"When it starts dying, get electrifying"

It's been interesting to watch the so-called "green revolution" advanced by the current administration, which is largely a push to electrify everything.

Consider this NPR article that appeared in early October, innocuously titled  "These 5 big purchases can save energy – and money – at home." I clicked on it because I'm always interested in frugal suggestions.

I should have known better. This being NPR, their agenda is clear and their logic mediocre. The article begins: "Driving a car, making dinner, heating water and turning on the air conditioner – our everyday actions emit some of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. But sustainability experts say there are ways we can make these daily tasks more climate friendly. By using home appliances and vehicles that run on electricity, we can help reduce our carbon footprint and leave more fossil fuels in the ground."

The article promotes a book entitled "Electrify Everything in Your Home" which, as the name suggests, wants everyone to convert to the wonders of electric everything. Forget wood. Forget propane. Forget natural gas. It's electricity all the way, baby.

The article says, "Making these upgrades to your home and lifestyle will cost money – and you will need to plan ahead. ... So don't feel like you have to change out your appliances overnight. Instead, buy them as your existing machines wear out. [The book's author] offers a catchy phrase: 'When it starts dying, get electrifying.'"

No. I refuse. I refuse to make ourselves more vulnerable.

The article touts the "dangers" of any other fuel option except electricity (even though these other fuel sources have been used anywhere from generations to millennia), and promotes such things as induction stoves and electric vehicles.

But all their persuasive arguments fail to address the one logical question, the ginormous elephant in the room they refuse to acknowledge: What happens when (not if, but when) the electricity fails? It doesn't even have to be a big event, but merely a winter storm or a high wind that can take down power lines and leave people unable to heat, cook, drive, see, or otherwise function in the modern world.

And make no mistake, America's grid is frighteningly fragile. California's grid alone is so delicate that the logistics of plugging in millions of new electric vehicles being pushed by government mandates would be enough to topple it irrevocably. Yet this logic eludes the bureaucrats.

We ourselves are far too dependent on electricity for my comfort, even though we heat with wood, cook with propane, and never use a clothes dryer. My quest is to continue to look for ways to wean ourselves further off the grid, rather than depending more on it.

So this catchy slogan ("When it starts dying, get electrifying") makes me laugh. Nope. I refuse.

So. Much. Packaging

Older Daughter needed some 1/8-inch brass rod, which she uses as a "hinge" in making lidded tankards. This rod comes in various diameters and is three feet in length. It's hard to find locally, so she thought she'd try ordering some online and see if the product meets her standards.

So she got on Lowe's and ordered a sampling of two rods. I'm sorry this photo came out blurry, but it lets you see the diameter – 1/8-inch across.

Here's the full three-foot length of a rod. Skinny, no?

To her surprise and dismay, the rod was delivered in an enormous box packed with enormous amounts of air-filled plastic padding (to pad a non-breakable brass rod!). Even worse, all that packaging was for one rod; of the two sample rods she ordered, they had to back-order one of them. (You can see the rod laid across the box.)

The next day she received the single back-ordered brass rod, more sensibly packaged in a flattened box with no plastic wrap.

That is so much packaging for just two skinny pieces of brass rod.

She says she's going to have to figure out something else, because this degree of ridiculous waste is unacceptable.....

Can you see the stars?

Last month, an article came out indicating only 1 in 50 people can see the stars "as Nature intended" due to light pollution. The article focused on the population in the U.K., a smaller and more crowded place than the U.S.

But America has more than its share of star blindness. Many years ago I visited Chicago, and one of my most distinct memories of that huge city is what the night sky looked like. Nothing was visible -- not a single star -- and the only celestial body I could see was the moon. The rest of the sky was blackish-orange from the glow of the streetlights.

Sadly, many people simply don't know what they're missing in the night sky.

As an example, consider what happened after the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake, which knocked out power in and around Los Angeles. The quake struck during the pre-dawn hours, and people went pouring out into the streets -- only to freak at the frightening "giant silvery cloud" overhead.

Calls poured into various emergency centers, with residents being assured they were merely seeing the Milky Way (evidently for the first time).

According to this article, "More than 80 percent of the world and more than 99 percent of the U.S. and European populations live under light-polluted skies. And according to the world atlas of artificial sky luminance, the Milky Way is hidden from more than one-third of humankind, including 60 percent of Europeans and nearly 80 percent of North Americans."

(Translation: 80 percent of North Americans are urban.)

In an effort to reclaim the night sky, a group called the Dark Sky Association is working with some cities to implement lighting systems that cast lights downward only, rather than everywhere. I sincerely hope it helps.

Ironically, the rapid spread of energy-efficient LED lighting is resulting in more light pollution, not less. The earth's artificially lit outdoor area is growing by 2.2 percent per year, with a total radiance growth of 1.8 percent per year. Why? Because they're so cheap and energy efficient, buildings are being encrusted with LED screens and lights when they weren't before, resulting in far more light pollution.

Can you see the stars where you live? I hope so, because there's no better testimony to Psalm 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

Do they know what "green" is?

This was sent by reader Ken with the caption, "Do they know what 'green' is?"

For ladies only: Naturally Cozy

Guys, go away. Ladies, please stay.

As long-time readers know, we phased out disposable products a number of years ago. Literally the first disposable product we got rid of was feminine hygiene. That's because our then-neighbor Enola Gay (who runs the Paratus Familia blog) opened a small cottage business making washable hygiene products. We were among her first customers. That was about 10 years ago.


The business was so successful Enola couldn't keep up, so she sold it to another young family that lives in north Idaho. The business, called Naturally Cozy, continues to flourish. Once in a while I like to give them a shout out because, after all these years, my enthusiasm for their products has never waned.

Before switching to washables, I'd long been dissatisfied with store-bought sanitary napkins for a number of reasons. One, I don't like what they're made of. Two, I don't like the price. Three, I don't like that they're non-biodegradable. Four, I don't like the idea of being, say, trapped in a blizzard and unable to make a dash for the store for emergency supplies. Five, I don't like things that aren't reusable.

So what’s it like, using washable hygiene? In a word, comfortable. The pads are made of soft flannel and organic cotton, so there is no chafing and it’s easier on the "lady parts." The fabrics breathe, which decreases trapped moisture and the problems that accompany it. Contrary to popular belief, washable hygiene isn't "icky" any more than washable cloth diapers are icky.

Women can choose their personal flannel pattern, which makes it easy to distinguish between pads for different family members.

Of course the initial cost of purchasing pads and panty liners are higher than disposables. But it’s also worth adding up how many disposables you purchase on a monthly or yearly basis, and compare that to the cost of washables. So far we’ve gotten 10 years’ worth of use out of our pads and they’re still going strong.

This is one of those products that, once used, you start to wonder what you ever saw in the disposable versions (which, not incidentally, are made with all kinds of nasty chemicals). Most women aren’t aware of what goes into the manufacture of disposable monthly pads. Laboratory analyses of a popular brand of disposable hygiene products found toxic chemicals classified as carcinogenic as well as reproductive and developmental toxins, including styrene (a human carcinogen), chloromethane (a reproductive toxicant), chloroethane (a carcinogen), chloroform (a carcinogen, reproductive toxicant and neurotoxin) and acetone (an irritant).

I also have about a month's worth of the daily-use panty liners and have come to loathe the store-bought versions after 10 years of cloth softness. I finally hit menopause (yay!) so I no longer have to worry about monthly pads, but I use the panty liners every single day and adore them beyond reason.

For those concerned about environmental impact, consider this: "It's estimated that nearly 20 billion (billion!) pads and tampons are discarded each year in North America alone. The plastics in a pad will take hundreds of years to decompose. The process of manufacturing these disposables also pollutes our waterways, air and animal habitats. Switching to reusables can make a difference."

Naturally Cozy products go beyond just monthly needs. They carry daily panty liners (of course) as well as cotton nursing pads, incontinence products, post-partum pads, washable toilet wipes, hand towels, and even flannel "clutches" to carry personal items discreetly. Additionally, since this is a home-based business, they are sensitive and responsive to customer requests, so if you have a special need or a product you’re looking for, just ask.

There is also the satisfaction of giving business to a hard-working young family which is hand-producing high-quality products.

Naturally Cozy has item samples you can order to "test drive" a product, if you want to try them out before ordering a full set.

I don't endorse products very often. When I do, it's because I can strongly recommend them. Once you've tried these washable versions, you'll never go back to store-bought disposables.

Ladies, I urge you to think about washable reusable hygiene items as a gift to yourself this upcoming year.

How to save on electricity

On my last post, "Living Green, Not Red," reader "StBa" left a comment as follows:

"Wonderful article...thank you! Your electric bill is fantastic. Other than line drying and using LED light bulbs, can you recommend other ways that you save electricity?"

Beyond the fact that we just tend to live dimly (meaning, we don't keep our house really really bright) and not having central heating and air conditioning, I'm not sure I have any brilliant words of wisdom. (Oh wait, we also have a hot-water-on-demand water heater, so we don't have a hot water tank, which saves a lot of electricity/propane.) But this is a good question, so I thought I'd throw it open to readers for advice and recommendations.

So c'mon, folks, help StBa out. What are your best thoughts for lowering your electric bill?

Living green, not red

I find myself fascinated by the green lifestyle. Not the movement; the politics drives me nuts. But a personal lifestyle? I'm on board.

As it turns out, I'm rather astonished by how much "greener" our lifestyle is than for many committed environmentalists (such as here and here). I just figured what we did was ordinary and commonplace, but I guess it's not. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to start tallying the things we do that are considered green. Here's a partial list:

• We "only" have two kids. We didn't do this to conform with any environmental considerations, of course (rather, we got a late start on our family), but limiting children is one of the biggest nags among environmentalists, many of whom consider "breeders" as contemptible. (Me, I think large families are lovely and children a blessing.)

• We don't commute since we work at home. A tank of gas will last us about a month. Every three or four weeks, I go into the city (an hour's drive away) for errands.

• We don't have air conditioning. Here in North Idaho, it rarely gets hot enough to need it. The few times in summer when the mercury climbs too high for comfort, we rely on fans.

• We don't have central heating (that's what wood cookstoves are for). A lot of environmentalists are against wood heat. I guess I can see the argument if you're packed cheek-by-jowl in the suburbs; but in rural areas, it's common.

• We switched to LED lightbulbs. I used to hate the sickly blue tint of LEDs, but in the last few years they've made remarkable advances and we've happily swapped out all our bulbs, which use a fraction of the wattage of incandescent bulbs while maintaining perfectly adequate light levels.

• We keep our electricity use low. We pay about $55 a month to run a business, a home, and a farm (this is average – our bill is lower in summer, higher in winter when we have a stock tank heater in use).

• We buy in bulk. Better prices, less packaging.

• We eat our leftovers. In fact, those are some of our favorite meals. (I'm always surprised how many people don't like leftovers.)

• We transitioned from disposables to reusables many years go and have never looked back. The germ of this idea happened when our girls were babies and we couldn't afford disposable diapers. We used cloth diapers and line-dried them.

• I've never given much thought to a "capsule wardrobe" for the simple reason I hate clothes. (I'm kinda like an "anti-fashionista.") So, by default, I have a capsule wardrobe. I wear a few pairs of sweat pants and T-shirts 99 percent of the time (shorts in summer), and I have two church outfits (one for winter, one for summer). Socks, underwear, appropriate winter clothing (coats, scarves, etc.) and that's about it.

• We wash laundry in cold water (except whites). We don't use a dryer. Ever. Well okay, maybe once a month for when I wash our bathroom carpets and I'll use the dryer for about 20 minutes. Everything else gets line dried year-round on drying racks.

• We keep our recycling low since we don't use a lot of stuff that comes in recyclable containers. Notably we don't buy a lot of packaged foods. Since China stopped taking plastic recycling last year, the whole issue of recycling is becoming less and less green. Far better to reduce the use of products that call for recycling the empty containers to begin with. When we do purchase something, I try to consider the packaging and opt for the least plastic-y version.

• We don't recreationally shop. Ever.

• When we do need to shop, our first choice is thrift stores. That's where 90 percent of our clothing and household furnishings came from. Don also makes a lot of our home furnishings (the joys of having a woodworking husband!). Literally every household furnishing we own is either second-hand or hand-made. The exception is a couch/loveseat combo we purchased new in 2003. We figure second-hand anything is far greener than any new "green" items.

• Our woodcraft business is quite green too. We buy our wood from sources that follow the recommendations of WARP (Woodworkers Alliance for Rainforest Protection). Nearly all our shop waste is either burned as fuel in the woodstove, composted (sawdust), or burned on a burn pile once or twice a year (in other words, our shop is nearly zero-waste). We can even burn old sanding belts, as well as broken rubber bands, used duct tape, and rubber hoses (all part of the assembly process). Old broken tools (belt sander, planer, etc.) go to a metal recycling center.

• Neighbors use us as their tin can and newspaper recycling drop-offs. We use tin cans to mix the inside coating material for our tankards, and since we seldom buy canned food, neighbors will save their cans for us. We use newspapers a lot -- both as firestarters for our woodstove, and to wrap our tankards when we ship.

• We raise our own organic grass-fed beef. Goodness, the last time we purchased beef in a store has to be 20+ years ago. I honestly can't remember the last time.

• It goes without saying our garden is organic. We even "recycle" tractor tires into hugely productive garden beds. We also use a drip system to keep water waste to a minimum.

• A lot of our food is beyond "locavore." It's more like "home-avore." We had a huge harvest this year that took a long time to process (canning garlic, tomato sauce, and carrots, shucking popcorn, shelling dried beans, etc.). I just read an amazing statistic: that 17 percent of the American diet comes out of cans. I'm a passionate canner, so I can our own food, which ironically leaves us short on tin cans, which we sometimes use in our woodcraft business (which is why our neighbors save their cans for us).

• We compost like crazy. We have three levels of compost: kitchen, garden, and barn. Kitchen waste goes to the worm composter; garden waste goes to the compost bins in the garden; and barn waste gets tossed on the giganto compost pile which is the favorite place for the chickens to hang out. We use a lot of the compost in the garden, and friends and neighbors can help themselves for their own gardens.

• We don't have a vegan diet, largely because we prefer to produce our own milk, meat, and eggs. Since losing both our dairy cows this year (Matilda and Polly), we're back to buying milk -- but hope to obtain another Jersey soon. Some have criticized our diet even so, arguing we could grow far more food if we turned our 20 acres into a giant garden. But we're not farmers, we're homesteaders. Our goal is not to produce 20 acres of tomatoes (imagine how much water that would use!), but instead to create a well-rounded, well-balanced diet by what we raise, grow, or produce ourselves. Deal with it.

• Our entertainments are rock-bottom on the carbon footprint scale. Potlucks. Books. Gardening. Puzzles. Walks. Visiting.

• Thrift stores are our best (shopping) friends. My goodness, what don't we get from thrift stores? As far as household goods, very little.

• We homeschooled our girls. Is homeschooling "greener" than public (or even private) schools? Of course it is. No transportation required. No school buildings needed. No indoctrination taking place. The benefits go on and on.

• We seldom fly. The last air trip I took was in 2015, taking Older Daughter to nanny school in Ohio. (This sometimes backfires. Every time I fly, things have changed so much about how to get tickets, etc. that I'm always clueless.)

• We don’t keep up with the Joneses. We don’t purchase anything to impress anyone, we don’t dress fashionably. We don't have electronic gadgets (two computers and one 10-year-old "dumb" phone is the sum total), and certainly don't upgrade. Why upgrade if the products still work?

• Relatively speaking, we don't have too many appliances: washing machine, dryer (seldom used -- it came with the house), kitchen range (propane), toaster oven, tiny microwave (for heating up leftovers), blender, slow cooker, bread machine, refrigerator, and two chest freezers.

• We don't have a dishwasher. I dunno, I just never minded washing dishes by hand.

• We have a hot-water-on-demand water heater, so we don’t have a tank of water to heat.

• We're very close to a zero-waste household. This was surprisingly easy to do once we adopted a non-disposable lifestyle. As an experiment over the last year, I monitored our kitchen garbage. I installed a fresh garbage bag on April 19 and didn't change it out until November 24 (it wasn't full, but we had turkey bones that would otherwise smell). That's 219 days without changing the garbage. I weighed the bag and it came in at 9.5 lbs. About three pounds of that was a replaced door handle Don discarded when our old one stopped working. In other words, aside from the door handle, Don and I created about 6.5 lbs. of garbage in a bit over seven months. The average American makes about 4.5 pounds of trash per person per day, or about 1600 pounds per year. If Don and I were "average," we should have produced 1,971 lbs. of garbage between us over those seven months.

• Along those lines, I try to "zero waste" grocery shop, using bulk bins, loose produce, and cloth bags.

• We don't buy bottled water. Our well water is delicious. When traveling, I use a cheap knock-off metal water bottle I have absolutely fallen in love with.

• Ziploc bags are some of my best friends. This goes against most "green" advice, but Ziplocs (yes, actual Ziplocs -- one of my few brand loyalties) can be amazingly efficient and useful. These little wonder-bags have endless uses, and are endlessly reusable. I can't tell you how many times I've washed and rewashed these bags -- they last a long, long time. I keep a number of bags in my grocery-shopping kit (consisting of cloth bags and Ziplocs with a piece of masking tape on one corner). These are the bags I use at the grocery store bulk bin.

I write the bin number on a piece of tape on the corner and they're a whole lot more sturdy than the store bags (and I can wash and reuse them). Plus, I don't need to use the twist-ties provided by the store.

I throw away (well, recycle) perhaps one or two bags a year, and have about 30 quart- and gallon-sized bags circulating at any one time. (Here's a photo of several bags, washed and upended over tall utensils to dry.)

So that's a tally of how "green" we live. Nothing about this lifestyle is onerous, sacrificial, or difficult. It's just second nature. It's just how we live.

Why do we live this way? Several reasons. It's cheap. It's fun. It's sustainable. It's low-impact. It's challenging. And it drives the liberals nuts.

Why does it drive them nuts? Because too many environmentalists believe you can’t be properly "green" unless you go along with the green political agenda. Let’s never forget one thing: to many progressives, the earth is a goddess. To challenge the leftist orthodoxy – particularly regarding the health of Mother Earth – is akin to blasphemy. But we prefer to worship the Creator, not the created – which does NOT excuse our personal responsibility to live as low-impact and green a lifestyle as possible.

Yet progressives wouldn’t call us "green" because we don’t support the draconian agenda they would impose by force on everyone (except, apparently, most of the politicians passing the legislation). In other words, we live green, not red.

To us, "green living" is the best option for being self-contained and prepper-minded. The less we have to depend on outside sources, the better. During the lively discussion that took place on last week's post about paper towels, for example, our interest in avoiding paper towels stems mostly from our interest in NOT having to purchase them. Cloth towels, once purchased, become part of our prepping arsenal.

I found an interesting photo essay awhile back called "Seven days of garbage" in which the artist photographed volunteers lying amidst the trash they created over a period of one week. It was both horrifying and fascinating. Should we ever be called to lie in our own trash, I'm hoping our output would be far more modest.

Now here's something interesting. I haven't been able to find the original source, but I caught wind that Thomas Jefferson believed America was incapable of true democracy unless 20 percent of its citizens were self-sufficient on small farms. This would enable them to be real dissenters, free to voice opinions and beliefs, without any obligation to food producers who might hold their survival at stake.

So there you go. Our homestead is an act of patriotic defiance.

Plus we get strawberries.

America's weird paper towel obsession

Here's an interesting article I came across recently: Americans Are Weirdly Obsessed With Paper Towels.

People, it seems, are insanely devoted to paper towels.

I didn’t realize this until I put a blog post in 2014, asking readers what kinds of reusable items they’ve embraced. The biggest conflict, I found out, was giving up the ubiquitous paper towel.

I was entirely unaware of this conflict because we seldom use paper towels in our house. Needs are taken care of 99 percent of the time by either dishcloths or rags.

About five or six years ago, we "inherited" a 12-pack bundle of Costco paper towels. I keep a roll in the pantry for certain purposes (draining bacon grease; cleaning up dog vomit) and go through about one roll of paper towels every two years. That bale will last me many, many years.

Let me digress for a moment. When I was growing up, my mother kept a kitchen drawer full of plain white terry dishcloths. They weren’t decorative and neatly folded; they were practical and tumbled into the drawer. She had those dish towels in constant use. A dishcloth always hung near the sink, and when it got damp or soiled (four or five times a day), she’d toss it in the washroom. She probably had fifty dish towels on hand. Old dish towels were, of course, recycled into rags.

We do the same thing in our house. I keep one kitchen drawer dedicated to a jumble of clean dish towels.

A towel hangs from a holder attached to the cabinet door in front of the kitchen sink for convenient hand-drying. I change the dish towel anywhere from twice a day (for light kitchen duties) up to four or five times a day (for active kitchen projects).

My kitchen is not a place of calm beauty and matching décor; it is a place of practical food production. It would never occur to me to use a paper towel merely to dry my hands; that’s what dish towels are for.

I buy white terrycloth “shop rags” in a 60-count bale from Costco. A bale will last me for 10 years or more of hard use before the towels become ratty or worn enough to recycle into rags.

So, with dish towels so inexpensive and versatile, why are people so devoted to paper towels?

I think I got my answer many years ago while visiting a friend. I needed to wash my hands at her kitchen sink, where she kept a dish towel hanging from a hook. Naturally I reached for the dish towel to dry my hands ... and was so revolted I had to re-wash my hands and use a paper towel for drying. That’s because the dish towel was greasy, rank, and damp. It was one of those pretty decorative towels that evidently never got washed.

I’ve since learned that having decorative towels in the kitchen is fairly common for a lot of people. Decorative towels are expensive, so folks don’t have 50 or 60 tumbled in a drawer. They don’t change them or wash them on a regular basis. As a result, the towels are either (a) never used, because they’re so pretty; or (b) used so heavily that they get greasy, rank, and damp. No wonder paper towels are so popular.

What's the consensus here? Are paper towels worth the cost and waste?

Happy Earth Day!

What shall I do on this Earth Day?

For all you cretins out there, today is Earth Day, the day everyone pretends to be green and virtuous and love their “Mother.”

Earth Day is now touted as the “world’s largest environmental movement” and is often characterized by mass gatherings of people who expended untold amounts of carbon to travel to Washington D.C. and protest the carbon footprints of everyone else (usually followed by photos of the amount of trash left in their wake).

Alternately, for those unwilling or unable to go to mass protests against environmental pollution, supporters can engage in something called “iActivism” in which they can tweet or post their disgust at pollution on social media, using their mass-produced electronics and the Internet Al Gore created. These tweets, of course, will make people think they’re actually doing something useful as they take pictures of themselves holding pieces of paper with “#hastagactivism” written on it.

Meanwhile protesters/supporters will laud the continued legalization of marijuana while condemning wheat or vegetable farmers, since apparently it’s “greener” to grow pot than to grow food. It’s the old “Leonardo DiCaprio has huge yachts, jets, and homes, and Al Gore has villas without solar panels. Where do they get off telling us what to do?” problem.

Yet apparently we, the Lewis family, are the hypocrites because we don’t support Earth Day twaddle. This, despite the fact that we don’t commute, don’t use disposables, have almost zero garbage output, never use our clothes dryer, have no personal electronics (except computers and one “dumb” phone), shop second-hand stores, heat with wood, keep our electricity usage between $30 and $50 every month (LED lights!), and otherwise subscribe to nearly every recommendation the environmentalists make.

But as “green” as these accomplishments may be, activists probably won’t approve. The difference, of course, is we support green living – not the green agenda. The green agenda is nothing more than a watermelon: green packaging around a red center. It’s socialism, prettily wrapped up in 100 percent recycled wrapping paper, with a communist bow on top and backed up by governmental force. Open that green package, and the gory red insides spill out: the blood of hundreds of millions people who have died from collectivist régimes in the last century.

Somehow it’s become unacceptable to live green lifestyle without having a suitably militant red attitude.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, we’ll celebrate Earth Day by going about our ordinary lives: Feeding the livestock, planting peas and potatoes, gathering eggs, and living the life God intended for us. I can think of no finer celebration.