You Don’t Miss Your Water

My mother was almost 30 years of age when my community was connected to the national grid. I once asked her what she would miss most if mains electricity were to disappear, she replied without hesitation pumping water.

Pedal Powered Water Pump

Before electric water pumps many rural Irish women spent a lot of time carrying water in buckets. Water was needed for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing clothes and bodies. Those who were lucky has a good source of water nearby, usually a well. But even if the well was nearby keeping the households water requirements met was an endless round of drudgery.

The thing is that pumping water on a domestic scale is one of those jobs that does not need electricity. A little equipment and some imagination can eliminate a lot of tedious work, as this video demonstrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UvhiNb1as&feature=player_embedded

Maybe We Are Not Doomed

I sometimes despair when talking to the unconverted about peak oil and the long emergency we are now entering, many people refuse to think about any other way of living but the modern way. It’s like we either have automatic washing machines or we have to beat our clothes on rocks down by the river. But recently I came across the James Washer, a simple, well made manual washing machine that would take all the drudgery out of clothes washing.

The James Washer

The biggest problem is getting people to think about other ways we could live. We waste enormous amounts of resources in madcap ways. We use two tons cars to travel a mile, when we could easily use a bike or walk. The Dutch do 25% of all journeys on bikes and they build bikes that last 100 years. The Swedes build houses that can be heated through arctic winters with little more than the body heat of the inhabitants.

We waste huge amounts of resources making short lived, useless crap, when we could make things like James Washers, and dutch bikes, and pedal powered power tools, and solar buildings etc, etc. The real necessities of human life are actually quite modest and can be met without the huge waste that we have right now.

The things that make life really worthwhile are not crap you can buy in a shopping mall, but things like a happy family, good neighbours and good health. Before we got rich in Ireland in the 1990s there was a great old tradition of a ceile house, a house in the neighbourhood where musicians were always welcome and a music session might start any time of the day or night. A few musicians, and dancers and a few bottles of whiskey and beer, and everyone would have a great party and forget their troubles. It got us through some very bad times and put a smile on our collective faces.

Dutch Bike

We are all doomed in the long run, the sun will eventually fry the earth, but the idea that there is no use in trying right now is one I reject. Who knows how it will play out, but when I hear some people who are peak oil aware saying there is no use in trying because we are all doomed, it reminds me of listening to peak oil deniers. When I try to discuss peak oil with the deniers they parody what I am saying by proclaiming “We are all doomed”. In both cases the reasoning leads to the same result, paralysis.

Dutch Bikes in Ireland

Dutch Cargo Bike

The True Value of Electricity

The average Irish home uses 5300 kWh of electricity a year (1) an increase of 21% since 1990. Irish households are profligate users compared to other western countries, in 2006 we used 21% more than UK households, and 31% more than our continental neighbours(2). We used more than our trans Atlantic cousins in the USA where average household use in 2009 was 4800 kWh (3).

Electricity is a miracle of the age and yet like so many modern miracles people take it for granted and waste it on an epic scale without thinking. So for this post I am going to try and put some perspective on the real value of electrical power. For this I turn to Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil (4)

Fleming wrote
“A gallon of gasoline energy content is about 33 kilowatt-hours. In perspective, 33 kilowatt-hours is the equivalent of a healthy male pedaling a stationary bike for 330 hours – if he can maintain 100 watts per hour. If he pedals 40 hours per week, he will generate the same amount of energy as in one gallon of gasoline in about eight weeks”

So one gallon of petrol (as we call gasoline in Ireland) has 33 kWh of potential energy. Average household electrical use is 5300 kWh a year, the equivalent of 160.6 gallons of petrol. Typically up to 60% of potential energy is lost in the generation and transmission of electricity. So to produce the 5300 kWh used by our average household requires the burning of the equivalent of 401.5 gallons of petrol in a power station.

If it takes an adult male 330 hours of pedaling a stationary bike to produce the power in one gallon of petrol. It will take the same male 132500 hours of pedaling to produce the kind of power an average Irish household burns in electricity every year. If we asked our male to cycle 40 hours a week, that would take him 3312.5 weeks (no weeks off) or 63.7 years.

If we paid him a modest 10 euro an hour (and remember that 100 watts is lively cycling) it would cost over 1.3 million Euros in human labour. Right now you can buy this much electrical power in Ireland for 800 Euros. It can be bought for 800 Euros because it is produced with cheap fossil fuels. But the days of cheap fossil fuels are rapidly running out and very soon we will have to start paying the true cost of electricity.

Sustainable Energy Ireland’s booklet “Your Guide to Electricity in Your Home” is packed with electricity saving tips.
http://www.seai.ie/Publications/Your_Home_Publications/Your_guide_to_electricity_in_the_home.pdf

References
(1) The Electricity Supply Board  http://www.esb.ie
(2) http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1013935.shtml
(3) http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_home_energy.htm
(4) http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a545047.pdf

Why Jimmy Carter Was Right

As I write this it is 17.45 GMT on December 16th 2011. According to Met.ie the temperature at my nearest Met station in Ballyhaise, Co Cavan was 1 degree Celsius (33.8 F) at 1700 hours. By now the outside temperature here must be down to zero. The temperature in my kitchen is 21 degrees (69.8 F). A difference of 21 degrees.

A year ago around here the nighttime temperatures were falling to -15 c (5 F). On December 20th 2010 the coldest Irish day ever recorded was at the Ballyhaise Met Station, with the highest daytime temperature of only -9 c (15.8 F).

This winter has not yet produced temperatures this low so it's taking a lot less timber to heat the house. Normally we like to keep the kitchen at a balmy 21 or 22 Celsius on a winter night. But last winter during the very cold weather we put on an extra layer of clothes and settled for 17 c to save fuel.

When it was -15 outside and our target was 17 degrees indoors we were trying to keep a difference of 32 degrees. And the law of diminishing returns applies with a vengeance, when you want a difference of 32 degrees. It takes a lot more fuel than the 21 degree difference I have right now in my kitchen.

When you get to a 32 degree difference every extra degree you want has a huge extra cost in fuel. When we tried to keep our kitchen at 22 degrees instead of 17 degrees during the very cold weather of 2010, those extra five degrees almost doubled our fuel consumption.

The easiest way to save on heating costs is to accept a lower difference between internal and external temperatures, every degree less you accept will result in major fuel savings. President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s told the American people he was turning down the thermostat in the Oval Office and putting on an extra sweater to save fuel. This is still good advise.

The Joys of Long Distance Bike Travel

A long car journey is a simple thing, you decide the route, the time you want to arrive and away you go. Barring an accident or a breakdown you are pretty much guaranteed most of the time, to get to your destination without any drama and on time.

A long bike ride is always an adventure, you never know how it will go on the day. The single biggest variable is the weather and in particular the wind. A long day spent riding into a strong headwind is among the most unpleasant experiences in cycling. It’s a remorseless, tiring, morale sapping grind.

The Great Western Greenway

On the other hand a day spent cycling with a strong tail wind is one of the most uplifting experiences on a bike. Many years ago as a very fit young man I cycled from Galway city to Cavan in six hours, on a heavy steel bike, with maybe ten kilos of cargo. I took a one hour break in the middle, so in five hours on the bike I covered 100 miles. It was quite a buzz bombing along over the gently rolling countryside at 20 mph, alone with only the road and my own thoughts for company.

Temperature and rain can also impact your progress and morale on a long journey but nothing trumps wind.

Your physical and metal state will also have a major impact on a long bike journey. Starting a long journey well rested, and in good shape, is very different to being tired and suffering from a cold. If the journey requires several days on the bike, you must pace yourself. It’s no good to do 100 miles the first day, finish exhausted, and then be unable to go more than 40 miles the next day. Better to pace it and do 70 miles both days.

A Bridge on the Greenway

The key to covering very long distances on a bike is to keep the pace low enough that you never get tired, and to cover the distance by spending a lot of hours on the bike. Make full use of your gears, find a sustainable rhythm and keep it going no matter what the gradient. Slow down enjoy the journey, experience the countryside, its sights, sounds and smells. Take lots of breaks, eat well.

Nothing beats a bicycle for exploring country. You are moving along at a modest speed, out in the open, sitting up, you feel every little rise and fall in the land. You will feel the slightest gradient in your legs, if uphill the increased strain, if down the reduced strain. After you cycle over a tract of country you will know its shape intimately. After crossing it in a car, you hardly know it all.

The Raleigh Oakland Reviewed Part 2

When I last wrote about my Oakland in September I had done about 3000 km on it and I said it was due a full service. Well the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it did not get that full service. In fact it got no service at all.

In the meantime I kept cycling and put up over 2000 km more on it. But last week the bottom bracket (BB) began to squeak and developed some play. I stripped it down and discovered it was worn. So I changed it for a new sealed BB, which I bought in Halfords for 20 euros. Time will tell whether this low cost BB is good value.

My Raleigh Oakland fully serviced

When changing the BB I gave the bike a full service, so she is now fully roadworthy. I bought a tool kit from Halfords for 37 euros which had almost everything I needed for the service, except the tool to remove the cassette from the back wheel. This I also got in Halfords for 10 euros.

It probably took me five hours all told to do the service, I was learning as I went along and proceeding with extreme caution. Now I know how to do it and I have assembled a full tool kit, I could probably do a full service in an hour and half.

The chainwheels are showing a lot of wear but with care I should get another few thousand kilometers out of them. If what I am reading is right when I change the chainwheels I will also need to change the chain and the rear cassette.

Total cost of the Oakland so far (excluding accessories) 300 euros to buy, new back wheel 35 euros, new set of brake pads 3 euros, new bottom bracket 20 euros. Throw in a little grease and lub takes the cost to about 360 euros. Not bad for over 5000 km traveled.

I still love this machine and have no intention of changing it for a more expensive bike.

Oakland Reviewed Part 1
Oakland Reviewed Part 3
Oakland Reviewed Part 4
Oakland Reviewed Part 5
Oakland Reviewed Part 6

VP Components BC-73 68*118mm Bottom Bracket

http://www.halfords.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_11101_catalogId_15551_productId_159696_langId_-1_categoryId_212653#dtab

Halfords Bike Tool Kit

http://www.halfords.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_11101_catalogId_15551_productId_522915_langId_-1_categoryId_212639

Bikehut Freewheel Tool

http://www.halfords.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_11101_catalogId_15551_productId_714311_langId_-1_categoryId_212639

A Bird in the Hand

Until a few years ago I owned two guns. I had to sell them when I was really stuck for cash as I could not afford the license fee and the gun club membership. I originally bought them to hunt game for the table, but with all the costs involved I was not making them pay.

Shot at dawn Nov 30th

Fortunately living in the countryside I have not had to give up eating game, as many of my friends and neighbors are hunters. Some of them just hunt for recreation, they never eat it and some of them shoot more than they eat. So at this time of year there is a surplus of pheasant and duck in my area. A few of my neighbors will often drop in a freshly shot pheasant or duck when they are passing. In return I give them a bottle of whiskey at Christmas.

If you live in an area where there are hunters try and cultivate this kind of relationship with them. This is the cheapest and most convenient way to get a regular supply of game.

A lot of people hang game for a few days before plucking and gutting it. I puck and gut right way and get it into the fridge. If you have never plucked and gutted a bird try YouTube, see below for some links. It is a primitive and visceral business and you may make a mess of it the first few times. But the only tool required is a sharp knife and with a little practice you soon get the hang of it. Needless to say take extreme care with sharp knifes and always cut away from yourself.

5 minutes later ready to cook

I usually cook game the next day. I parboil for 15 to 20 minutes and finish it off in a Pyrex dish in the oven covered with tin foil, this keeps it from drying out.

Unlike buying meat in a shop you never know what wild meat will taste like. The flavour will vary depending on what the animal was feeding on, its health and age. At worst the meat may be tough, but at its best there is nothing to beat wild meat for flavour. And wild meat is all lean.

I never use any kind of flavorings or sauce, just the meat served with a few spuds and veg and a little butter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmoTthxTnv8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_BVYOhCocw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ddDzGGtiU&feature=related

First in the Country then in the Town

Back in September CNN had a story about the rising poverty in American suburbs. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be poor in a suburb. I have experienced poverty in the city and in the country. But in both there are advantages that take the hard edge off poverty. Being poor in the suburbs must be a living hell, they have all the disadvantages of urban living but none of its advantages, and they have none of the advantages of rural living.

Part of my Kitchen Garden

As a young man I lived in Dublin in the late 1980s during the last Irish recession. I lived in a single roomed bedsit in the city centre and survived on welfare. But I managed my money well and took full advantage of the cities amenities. In a small city like Dublin everything was within walking distance, so I had no transport costs.

My big shop of the week was done late on Saturday afternoon in Moore Street, the cities traditional open air market. There was no market on Sunday so all perishable goods like vegetables, fruits and baked goods could be picked up for small money. Traders would accept almost any offer for goods, as soon as the market closed they would have to dump them anyway.

Dublin is full of great libraries, galleries, and museums, which I made full use of. As a young man who liked alcohol the opening of exhibitions were always a good source of free wine and entertainment. In Stephens Green (the main park in the city centre) there would be lunchtime recitals by brass bands, more free entertainment. There were always good buskers on Grafton Street. Cinemas had half price afternoon shows. I was poor but life was good.

Living in the countryside is the easiest option for a poor person. While it does not have the cultural life of the city it has a lot more opportunities for foraging resources. I have written already about foraging firewood (see Windfall in September) but free food is the real treasure on offer in the countryside.

The bounty starts in spring with nettles which make an excellent soup and sorrell which is a good salad leaf. But the real easy foraging comes in autumn, when the hedgerows are full of fruit like blackberries, crabapples, raspberries, wild strawberries etc. My brother is an avid collector of edible wild fungus in autumn. There are lots of neglected fruit trees in the Irish countryside.

All year round wild game can be shot and trapped. The rivers and lakes are full of fish. If you live near the seashore shellfish and edible seaweed are available. In the countryside it’s never to hard to get some land and start growing your own food. It’s always possible to keep to small livestock like poultry, rabbits or goats.

Lots of people will tell you that it's impossible to live in the countryside without a car, but if you are fit and have lots of time a bicycle is all the transport you need.

The CNN story

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/23/news/economy/poverty_suburbs/index.htm?iid=HP_LN

Bicycles are faster than cars

In the early 1970s Ivan Illich wrote
The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour.

My Raleigh Oakland a cheap hybrid

So a bike is a lot faster than a car when you measure all the time required to keep a car going. I ride a 15 kg cheap steel hybrid bike and over level ground, for a sustained period I can get three times the speed of a car on my bike. Over a short journey I can do four times this speed.

Even with a full touring load of 15 kg I can do twice the speed of a car and cover 80 miles a day. And I am almost 50 years old, when I was in my twenties I could cover more than 100 miles a day cycle touring.

If you do most of your driving in a city then the real speed you achieve with your car is probably a lot less than 5 mph. A bike also allows door to door travel, no driving round town looking for parking or walking to the final destination. No sitting in traffic jams. In cities nothing beats the bike for speed.

I bought my Raleigh Oakland in the June for 300 euro, since then I’ve spent about 50 euros on spares and maybe three or four hours servicing and I have done over 3000 miles on it. It will cost about 100 euros in servicing costs to do 6000 miles a year and keep the bike road worthy. I will be doing all own servicing, if I was to pay someone else to service the bike the cost will at least double. But that would still only be 200 euros a year.

A very high percentage of car journeys are under five miles, an ideal distance for the bike. This kind of short car journey with a cold engine uses a lot of fuel and results in a lot of engine wear. Apart from the money saved the exercise and fresh air will leave you feeling invigorated. In the long run you will live a longer and healthier life and save on medical bills.

The bike is I believe humanities greatest invention and as we pass peak oil its importance will only grow. And just to finish here’s Ivan Illich again on the bike.

Cycling on the Great Western Greenway

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.


Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car.

Home Accounts Software

We have been keeping household accounts for about ten years. To keep control of spending and make sure  we know where the money is going to and coming from we record everytime money goes in or out. For many years we done this with Excel spreadsheets but since the start of this year we have been using an accounts program Simple Home Budget. Cost 29 dollars 95 cents, and available for 30 day free trial

http://www.home-budget-software.com

Cheap Fast Food

A great favourite for dinner in our house is pasta and tuna. Everyone likes it and as the cook I really like it because it takes about ten minutes and very little work to prepare. It is also a very cheap dinner, all the prices below are current Lidl prices. To feed four I use the following

250 grams of Pasta 0.25 cents
1 tin of Tuna 0.80 cents
A few spoons of Mayonnaise 0.50 cents

Boil water, add pasta, cook for 10 minutes. Drain, add tuna and mayonnaise, stir it up. Add a little fresh parsley if you have it. Serve.

Total time ten minutes, total cost 1 euro 55 cents.

The Real Cost of a Sandwich

During the Irish economic bubble I worked for a busy fencing company in a small town. I was the only member of staff who brought a home made lunch to work. All my colleagues went down town at lunchtime, and bought sandwiches in a supermarket deli.

Over lunch one day we discussed the merits of buying lunch versus making it at home. I said that for the cost of one deli sandwich I could make lunch for five days. A colleague suggested the deli sandwich was more convenient. Wrong I said, it takes me about two minutes to make a sandwich each morning. To get a deli sandwich I would have to go downtown, queue at the deli counter, wait for the sandwich to be made, queue at the checkout and get back to the office. This would take ten maybe fifteen minutes.

Not only did it take time to get a deli sandwich, it took time to earn the money to pay for it. Given my rate of take home pay at the time it would have taken twenty minutes labour to pay for a deli sandwich. Add ten minutes to get the sandwich and the total cost in time would have been thirty minutes a day, or two and half hours per week.

It took twenty minutes labour to pay for a weeks worth of home made sandwiches and ten minutes a week to make them. I was investing thirty minutes a week to pay the lunch bill. My colleagues deli sandwiches were costing them at least thirty minutes a day.

In fact it was even more than that, because they usually bought a donut or Danish pastry and maybe a soft drink. In reality the deli sandwich was costing about forty minutes a day or three and half hours a week. Over a year about one hundred and sixty eight hours, or twenty one working days, or over four working weeks, just to pay the lunch bill.

One of the most extraordinary things about the modern world is how much inconvenience people will endure in the pursuit of the illusion of convenience. When you spend money in pursuit of convenience, don’t forgot to count the real cost in time and money. A tank of oil may seem convenient compared to cutting and burning timber. It is convenient to flick a switch and heat your house, but don’t forget all the hours of labour it takes to keep the oil tank filled. When calculating the true costs never forget that time and money are interchangable resources.

Harvesting Sunlight

As I write this I’m sitting in my house it’s late morning on the 7th of November and the kitchen is 22.5 degrees centigrade (71 Fahrenheit). Outside it’s 4 degrees. The only source of heat apart from a tiny amount of my own body heat and the waste heat from the computer I’m typing on, is the sunlight streaming through the windows.

11am November 7th

Our house is only 800 sq foot and well insulated. Most of the glass in the building is in the south gable and when we layed out the building we orientated it to maximise solar gain.

A lot of winter days in this part of the world are like today, under clear skys the nights are frosty and the days are sunny. By harvesting sunlight with a passive solar design, we do not need to light the stove until dark. By the time the stove is lit the house will still be over 20 degrees and a little firewood will keep it warm at night.

If you have already built your house it maybe possible to add some kind of passive solar collection, like a sunroom. If you are thinking of building a new house, think seriously about making you house a passive solar building. Space heating is expensive but sunlight is free.

Passive Solar Design

Solar Gain

Why Scott Olsen is my hero

I grew up during the latter days of the Cold War, and as a European I was always very aware that my freedom from Soviet tyranny was guaranteed by the military might of the USA. I grew up on a diet of John Wayne movies and all that went with that. As a European child of the 1970s my barometer of heroic was the US marines in the “Sands of Iwo Jima”.

As a young man I developed a much more cynical view of US military policy, but I never lost my admiration for the service men and women who had to carry out the imperial military policy. While my generation was lost in a myopic, narcissistic, nebulous, consumerist culture those who joined the military services lived their lives by a different code.

The greatest irony is that the moronic, self centered, robbers barons of Wall Street can only plunder the world because they are protected by the incredible self sacrifice of service men and women. When Thatcher and Regan assumed that every person in society would act to protect their own self interest and encouraged us all to follow that model, as most of us did, the military upheld a different ethic.

While war is all about killing your fellow man and woman, there is at the heart of the military ethic an ancient tribal idea about self sacrifice for the common good. When compared to the self service the rest of have been up to for the last 30 years, there is something heroic about the self sacrifice of service men and women.

Scott Olsen is an idealistic young man, he joined an organization dedicated to protecting his nation and put himself in harms way for the common good. There is no doubt the war in Iraq was a half baked imperialist adventure, dreamed up by the greatest collection of cynical morons that ever governed a great country. All the negative things you can say about the Iraq war are true. And yet that does not detract from the heroic nature of Scott Olsen’s sacrifice in going to Iraq.

The Irish patriot martyr Terence McSwiney who died after 74 days on hunger strike, during the 1919-21 Irish War of Independence, said that “victory in this war will not go to those who can inflict the most suffering, but to those who can endure the most suffering”.

Cut to Oakland, October 25th 2011, there stands Scott Olsen, Marine Corp war veteran, standing in harms way, between the people and the police. Like Gandhi he does not have a gun, he is placid, bearing witness. He displayed physical and mental courage in going to Iraq. That night in Oakland he displayed moral courage. There is a strange serenity about him in the moments before he is shot.

Next moment he is on the ground with blood pumping from his head and the cops throw a flash grenade at those seeking to assist him. I don’t know why Scott Olsen captures it all so clearly for me, it’s just iconic, an image of a society at war with its finest, most idealistic young people.

Lincoln said a “house divided against itself cannot long stand”. We in the western world are now at war with our young people. They are on the streets telling us they have no future living in this system, a system that keeps many of us middle aged and elderly people in comfort. His heroic sacrifice is a measure by which our generation (I'm 48) can gauge our failure to act, when we were his age.

A very wise man about 25 years ago (a year before Scott Olsen was born) told me that for every easy decision we make now, those who come after us will have to make an equal and opposite hard decision. I thought of this when I saw Scott Olsen’s blood, he is paying the price I and my generation were too cowardly or stupid to pay. He is bearing witness to our shortcomings. His suffering calls on us all to act. He is my hero. Ooh-rah

A Bed of Leeks

When we moved into our house nine years ago, I built some raised beds for vegetable production. I have never dug the beds since, just mulched them once a year and used a small hand cultivator to make a seed bed.

The photo shows a bed of leeks on november 1st 2011. These leeks were sown direct in April. I priced leeks last week and at current cost this bed of leeks is worth about 30 euros.

For about twenty five years from the late 1980s until 2009 there was no really cold winter weather in Ireland and an incredible range of vegetables would thrive in the Irish winter. But in the recent two cold winters leeks are one of the few vegetables that survived in my garden.

In our household leek and potato soup is a standard winter dish.

Two Cheap Dinners

I do pretty much all the cooking in our house and we never buy processed food. In late summer and early autumn we eat a lot of food from our garden and orchard and some wild food, like blackberries. But for most of the year a lot of our food comes from our local branch of the German supermarket chain Lidl.

When we have no home produced food and depend totally on bought food, feeding our household of four costs just over ten euros per day.

Here are two chicken recipes, based on a five euro pack of chicken breasts. These two recipes are a particular favourites in our house. Chicken chow mein and chicken curry, both of these recipes will provide a main meal for four people at a cost of just over five euros. Take out the chicken and you have nice vegeterian meals at a cost of about two euro fifty cents or about sixty two cents per head.

Ingredients

Chicken	€5.00
Rice	€0.40
Noodles	€0.60
Mushrooms	€0.99
Onions	€0.60
Carrots	€0.20
Garlic	€0.30
Curry	€1.00
Soy Sause	€0.20
Milk	€0.50
Flour	€0.20
Olive Oil	€0.30
	€10.29

Chicken Curry

Fry two carrots, two onions and three or four cloves of garlic on a hot stove for several minutes. Add curry powder, we like it hot and add three heaped dessert spoons of medium hot curry powder. Fry for another few minutes. Add a half litre of milk and flour to thicken. Leave to simmer.

Fry two chicken breasts and chop into small pieces. Add to curry. Chop half a punnet of mushrooms and add to curry. Bring four cups of water to the boil and add one cup of rice. Boil rice until cooked. Serve

Chicken Chow Mein

Fry two carrots, two onions, three or four cloves of garlic and a half a punnet of mushrooms on a hot stove for several minutes. Add soy sauce to taste.

In another pan fry off two chicken breasts and chop into small pieces. Add to vegetables.

Boil water, cover packet of noodles in boiling water. Wait five minutes. Serve

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Last January we bought a Morphy Richards bread makers in Argos for 107 euros, it currently sells for 116 euros. With the bread maker it costs 1.85 euros to make a two pound loaf, we bake about one of these a day. This works out perfect for our four person household and keeps us in daily bread.

We use Odlums strong white flour which currently costs 2.69 euros for a two kilo bag, which will make 3.3 loaves. McDougalls yeast cost 2.95 euros a pack, which will make 16 loaves. The other main ingredient is Marvel powered milk at 1.98 euros for 198 grams, enough to make about 6.6 loaves. A pinch of salt, 4 spoons of oil and a spoon of sugar complete the ingredients. Total cost of ingredients 1.55 euros.

It takes about 1.5 units of electricity to mix, prove and bake the loaf, cost about 30 cents including vat. Total cost 1.85 euros per day for bread. Or 12.95 euros a week, or 56 euros a month, or 673.95 euros a year.

I love the bread maker, it takes all the skill and work out of making bread. Just throw in the ingredients, set the program and three hours later it’s ready. In some post peak oil future when I have to make bread in my solid fuel range I will think back wistfully to the age of plenty when I had a bread maker. This is one kind of modern convenience I will miss.

The Morphy Richards comes with a 2 year guarantee. Ours has now made around 300 perfect loaves and has worked flawlessly so far.


Available at Argos

Morphy Richards

Windfall

A neighbor now in her 80s told me that when she was a child in Co Kerry, every child in the parish would be up bright and early the morning after a storm. The storm would bring down tree branches and children would race to find them and get them home before someone else did.

I decided to follow this tradition this week and took my handcart out of storage to go forage for windfall timber in the aftermath of hurricane Katia which brought high winds to Ireland on Monday September 12th. Unlike when my neighbor was a child I had lots of time to find and collect windfall timber as no one else bothers.

Picture is a load of ash collected about 400 meters from home. Not a huge amount of firewood but it only took about 10 minutes and a little effort to collect it. On top of the load is my bow saw which I used for the job. For a small job like this the bow saw is far quicker than the chainsaw, it does not have to be fueled and started like a chainsaw.

The Raleigh Oakland Reviewed

Last June I bought a Raleigh Oakland, a low cost steel frame hybrid bike. The Oakland is not light, weighing in at 15.5 kg, but it’s a rugged, stable and comfortable machine to ride. It has 700c x 28 wheels, 18 speed shimano gears, mudguards, chain guard, and rear carrier. It has a upright riding position, and a comfortable saddle. The wide gear range makes it a good bike for hilly country.

In three months I’ve done over 3000 km on it, including a 500 km tour in the West of Ireland. I have ridden it at speeds of up to 53 kph over rough Irish back roads. I have carried up to 15kg of cargo on it. In all cases it handeled well.

On the first day of my tour with 15 kg of gear (and me at 70 kg) aboard, three back spokes broke. A new wheel cost 35 euro and after shedding 5 kg of gear I completed the tour with no further problem. Next year I will try touring again with 15kg of cargo.

The bike has not been serviced other than the wheel change, the front deralier cable was tightened, the back brake blocks replaced, and a drop of lub on the chain and after 3000 km it is still running well. It is now due a full service.

This bike is amazing value for money being available online for as little as 230 euro. 

So how do you sell a bike this cheap, by compromising on the chainwheels, which are poor. I have been very careful while changing gear and after 3000 km the chainwheels still have lots of service left in them. When they wear out I will replace them with quality components.

After 3000 km I love this bike. You could spend a lot more on a hybrid bike but I doubt you will beat the Oakland on value for money. There is a great Russian saying, the perfect is the enemy of the good enough, this to me sums up the Oakland.

Oakland Reviewed Part 2
Oakland Reviewed Part 3
Oakland Reviewed Part 4
Oakland Reviewed Part 5
Oakland Reviewed Part 6

Got mine from Clarkes of Cavan, ask for Stephen or Martin

To buy online

Raleigh Ireland

Specs

Frame Size: 19 inch and 22 inch

Wheel size: 700c x 28

Gender: Unisex Adult

Material: Chromoly Steel

Gearset: Shimano 18speed with Revoshifters

Brakeset: Powerful alloy V Brakes

Wheelset: Alloy rims running on 700c x 28c trekking tyres

Controls: Alloy adjustable stem with riser style handlebar

Finishing kit: Comfort spring type saddle

Frame: Raleigh steel trekking frame

Forks: Rigid steel unicrown

My Oakland on the Great Western Greenway, Co Mayo August 2011

Always Read The Label

In the year 2000 our household decided we had to do something about the ever rising cost of living. Our first step was an electricity audit. We listed  every appliance in the house that used electricity and the power required to run it.

The most amazing discovery we made concerned the two TVs in the house, we had an 18” and a 14” TV. The 18” drew 40 watts, but the 14” drew 60 watts. The bigger TV gave us a bigger picture for less power. It was a valuable lesson, always read the label and ever since when buying electrical appliances we have always checked how much power the machine uses.

This quite simple to do, on the back of all electrical appliances is a label or a plate, the key figure is watts. If watts aren’t there look for volts and amps, multiply volts by amps and you get watts. A 1000 watt appliance will use one kWh or one unit of electricity if ran for one hour.

We replaced the 60 watt 14” TV ten years ago with a 30 watt 14” TV. We got exactly the same service from the new TV but at half the power consumption. Memory fails me and I can’t recall how much we paid for the 30 watt TV, but I am confident the investment made to save that 30 watts has long repaid itself.

We took other measures, like making sure no appliances were left on standby, loading the washing machine fully, turning off lights and constantly thinking about how we were using power. Combined these measures in one month, cut our electricity consumption by one third, from about 300 kWh per month to 200 kWh per month.

In the following months we replaced our light bulbs and other inefficient appliances and continued to think actively about how we used power. Six months later we had reduced our power consumption to about 100 kWh per month. We had exactly the same services but were achieving this with one third the electricity.

New Woodlands in Ireland

Birch Wood

The source of our households firewood is a nearby bog. It was abandoned in the 1960s and since the 1970s a pioneer wood of birch, willow and rowan has grown up. We have been harvesting it for over twenty years. The only practical way to get wood out of these old bogs due to huge bogholes is to carry it by hand onto solid ground. From there it’s moved home on a handcart

Most of our harvest is birch, a good hardwood timber. Not as good as oak but vastly superior to spruce. Birch will not spit in an open fire and is best split when fresh, as it hardens when seasoned. It has a waterproof bark so if left in long poles it will not season it will rot. It is surpassed only by hazel for charcoal making. Howard Hughes monster plane the Spruce Goose was built from birch.

Willow is the second most common wood we harvest. Harder to get at, as it grows in the wettest ground. Like birch it is good hard wood but with a higher moisture content it requires more seasoning. It will not spit in an open fire. In the recent freezing winter weather willow was more accessible as the ground was frozen. The raw material for cricket bats.

Willow cut last winter

Rowan or Mountain Ash is the third kind of wood we harvest, usually found on the higher and dryer ground, it is a poorer quality hardwood. It has a very distinctive aroma.

Harvested sustainably this kind of Irish woodland is capable of producing vast amounts of firewood over many generations. The secret to achieving this is coppicing. Cutting the trees back and letting them sprout again, and repeating the process a decade or two later. When a tree with a developed root system is cut, it shoots very quickly and produces a lot of new timber in a relatively short time. Willow managed this way will give a useful harvest in ten years, birch in twenty.

We cut this section last winter

In Ireland there are literally thousands of acres of scrub willow and birch wood on old bogs. There are many more acres of scrub oak, ash, sycamore and hazel on steep hillsides all over the island. There is also a vast amount of unmanaged forestry planted in recent decades, much of which will be only be suitable for pulping or firewood. In addition there are immense amounts of timber in Ireland’s ditches (hedgerows).

Ireland has one of the best climate on earth for producing timber. We have vast timber reserves suitable for firewood, we have vast amounts of unused labour and we have an energy and economic crisis. How long can we continue to ignore this huge store of potential energy, this store of tangible and real assets.

Willow ready to cut

The Kelly Kettle

I’m onto my third Kelly Kettle (KK). The first was a present from my mother six years ago. When we discovered how efficient it was we threw out the electric kettle and used the KK whenever we needed a small amount of hot water and it was not available from our Stanley range.

Brand new kettle with all accessories

In the winter the range is going every day and evening, so the KK gets a break. But in Spring or Autumn if the day is sunny we don’t need to light a fire till evening, so the KK provides hot water, for tea and coffee.

In the summer we use it many times everyday, not just for boiling water but for cooking. My porridge gets cooked on it every morning; it’s ideal for cooking a few spuds, or a little pasta or rice for a salad. The frying pan will fry an egg and a few sausages. If we want to cook a full dinner we still have to light the range, but some days we get by with just the KK. As we have no immersion heater we also boil water for washing dishes and bodies.

After five years of very heavy use we finally wore out our first KK last year. We bought a new one and it continues to work as hard as it predecessor. If you are a “normal” user who only uses it for leisure pursuits like fishing, you will get decades of use from a KK.

Ready to start cooking
breakfast

I’m off cycle touring with my daughter next week and for cooking and making tea and coffee I’ve just bought a new KK with all the accessories. Ideal for the job as it weights only 1.5 kg.

When ever we travel a long journey by car the KK provides tea and coffee on the road. We’ve taken it to the bog, the wood and the beach. We’ve brewed up in national parks and in urban car parks. If you use bone dry wood and manage it carefully there is no smoke.  I'm off to London in a few weeks with my son, the KK will also be coming. My cousins have even used it in a boat while fishing, they say you get a lot of looks from other anglers when a plume of smoke suddenly rises from a boat out on the lake.

For fuel we use birch wood but just about anything that will burn will do. On the KK website they talk about dried camel dung being used in the desert. No matter where you go you will find suitable fuel.

Breakfast will soon be ready

In the last six years the KK has saved us a lot of money. I have no idea how much and I don’t really care, I just love its elegant simplicity and the fact that I can cook meals and brew my coffee with a few scraps of timber. I also love the fact that I am supporting a great west of Ireland company who have been making a great product for four generations and who are now with the Internet selling it all over the world.

For more information and to order

http://www.kellykettle.com/

For even more information try Youtube and search for “Kelly Kettle”. 

My Friend Stanley

The best money I ever spent was buying our Stanley Number 8 range. We got it second hand ten years ago for 280 euros, from a woman who was getting rid of it and replacing it with an oil burner. This machine supplies our household with all most all of its space heating, water heating and cooking.

Our house is a passive solar building so the sun provides a good deal of space heat. We have no electric water heaters, immersion or kettle, so all our hot water comes from the Stanley, except what comes from our Kelly Kettle. We have no other means of cooking except the Stanley.

For fuel we use birchwood that we cut about half a mile from home, on an abandoned bog. Due to the kindness of our neighbours we do not have to pay for this wood, except the fuel to cut it and the labour to haul it out and get it home. At last years oil prices it cost about eight euros worth of oil to cut a years supply of timber. We draw the timber home on a handcart.

I have never counted how many hours labour it takes to cut, draw, chop and stack a years supply of firewood, but it’s a lot. However I don’t mind, it keeps us fit, get us out in the open air and is a way for our children to make a real contribution to the households wealth.

Our Kelly Kettle

Of course the Stanley has to be lit and fed, ashes have to be emptied and every few weeks it needs cleaning. But it allows us to heat our house, heat our water and cook our food at an annual cash cost of only 8 euros.

Yes it takes a lot hard work, but then so does earning the money to buy a tank of heating oil. And if oil prices double it takes twice as much labour to buy the tank of oil. It will still require the same amount of labour to save a years supply of firewood, so in this regard our household is protected from the perils of fuel price inflation.

Our Handcart

Kelly Kettles available from http://www.kellykettle.com/

Handcart available from http://www.kaiserkraft.ie/shop/product/M8852/Two-wheel+hand+truck.html?article=704631&article=704632