Running Hen Microfarm » woodstove

Snow, worms, potting soil, power outtage

Ruth — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:24:21 +0000

Lots more snow today! We have maybe 3 feet. Also, we woke up this morning to no power…so, first thing, Mike made a fire and brought in some snow to melt on the woodstove to make coffee…after all, no power means no heat (even the geothermal runs on electricity) and no water (electricity needed to run pump) and no cooking on the gas stove (ignition works by electricity)…not very off-the-grid, is it? But at least we have this alternative…thanks be for woodstoves!! Fortunately, the power came back on around noon.

An indoor chore for today was to work on making potting soil, a several step process. Today I removed the middle tier of the worm farm…there is wonderful, dark compost within (see photo)!! However, there were also MANY worms. Ideally the worms were supposed to migrate up into the top bin in search of new food, but most of them hadn’t made it up yet (I gave them at least 3 weeks and tried bribing them with lots of garbage!!). So, I spent about an hour sitting on the floor pulling worms out of the finished bin and putting them into the top bin. Of course I didn’t get them all…sorry, worms, but some of you will have to be sacrificed for the cause of compost…be reassured that most of your relatives will live on for generations…

Megasnow II

Ruth — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:59:11 +0000

Here are two pictures from today…one outside with the deer crossing the yard, and the other inside with a steamed applesauce cake made on top of the woodstove! (I googled “steamed” and “applesauce” to get the recipe which was developed by some Boy Scouts for cooking over a fire.) In the back is some frozen pumpkin I am thawing to make “pumpkin gnocci with sage butter”.

Geothermal Heat Pump

Ruth — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:43:29 +0000

Here’s a picture of our geothermal heat pump, at least the basement part. A large loop of pipe goes underground outside the house and a liquid in the pipe transfers the ground temperature (55 degrees) to the heating system, so the heat pump works very efficiently. The same method is used to cool the house in summer.

We also use a wood stove, often in the evenings, which makes the living room more cozy, but on lazy days the heat pump does just fine.

A book that was helpful in our research is Natural Home Heating by Greg Pahl.