


After we harvested the potatoes we turned in the soil with the potato plants and the season's mulch of reeds, grass and cardboard. Aki broadcast rye seed and peas. Let them grow for a month and at about 5" high turned them under with some seasoned chicken manure, raised the bed, skirted the rise with bark and cardboard, planted 2/3 of the garlic crop for next and covered it in a thick blanket of reeds.
The reeds will be pulled back in the spring to let the soil warm. When the plants are up the reeds get distributed throughout the garlic as mulch.

Some yells, some screams.













Some friends gave us some red kuri squash. It looks an awful lot like pumpkin. So we carved it for halloween. We had it lit for a night...then we ate it... Jack's head. We found our halloween tradition.

We have been spending some time in the forest collecting firewood. Always rejuvenating. We are looking forward to the deep dark winter.

The three of us watched a movie a month back set in Afghanistan, "The Kite Runner". It spanned a timeline of 30 years. We're still thinking about it.
Basted in honey and butter. Roasted and eaten.

Served on a moose antler platter.



Pink Salmon, dandelions, artists and farmers all have something in common, and we are still trying to grasp and pin down this thread.

December 21st. We are alone and we've got something all to ourselves.
Deep in thought in the deep, dark winter.
http://www.caribooblades.com/

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Smoke in Our Skies

It's been a spring and summer of sunshine, hot, dry and fires. In the last month smoke from forest fires blocked out the late afternoon sun for a couple of weeks. A forest fire just south of us was 53,000 hectares big. Very high ground water levels. The mosquitoes were extreme and lasted an extra month into August - still a few around.


For Aki, Kai and I it has meant a great harvest. This winter holds a palette of sun dried tomatoes, dried broccoli, cauliflower, broad beans, peas,herbs and kale. Aki is canning pesto, hot pepper jelly, Saskatoon jam etc, etc... .

Every knife and tool we've made this year has been produced with just solar power. We work with the Sun. The Sun basically dictates what we do, how and what we eat, what time we go to sleep, when we wake up, how many movies we watch and in the deep, dark winter, how many emails we can write. We'd much rather be guided by the sun than by Exxon or Shell.
We've been harping about solar power for 15 years to anyone who would listen. Not many were listening but a few were watching. To us it is mind baffling that everyone hasn't a panel or two. We all know the sun.
Today, silicon, which makes up roughly half the cost of making of most solar electric panels, has dropped from $400/kg to $70/kg in one year..... and the silicon Baron's are still making money. Kind of sounds like the oil companies. Right now you can get Sharp panels for 2/3 of what they were a year ago. .


At the time when we moved here we invaded Iraq. Now we're occupying Afghanistan. Sure is a disgraceful situation we find ourselves in. All for a pipeline. All for oil.
Anyone can.
Running your shop on solar electric power is easy. With this system we've run our cabin and shop for 13 years. We started with one panel, 2 batteries and an inverter.
We are 100% solar powered from the end of March until the end of September now. March and October are good for sun energy just not unlimited. We work full time making edged tools. Our power needs decline until December 21st, by the end of February we have the power we need from the sun again. It's December and January when we slow down and burn candles in the evening. If you're connected to a grid there is no fluctuation. We tried to keep up the production for these dark months only to fall behind and get stressed. This year we'll snow shoe, think more, and play more music.

We designed and installed our system. It was fairly easy.
We went with 6 volt golf cart batteries. They are tough (We've frozen them solid and they have come back). These batteries are inexpensive and easy to replace although we haven't had to. 8 batteries and they are all in good shape. Twice a year I'll clean them with baking soda and water, then top off each cell with distilled water.
We've seen people spend lots of money on batteries. You don't have to, tough golf cart batteries are the way to go, especially for a shop. If you live within a grid you don't need batteries.

We have 390 watts of panel. 2 are BP and one is made by Sharp, a 20 amp regulator and we have a 2,500 watt (with a surge of 3,500) inverter we bought at Canadian Tire.

We built a manual tracker. Three panels, framed, on top of a 20 foot steel pole set cemented into the ground. As we work we turn the panels to face the sun.
This has increased our power by 35%.
The tracker put us at the level of power we are satisfied with and gave us a very good ground.--- An excellent ground is really important. Ground your inverter, batteries and panels.

Trick is to work with the sun when it is out. We don't think of it as storing power. Use power when it is there in the sky.
At night we use stored power for light, music, watching movies, and small amp tools.

If you have a steady wind, a wind generator is the way to go.

It's quite amazing once you begin... A different way of seeing. It feels like a breakthrough. Life on another level. Being responsible for your own power instead of being forced to be part of the crime. We are all, in this part of the world, part of a crime.



Questions like, "what do you do when the sun's not out", or statements like, "solar panels are made by oil energy" seem true enough in an all or nothing way. When the sun's not out we relax. The real cost to the environment of a panel is paid off in as little as 5 years. Life is saved. Solar electric panels are guaranteed for 25 years.

Electric cars are a boondoggle unless you plug into the sun. Electric anything, otherwise your plugging into oil, coal and nuclear reactors.




Living with the sun as the source of power, growing your own food, taking time to think, taking only what you need and most of all being empathetic, not psychopathic.




Saturday, June 20, 2009

Storm

We can see and hear them coming. This one is a storm to the northwest. We've experienced many terrific lightning and thunder, wind and rain storms. This was a new and ominous sound to us. Threshing, mashing sounds of a huge wind. Aki was at the coop preparing a space and run for the new hen and chicks. "What is that", I said in part incredulously because of the unfamiliarity of this steadily approaching sonorous sound. I headed down toward the lake where the sky opens up for a better look. A storm of solid dark grey blanketing the northwest sky moved swiftly, loud, swiftly and louder. I stood in this wide sky space in wonder, taken by the power of it. It wasn't coming head on. The path of the storm was just north of us and the sound was becoming very loud. Instinct kicked in, adrenalin shot into my system. I was awake.

It was across the lake, in the middle, then a loud "tat" on the metal roofing of the outhouse just behind me. For that split second I pondered and could not really believe how dense I was. "Hail!" . We raced for the gardens grabbed all the tarps still, luckily, in their positions ready for the next frost. Working quickly as the hail moved across the lake with deafening sound Aki and I just had the vulnerable plants in the garden covered when the hail hit full force. We stood over the last half dozen broccoli plants, straddled over the bed holding a piece of plywood to shield them. We stood and waited out the storm, pelted by hail stones .

This kind of storm happened 6 years ago while we were away. We get hail all the time but this hail is big, solid and comes down thick. 6 years ago it pummelled the garden leaving every plant in shreds. It shreds the leaves on the trees, puts dents in our truck hood.



We are always in awe of the power of the elements, as we mattock sod, coax boulders out of clay, turn hard-packed soil and carefully build garden plots. Every year it is different with different challenges. This year we watched as tadpoles congregated between the onion and zucchini plots, and we still have to roll up our pant legs in order to weed the garlic. Dikes, we concluded, would have been the solution. Perhaps next year, unless the lake drops again.


When we moved up here we found a mound of rocks just down the hill from the cabin and some 200 ft up from the lake waterline. The discovery of an old fish hook led to speculation that it was the remains of a dock, and that the lake had once been much higher. Around the lake's shallow shoreline the reeds are tall and the grass grows lush for 100 to 500 feet up to the forest line. 20 foot tall skeletal remains of spruce trees rise out of the grass referring to a different time, a higher water level that drowned them and a stretch of time when they grew.
An old timer told of us of a time in the 30's when our lake was a meadow that, as a boy, he used to help hay.
This year the lake has taken most of our lakeside garden. Over the last 2 years the lake has risen 3 feet. 6 years ago we had a 100 ft pallet walkway built over the soft mud to the receding water line. At least 7 feet lower than it is now.





The gardens on higher ground are looking green and lush now, and as we feast on chard and spinach and basil and watch the tomatoes ripen and the cucumbers and apples form, it is often with amazement.




They call this the simple life.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Entitlement



We both grew up on middle class streets in Canadian cities during the 60's and 70's. Gas was 35 cents a gallon. Electricity was almost free. Water was free.
During that time I watched my father convert our whole backyard into a garden with fruit trees. After reinsulating the roof and upgrading the windows, he plumbed in an 80 gallon preheating tank beside the furnace which received cold city water before entering the hot water tank, put a wood stove in the basement and plumbed it into the central heat, cut and dug a small root cellar off the basement. Our house was an average looking house on a city block but way more efficient. That was 40 years ago. If he was still alive he'd have at least a solar array on the roof and a heat pump in the cellar.


Following that patriarchal line, he was doing what his father and mother did. They did what my great grandparents had taught them. My great, great grandparents were pioneers and they did what they had to do to survive in a rugged environment.
The environment cannot be denied. All lines do lead to the same... survival. Our environment is everything.


Like so many boys of my generation, I didn't get to know my father because he died young. Heart attack. Doing all kinds of stuff for the environment and feeding everybody he could...didn't take care of himself. He was 56. Aki's dad died of stomach cancer when he was 47. Looking for a better life for their children, Aki's parents brought the family over from Japan in the 60's. The only "ethnic" family in their suburban neighbourhood. Aki was one of three Japanese-Canadians in her high school of 1200 students.

Shaking off our sense of entitlement.
By the second year we knew we were onto something but still a long way off. Now 16 years later we're still settling in and are just plain sad that more people aren't living this way. It is simple. Working with nature. More healthy physical work. Breathing fresh air, drinking fresh water. We grow all our own  vegetables, keep bees and keep chickens for meat and eggs. We know the organic farmers who raise the pork we savour over winter.


There are people doing this in the cities. Small , large backyards and container vegetable gardens...




for healthy food.

Eating fresh food, drinking fresh water and breathing fresh air, of course, is possible in the cities.


Nancy and Rosa's gardens in the lower mainland.



We initially came here for the same reasons that anyone would have.

We separated the compressor and condenser from the backside of our freezer, carefully bending the copper tubing so that it is away from the freezer.  Our Sears freezer is a bad design. Heating while you're trying to freeze. So much of this society is designed with the assumption of entitlement to cheap, unlimited and uninterrrupted power and resources. Separating just the motor will make a big difference. We throw a duvet over the freezer when it's not on.. Huge difference. We haven't had a fridge for 13 years. Between the freezer, pantry and root cellar we don't need one. We don't have a basement but our pantry floor is not insulated. From September until May the bottom shelf in the pantry keeps things cool. The root cellar always keeps things cool. An old sixty gallon water tank thermal cycling through our wood cook stove is like having a second wood heater and supplies us with hot water. A small green house off the south wall of our small house heats up for vented heat into the house, and supplies greens earlier and later in the season for us. For our power we've 416 watts of panel, a 30 amp controller, 8 - 6 volt heavy deep cycle batteries and a 1750 inverter. With cable, wire and connections, $3000 Canadian for everything.  A second 12 volt system for the water pump, a couple kitchen lights, pantry light and music we have 2 - 12 volt deep cycle batteries charged by a 50 watt panel, no contoller. This system is almost 17 and working fine. One battery is 17 the other is 12 years old. Maintainance is key.  These systems have paid for themselves at least 4 or 5 times.
The newest stat I've read is that the real cost of a solar panel operating in ideal circumstances is paid for in 5 years of operation financially and environmentally. In the city there is the huge advantage of being able to tie directly into the grid, eliminating the need for batteries. So many possibilities.

We went a little watt heavy as far as panel:battery ratio. During the dark months of January and December when the batteries get low repeatedly I'll sometimes disconnect 2 of the batteries to make it easier to break down the batteries' resistance to accept a charge. I found that reading a bit about batteries and 12 v (DC) was a good thing. From March until September power is not an issue here. We run our cabin and a small shop without any sacrifice. Working with the sun is the key.  We really live by the sun. For a couple of years it was an adjustment living off grid... now we wouldn`t live any other way.


Nancy Brignall and George Rammell's web sites, http://www3.telus.net/4.
Mike Edwareds and Rosa Quintana, www.rosaquintanalillo.com and http://mikeedwardsart.com
Together they're changing their neighbourhoods. Sites of art and rejuvenation.


Our site,


We humans excel at adjusting, adjusting, adapting - until we almost completely forget how we used to do things... Forget what we've done, forget what we're doing. Forget where we're going.
Aki and Scott                        

 www.caribooblades.com

* It's an updated blog.