Organic and Economy

[chickenannie]

Quote:
Never said it did. The ones I knew were very nice. They were also good stewards of the land.

I try very hard not to make sweeping generalizations about any group of people. But if I do make one now and then, I'd rather err on the side of being kind than being critical. Not that I always manage it, but that's what I try to do.

If I added up the good things about having Amish neighbors in our community, it FAR outweighs the negatives like having buggy wheels make lines in the road over a long period of time. I'm not saying its not a problem, but the road issue seems like a very minor complaint if you consider the big picture.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

I completely agree. I'm an hour in a half away from the nearest Amish farm so it doesn't affect me in what shape the roads are in. I just have to pay for it out of my taxes.

They do a lot of good, but many people have this idea that Amish people are saints.

 

[ltlchicken]

i'm buying stock in spam. they had a better than expected first quarter earnings this year.

 

[chandasue]

Despite the cost of having organic feed shipped to me, I'm still feeding my chickens organic. I buy mostly organics at the store as well, but I have cut back on some of the convenience things I used to buy like bread and cookies, and I'm making my own from scratch. We don't eat out nearly as often as we used to either. It's actually proven to be quite the bonding experience for my family. My 2 yo son helps me with the baking and loves it. Now that I'm cooking more meals, he spends that extra time with daddy. My chickens should start laying in the next month or so. I'm hoping to offset the cost of the feed by selling eggs to the neighbors.

 

[Bossroo]

On the other side of the road and 1 mile away from me there is an absentee corporate farm owned 640 acre parcel of rolling hill land and NO buildings or well much less a tree. The only water the crop gets is from rain that was a total of 6.2 inches last year ( as every year average) between Dec. and April. The soil is a red clay with low fertility. All of the surounding lands is several thausand acres of poor and very sparce grass that grows to maybe 3-4 inches range lands that support a couple dozen beef cows with maybe a total of a dozen oak trees and only one small well with a wind mill that produces about 4 gal of water per hour, just enough to water the cows only. That well is exceptional as it is the only one in the area that does not contain SALT water. This is due to a geological fault shear for that area. On my side of the fault, my well is only 30 feet deep and produces 152 gal a min. of very good water as I hit an underground water low. Every Sept. they truck in a Caterpillar tractor with gang discs. They disc in all of the wheat stubble, then they plant it with wheat along with fertilizer according to laboratory soil tests and using GPS to spot apply the fertilizer and trace minerals. Today, as every Spring , they have a helicopter spray the entire land for wheat rust. When the wheat grows to head stage, they bring in the caterpillar tractor with the disc gang and disc under a full HALF of the crop, alternating the halves every ear. They harvest a bumper crop of wheat every year that surpasses anything that they could harvest if they didn't do this type of land management on basically worthless lands. They have been doing this for over the past 50 years .

 

[ninjapoodles]

Quote:
With Speckled Sussex, you may be able to recoup your feed costs quicker selling hatching eggs! Just a thought?

 

[jeanniejayne]

Yep -- bigger veggie garden, and found a local guy who sells grass-fed, dry aged beef, butchered and vacuum-packed by the quarter-steer for an amazingly low price, considering that I looked at dry-aged beef online and found ground beef at $14/lb! I think we will be paying $3.50/lb hanging weight. Lucky to have 2 big freezers. Getting my chicks this weekend. Hunkering down.

Two years ago we decided to invest in geothermal when we needed to replace our oil furnace and re-did the kitchen/ family room. Cost a good deal more -- maybe 10K -- but it has been worth it. Cleaner, quiet, more inexpensive. We are all-electric and have not had a bill of $500. yet, even with this supercold winter, and an in-ground pool in summer. And Water
Furnace has a 10-year warranty.

 

[Rosalind]

Quote:
Ooooh, tell me more about this!

DH and I have just gotten yet ANOTHER repair bill for our stupid oil furnace. The accursed thing is only 10 years old, it's only used as a backup for our wood stove, and the evil thing still breaks down--usually around 3am, you know, so I can wake up freezing at 4am to run down to the basement and scream at it for a while. Last week we had the fire department out because the house was full of smoke at 4am. I am ready to give up on it and put in a geothermal system.

We currently have a non-functional decorative well in our house (long story).

It goes down about, hmm, 20-30 feet. The water is always liquid throughout even the most terrible winter weather. Ideally I'd like to use that well for geothermal, make it deeper if needed.

I heard there are tax credits and stuff for installing geothermal, is that true? Also that in some areas, they have 0% loan programs for financing? Are you using geothermal for forced air, or did you put in a radiant system at the same time?

Thanks in advance!

 

[patandchickens]

Rosalind, one thing to remember about geothermal is that you need a big enough area that you are not unduly cooling it off with your winter heating demands. Running the air conditioner (using the geothermal) all summer helps some, but still, a problem up north here (and they have the reverse problem in southern climates) is that a couple months into the heating season you don't wanna have pumped so much coolth thru your underground system that you've near-frozen the area all around it so it doesn't work any more.

You can look into it, but I am highly suspicious whether a 20-30 foot well, or even several of them, would be sufficient.

Just something to be aware of,

Pat

 

[Rosalind]

I have heard that, but then I was thinking they might wish to drill the well down deeper--still use the same hole in the ground, though.

I am not *very* worried that we would use up all our local thermal mass: We would be the only ones running any kind of well (everyone around us has city water), and we are on top of a freakin' motherlode of New England pink & gray granite. Also, like the oil furnace, this would be running a backup to the wood stove. We actually don't have any A/C and won't be getting any in the foreseeable future--the house is too elderly and it would kill the humidity control for the timber frame.

Eh, we'll see.