We lit our wood stove for the first time yesterday. The temperature inside was 62 F, so quite bearable, but we wanted to cure the stove while we could still open the windows, and get the hang of lighting a fire before the cold really kicks in. Going by this evening’s attempts, we’ll have to …
Category Archives: Recent Riot Posts
Riot for Austerity, Month 11
Our Riot is almost a year old! It feels great to have come this far, and I can’t wait to tally up the yearly average. But first, month 11. Gasoline. This went down a bit from last month because DH’s shuttle rides again. 9.55 gallons pp = 23% of the US National Average Electricity. Our …
Lifestyle Changes
Wow, Sharon has another great blog entry up: Dreaming a Life, about radical lifestyle changes – “whether they come from adapting to a deeply damaged climate or from addressing the crisis, whether they come from adapting to depletion or from enduring it.” Sharon points out that much of the political unrest we are seeing comes …
Independence Days, Week 3
Plant: Still waiting for the “Fall planting” seedlings (lettuce, spinach, chard, etc.) to graduate to planting-out size. “Unplanted” most of the tomato plants (one chilly day and night and they succumbed fully to the blight). Also planted sustainable lawn seed on our erosion-prone slope: curious about the result! Harvest: Finally harvested the first carrots (which …
Riot for Austerity – Month 10
This month there were no shifts in the household: just the three of us, which makes the reckoning much easier. Amie feeds the compost tea some molasses Gasoline: 27% This stayed the same as last month. The school year hasn’t started yet, so DH is spending more time working from home and Amie isn’t daily …
Independence Days, Week 2 {reset}
{Reset} Since I started again last week, I’ll call this week 2. Plant: Transplanted mostly lettuce seedlings in the old potato bed, but I’m afraid they drowned in last week’s downpours; luckily I didn’t put in all of them, and I have many more waiting on the porch. I did drop a tray with mizuna …
Flushing Drinking Water, Not – and Toilet Cloth
Okay, I’m warning you. This one’s (perhaps) on the edge for this blog, but it was inevitable. It’s about our toilet flushing habits. So if you’re here to read about Amie’s drawings or how the carrots are doing (badly), proceed at your own risk. This is the one aspect of our homestead that I don’t …
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Riot for Austerity – Months 7, 8, and 9
Months 7 – 9, that is, May to and including July. So I’ve been slacking a bit, not on the practice – I hope – but on the monitoring and recording. Then again, if your practice isn’t wholly a routine yet, monitoring and recording may well be essential (not sufficient, of course, but necessary)… Let’s …
Thinking of Transition
a.
Rain and Slugs Slugs Slugs
It’s the middle of Summer and you wouldn’t say so. The Boston Globe reported that eastern Massachusetts may have had its “dimmest” June since recording began in 1885. Through June 22, Boston and vicinity had received just 32% of the available sunshine. In an average June, the region gets 55% of the possible sunshine between …