Recon in the North Fork of North Creek

I went up the North Fork of North Creek looking for the Mountain Pine Beetle.  I found a few scattered hits, but no epidemics.  Mostly the ponderosa pine looked good:  healthy crowns, a range of diameters, not too dense, a reasonable amount of regeneration, etc.  A few fire-killed trees had insects in them, but they were borers, not beetles, so they were not attacking healthy trees.  There were also a few limber pine trees in the stand, but they were doing less well.  My colleague, Steve, said that he thought the elevation was too low for the limber pine.

Speaking of Steve, he made my reconnaissance possible by loaning me a snowmobile.  In the picture below, Steve is extracting the snowmobile that he loaned me from the creek where I rolled it over on top of myself.  I told Steve that I was an experienced snowmobiler, but my actions soon proved to him that I was a liar.  Actually, I have used the machines a fair amount, but it has been under more controlled conditions—like where the snow was packed, the road was wide, and the power of the sled was measured in horses, not orbital rockets.  The pictured event was neither the first nor the last time that Steve got my snowmobile back in action while I licked my wounds and tried to gather my gear and my pride.  It was great to have access to the North Fork of North Creek, but, by the time I got home, I definitely looked like something the (artic) cat dragged in.

Shingle Creek

I tried to drive to Indian Creek.  At first, the snow was firm enough for straight going, but, with five miles left, it was clearly going to get too deep.  So, I tried to turn around.  Bad idea.  After a lot of digging, I decided to back out.  I backed for a mile or two until I came to a little gravel pit that was firm enough for turning.  My next stop was Shingle Creek.  It was no better there.  In fact, I couldn't even drive from the state highway to the freeway overpass.  So, I skied.  I skied to I-70, and then up Shingle Creek most of the way to Sawmill Bench.  By then the sun was out and the snow was gloppy—grabbing the ski on each step.  It was already 2p, and I was not in the mood for another hour of uphill slogging, so I went back to the truck.  I drove back through Sulpherdale and Manderfield—avoiding I-15 as much as possible.  I was in Beaver shortly after 3p.

Cheap Gas

Well, I was wrong.  (And that is not something I have to admit very often.)  But, in contrast to what I predicted a couple of weeks ago, Rural Way's January 2013 energy bill was not the highest ever.  In fact, it barely made the top five.  The total January cost for electricity and gas was $138.32.  In our economy, that is plenty of money, but, given the amount of heat we'd used, I had fears of breaking $200.  We've done that once before, in December of 2009, but I felt sure that we'd be close this time, too.  Actually, as my reader might guess, I'm glad to be wrong in this case, but I'd like to know why—so that it doesn't happen again.

Since buying The Homestead late in 2008 we have worked to improve its thermal efficiencies.  We have insulated where we could, have added storms to almost all the existing single pane windows, and have forced rags, blankets, and weather stripping into most of the obvious holes.  All of this has probably paid off a little bit.  One way to find out how much is to take the average monthly energy bill for our first full year in the house (2009), and compare it to what we paid last year (2012).  Without controlling for other factors, such as the climate, what we've saved is $13 per month.  That isn't a huge amount, but it is nice to think that we've got an extra $150 under our mattress this year that we didn't have in 2010.

To learn even more about this, though, it is useful to separate the heating months from the non-heating months.  In other words, it takes far more energy to keep The Homestead warm in the winter than it does to keep it comfortable during the rest of the year.  The heating months for southern Utah are generally November through April.  So, when we calculate the average monthly energy savings for those six months (again, using 2009 and 2012), we get $24 per month.  Thus, the total savings for the heating months is about $140.  Obviously this is what really matters.

But, how did we save that money?  What was it that we did?  Was it the insulation?  Was it the storm windows?  It was, actually, none of that.  The real savings came from converting our space heaters from electricity to gas.  In 2009, we supplemented the heat coming from the wood stove by, primarily, using electric space heaters.  By 2012, we had converted to ventless natural gas heaters in some critical areas and had almost entirely given up on electric space heaters.  Here is the financial difference:  During the 2009 heating months we spent $115 per month on electricity, but during the 2012 heating months we spent just $82 per month on electricity, a savings of $33 per month.  For gas, the outcome was reversed—we spent $21 per month in 2009 and $30 per month in 2012—but the increased cost, $9, was more than offset by the reduced electric bill.  In fact, the net savings comes out to $24 per month.  Bingo.  Mystery solved:  Our energy cost savings has come from switching from electric heat to gas heat.

Seeds and Seedlings

Winter is not half over, but it is time to start planning for spring.  First, the trees.  If you want to have them in the ground in April, you need to order them now.  My friend Vern and I worked on the City's order yesterday:  English walnut, Kentucky coffeetree, prairifire crab, red mulberry, Austrian pine, and Scotch pine.  Forty six bare root seedlings, and not a native among them.  For The Homestead, we'll probably order half that number.  So far, I have just one request, from VSO:  Cottonwood.

Second, the vegetables.  In past years, we have started most of our garden plantings in the living room window during February.  This year, we have not yet ordered our seeds.  Part of the problem is the lingering fatigue from last year's effort.  I was away from The Homestead so much that all of the work fell to the girls.  They have little enthusiasm for doing that again.  There has even been talk of suspending the garden altogether during 2013 if I am going to be on the road all summer.  (Then what will we do with our free time?  Daytime TV and fried pork rinds?  Whoo-hoo.)

We could certainly reduce the labor somewhat by improving our irrigation system.  Very little will grow—aside from cheat grass—in a southern Utah summer without adequate irrigation.  Carrying water to a couple of plantings is one thing, but we have hundreds of plantings spread over almost an acre.  Some of the irrigation is automated, or at least comes on when you turn a spigot, but much of it is not.  For about $300 we could probably buy the materials for a simple system that would reach most of our trees and do a better job on the vegetables.  Of course, as I've often argued, $300 would buy a lot of vegetables at the Piggly Wiggly . . . not to mention pork rinds.