Happy Green Beings

While reading Michael Perry’s book Coop, it struck me that our goal to grow blueberry pies in our yard may require much more work than I’m willing to do for that far off benefit. No, I don’t think that genetic engineers can produce a bush that fruits whole wheat pie crusts sprinkled with sweetener and stuffed with blueberries. I prefer my ingredients from heritage versions of plants anyway. But the growing of blueberries appears to require not only clearing of our overgrown landscaping, but bed prep to boot.

I’m mostly fine with the clearing part other than the fact that it will leave far too little vegetation between myself and the road noise rising from pavement both near and not so far. The ash trees that shade the area are destined to fall prey to the emerald ash bore anyway, so they may as well become a source of firewood or full dimension lumber before infestation. That’s part of why the solar hot water panels to their North and West made sense in spite of what the solar site assessment showed. The question for me is, how can I avoid all of that bending and digging that creates good fertile ground. Thanks to recent wanderings across the pages of Mr. Perry’s most recent book, I’m reconsidering the use of chickens as weeders and tillers of soil in the form of a chicken tractor. I see a road trip to the Restore in my near future.

Now before you go and contact your animal rights persons to let them know I’ve gone bonkers, what Mr. Perry describes is a mobile cage in which young chickens do their natural foraging for worms, insects, and vegetation. Their scratching effectively tills the soil while they get a fresh plot of ground to feed from. The chickens fertilize the soil, doing what comes naturally following their consumption of worms, insects and vegetation. The entire prospect is a win-win. The tricky part is for the chickens to visit long enough to effectively do the garden prep. So, by building a chicken “tractor” cage that will keep them safe, and then sliding it along the ground into positions where garden beds are to be formed, one can avoid the tilling of soil “man”ually.

There is some risk here, since it involves the use of chickens. Somewhere, one has to come by a number of chickens for a long enough period of time to do the square footage required for the bed. Our customary dimensions are 5 feet wide so we can do most of the weeding and harvesting without trampling upon roots. But then again, there is the care of the chickens, and what you do with them once they have dug your blueberry beds…

One of the concurrent story lines in Coop involves the construction of a chicken coop during the acquisition of chicks and construction of the chicken tractor. I defer to our poultry expert, Kirk on the startup of urban chicken rearing. He’s on his second year. Send encouragement, and perhaps he’ll share some of his expertise. Now, what do they have at that Restore that could become a chicken tractor?

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Here comes Fall. That 2002 Chevy Prizm sitting in our garage was rated 41mpg highway and 36 city back when we bought it, and now has 107,000 miles on it. Following collisions with other vehicles, insurance funds paid to have it fixed, worked upon, hopefully it will be fixed for good this time so we don’t have to shop for a vehicle to replace it this year. But the Prizm was the more recent model of our two gas powered vehicles, and the one that typically sits in the garage when I take the bike to school. When that happens it is often used for shorter trips by our teenager (refer back to the third sentence.) When looking for a more nimble car to replace our older van, something that will go through snow drifts on Winter mid night midwifery calls, it seems the gas mileage plummets.

The 2000 Honda Odyssey van that we want to replace doesn’t get as many miles per gallon (rated 18/26 mpg), and we would like to improve things when moving to a smaller car with better handling characteristics. But it seems the best we can do in a wagon is 20/26 for the Subaru Outback. Wouldn’t you expect that the technology would have improved gas mileage more in a decade? There is an electric SUV promised by Phoenix Motorcars in 2008 that can be pre-ordered now, if you bypass your browser’s security. I’m not sure it is the best choice since the Amish families who live about an hour’s drive away don’t have electrical outlets to plug it into, and it is supposed to go up to 100 miles. That is close. Maybe tow a trailer with a gas powered generator? Or maybe move a bit closer to Amish territory.

It would be tempting since EESA created a tax credit for vehicles that have at least four wheels and draw propulsion using a rechargeable traction battery with at least four kilowatt hours of capacity. For 2009, the minimum credit is $2,500 and the credit tops out at $7,500 to $15,000, depending on the weight of the vehicle and the capacity of the battery. If only we could buy that vehicle this year.

I keep thinking about that Chevy Prizm, and how far 5 people can go on a couple of hundred dollars. At the time we purchased it, I figured the Toyota Prius would have to save us more than 10 miles per gallon to be worth the $10,000 more it cost back then. Even though the new Honda Insight’s 40/43 improves significantly on the Prizm’s city driving mileage, it is mainly due to regenerative braking and still sacrifices winter driving. We’re looking for efficiency and capacity in a vehicle that handles winter roads. I seem to remember that the old Volvo wagons had better mileage, but I guess they’ve become a luxury car with all of the power to go with it. Too bad so many people associate their own power with the drivetrain of their automobile.

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Since our computer began playing possum early last Spring, we’ve been searching for green alternatives to nursing along the old desktop or just giving in and buying a whole new system. Compounding the problem has been the wife’s departure for a month of clinical training taking her laptop with her. By nature, laptops and netbooks consume less power because they are partly rated on battery life. You could search and find any number of options there if you like. But they also tend to be expensive for the technology you receive, you pretty much have to buy the whole package, and when you are done, throw away a whole package. So with a mind toward reducing, I’ld begun talking to my eldest son (the resident tech wiz) as he handed down equipment and software to get us through the summer. During our discussions he told me about an exciting new product that would come out before August.

So, most of the summer, we were waiting for the availability of the $200 Zotac Ion ITX A Mini motherboard. We ordered one and it came in last week. Now as far as motherboards go, it is relatively expensive for an Atom based system. Atom is the brand of processor in most netbook computers. It doesn’t come with an integrated screen or keyboard. But we had the full sized versions from our desktop which I prefer. We still need to add DDR2 memory, a mountable mini itx case sans power supply, and a hard drive which all comes to about $150. Yes, we considered a netbook for $350, but we would be stuck with a 10″ screen and poor internet video capabilities. No, we won’t be able to surf at Starbucks on battery power. But then again, we could unplug the brick and pick up the monitor with pc attached and go somewhere that has wifi and an outlet. What came in the package runs on very little power, and has awesome video capability. It is recommended for use as a home theater personal computer. The motherboard includes the graphics circuitry, and the package includes an external 90 Watt power supply (the brick) similar to what you would use to charge your laptop battery. It even has Wifi on board, and 6 USB ports. The case we found is small enough to mount on the back of our LCD screen, and can be purchased with the mounting hardware for very little extra.

Now, there are lots of mini motherboards, so what makes this unit so special? Due to the integrated Ion 9300 graphics circuitry, this tiny motherboard can stream video from the internet, which it does it without taking up much space, fits in a small cabinet, won’t require liquid cooling or lots of fans (heat = inefficiency in electronics), and it may even run most video games without so much as a fan. In fact, it resembles a video game system in size. You may want to use the fan that is included, which quietly pulls air across the heat sink. But the fact that it isn’t required means this unit is very efficient in terms of energy use, and without the fan, the only noise comes from the hard drive.

I didn’t do any checking on Zotac’s reputation as a manufacturer in terms of it’s environmental record. It also takes a bit of DIY to assemble even a mini computer, but you would be surprised how little. We’re going without an optical drive attached once it is set up with linux. If you are like me, you have working computer parts you hate to throw in a landfill, and you may prefer to minimize the footprint on your desktop. Since everybody is posting digital video these days, the Zotac Ion ITX Mini A may be a pretty good option.

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