The Habits of Rabbits

Ellen and I were walking down the trail from Noah's Ark today when she said, "I was recently reading a book about rabbits. It had a "c" word in it that I didn't know, do you know what that was?" I guessed "coney," but that wasn't it. After a minute, she came up with it: Crepuscular.

(Now, at the end of last week, Ellen finished Kindergarten, so she has some solid learning to draw from, but "crepuscular?" What kind of Kindergarten is this? I mean, when I went to Kindergarten, I learned the difference between triangles and squares, but not much more.)

In any case, not wanting to appear ignorant of Kindergarten vocabulary, I said that I thought it meant that rabbits were the kind of animals that ate their own poop. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The word for that is "coprophagia." While rabbits do engage in coprophagia, they are also crepuscular, which means that they are active at dawn and dusk--at first light and at twilight.

Rural Ways has been having a tremendous problem with the local deer herd eating from our garden and orchard. The deer, from my observations, appear to be crepuscular, too, like rabbits. I just wish the deer ate poop instead of apple blossoms.

Electricity Hogs

Rural Ways is supposed to be in the field in southern Idaho today for a little forestry clinic. Unfortunately, we got snowed out. Since winter is not over yet, let me take this opportunity to post some electricity usage data that I collected recently. I promised my brother-in-law that I would do this so that he could win a debate with my sister.

Rural Ways purchased a "Kill-a-Watt" over the winter in an attempt to find out why our electric bills were the largest in history. The conclusion: heat. It costs more to make heat than to do anything else. It's not the office equipment; it's not the lights; it's not the fridge and freezer. I'm not saying that the electricity for these items is free; I'm just saying that each of them makes a relatively small contribution to our overall electric bill. The big culprit is heat. We have an electric hot water heater, an electric clothes dryer, and an electric oven/range. I was not able to test any of these directly (the Kill-a-Watt is for 110 plugs only), but by testing everything else, I am able to say with confidence that those three things make up the bulk of our electrical usage every month. Our average MINIMUM electric bill is $75 per month. When I add up the fridge, lights, stereo, and office equipment costs, I only reach about $15 per month. As a result, I'm guessing that we have a base cost of $50 to $60 per month simply to run the oven, the dryer, and the hot water heater.

The real story, though, is the cost of using a space heater. In the winter, our electric bill jumps from $75 to $150. Yikes. That hurts. A lot. And, this big price spike is what prompted me to purchase the Kill-a-Watt. I wanted to know what was causing it. Well, now I know. We run two baseboard space heaters periodically over the winter. One of them is for the bathroom downstairs, and runs only during shower/bath times. The other one is for Ellen's room, upstairs, and sometimes runs round the clock during very cold weather. This is the smoking gun. Ellen's space heater alone costs $45 per month to operate. The one in the bathroom contributes an additional $15 per month. Those two baseboard heaters make up 80% of our surplus winter electrical costs. Of course, while I hate paying hefty bills, I also hate making the family shower in a 40 degree bathroom, so I'm not going to stop . . . at least not until we can afford some energy efficiency renovations.

Garden Layout

I more or less promised that there would be no more posts about The Homestead's year-round winter. Instead, there may be some interest in the progress of our garden. We went with 120 square feet this year (30 x 40), which is probably our largest to date. We may add ten feet to the length next year because irrigation hoses are sold in fifty foot lengths. (Right now we have a number of J-shaped irrigation lines.) Anyway, as you can see from this picture . . . snapped on 11 May 2010 . . . we have a nice row of little onions poking up. The fence directly behind the row of onions will support the peas as they grow larger. The peas have sprouted, but they are currently covered by, um, manna from heaven. In the background, there is a row of cone shaped things called "Wall-o-waters." These are protecting our tomato plants from, well, the effects of global warming. As this picture demonstrates, gardening can be year round family fun no matter where you live.

Sable Update

A few months ago, it looked as though our car would be forced into retirement. At that time, I said that we would nurse it for a few months. Well, nurse it we have, and it is still going strong. I also noted in that earlier post that the car wasn't much to look at. Well, it still isn't. In fact, now it is worse. This morning the kid from across the street backed into it on his way to school. When I talked with his dad, the dad kept saying, "We'll make it right." I appreciate that kind of neighbor, but it isn't really worth it. Repairing or replacing a fender on that car may cost half of what the car is worth. Besides, everything still works fine. There is no broken glass or punctured tires. So, I told them not to worry about it. We won't fix it, we'll just keep driving it. (Note to all you agressive southern Utah tailgaters: We've got nothing to lose.)