Incredible Generosity of Cryptogon Readers
August 25th, 2007Three of Cryptogon’s most generous supporters sent the following contributions over the last few days:
JW $300 (Yes, that’s $300.)
AS $75
MW $20
What will we do with this money?
Our ute (pickup) failed its warrant of fitness, again. * sigh * For the 99% of you who aren’t in New Zealand, vehicles here have to be declared road worthy every six months. The person who did ours was extra strict this time, so we went away with a list of things that needed to be fixed before it would pass, including a new ball joint. I fixed everything else, but I couldn’t do the ball joint. Then I filled the ute up with petrol (gas). That was a nearly NZ$300 day. We haven’t done the math, but it would probably be shocking to calculate the cost per kilometer driven on that ute. Registration, fuel, insurance, warrants, failed warrant repairs… We only use the thing for occasional heavy loads/animal transportation. Sometimes, we don’t drive it for weeks. But when you need that thing, you need it. The moral of the story is that having to participate in the car economy without a “normal” level of income can be frustrating.
I need to get the chook (chicken) house built ASAP. It’s ridiculous that I haven’t done this yet, especially as eggs represent a large portion of our food expenses. I look at the cost of materials and I go into a bit of a state of denial. But there’s no escaping the cost of eggs, which actually just went up, again. We don’t buy chicken to eat very often. It’s too expensive. When I eye the delicious looking chicken parts in the store, Becky gently reminds me that, “We need to get that chook house built, don’t we…” If I want to feast on chook carcass, it’s going to be me out there with a hatchet and an Australorp rooster.
We need large barrels to make compost teas. I’ve seen these barrels in town and they cost NZ$50 used. This seems insane for used, food grade plastic barrels, but there’s exactly one option up here, and that’s it. We want to mix up some lovely cow manure tea to pour on our compost piles and garden beds.
We paid our rates (property taxes) in full and early to get the discount. But get this, we make so little money that we qualify for an additional discount on our rates! We applied for and got nearly the theoretical maximum credit of NZ$500 off our rates bill.
We also must pull the trigger on the solar water heater. That’s such a big deal, we’ve just been in denial about that as well. I don’t know if others of you feel like this, but I know people who lived through the Depression, and I’m not saying that Becky and I are that frugal, but even though we probably have more cash saved than most people in New Zealand, I pick up avocados in the store, look at the price and set them down again. Then I look at the cost of that solar water thing, and installation. It’s three to four grand, minimum. But we have to do it. Our hot water is costing something like NZ$70 per month. Just the hot water. It’s criminal. (We actually pay the highest electricity costs in all of New Zealand. It is E X P E N S I V E!) I looked at various half ass methods of doing this and by the time you get through screwing around, you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on an outlaw piece of crap that won’t work anything like an evacuated tube deal. We’ve just got to do it right and we’re going to have to pay.
Well, these are some of the high finance matters that are going on here at the Cryptogon/Farmlet Headquarters.
Thanks to JW, AS, MW and all Cryptogon and Farmlet contributors for helping to support our work/efforts/antics!
Sheesh! Your electricity really is murder in NZ! The portion of my electric bill that goes to the water heater is around $20 a month. I know because I shut off the hot water heater for a couple of months for plumbing repairs.
As a stop-gap measure, you might want to put a switch on your water-heater, so you could turn it on only for a couple of hours each evening for bath water. You could also keep it turned off at the breaker, but modern breakers are such peices of crap that flipping them on and off means that you’ll have to replace the breaker often–and a new breaker is almost as expensive as a month’s water bill.
I hope you’ll keep us updated about that chicken coop.
I appear to be a retard, where poultry is concerned. Or maybe, like you, I just can’t afford the palatial, high-security accomodations these critters need to keep them safe from predators.
Apparently you must have a fence that will keep out foxes and stray dogs, and it must be lined with chicken-wire to keep your baby chicks in. The pen apparently needs to be completely covered with still more chicken-wire, otherwise the hawks will swoop down and get your poultry.
Then, they need a sturdy shelter at night. And it needs to have a floor that will keep out digging-type predators. A concrete slab would probably do it.
What do you think of a straw-bale coop on a concrete slab? It could have a tin roof.
I love poultry, but I can’t seem to keep them around here.
Why bother with all that insurance, registration, warrant of fitness and drivers licence when you don’t have a normal level of income? If it’s criminal to charge so much for something then why not be a so called criminal too and forgo all those unnecessary payments. It maybe time to invest in a horse and cart.
@ sharon
By flipping the hot water cylinder off, it will just have to grunt really hard to heat the water when you need it. Our cylinder is fully insulated, so it pretty much only turns on when we use the water. I have turned it off when we’ve gone away for a few days. But that’s almost never.
Hopefully this isn’t more info that people wanted to know, but we only bathe every few days in the winter, unless we’re particularly filthy from working outside.
Re: Chicken coop: Yep, you seem to know what they need alright, but straw bale would be a very bad choice for us. We live in an extremely high humidity and moisture environment. Straw bale might be possible here, but it’s not anything we’re going to try to pull off.
@ steveh
Good question. In remote areas like this, many people ignore the rules. But there are frequent sweeps and checkpoints for warrants up here. Although I’ve never encountered one, we hear about them all the time. We probably haven’t gone through one because we hardly drive! It’s well known that anyone driving a car without current WOF or Rego shouldn’t park in the Pak N Save parking lot, for example, because the cops might be checking. Pak N Save is where EVERYONE goes for groceries up here. The cops know this. So, when people come out of the hills in their creaking, rusted buckets, they’re most likely going to go to Pak N Save.
Our ute looks like shit on a stick. I can’t believe we haven’t been pulled over yet, even though we’re legal.
The reason I obey these ludicrous regulations is because I am a new resident of this country and I have no choice. Well, unless going back to the U.S. is a choice, which it isn’t. They can kick me out if I decide that I don’t like following the rules. And fair enough. I feel very lucky to be here, even if the warrant of fitness thing is lame.
Horse and cart would be good, but we’d be dead after trying to get to town the first time. There are endless numbers of blind corners on roads with no shoulders here. Someone would come around one of those corners at the maximum speed that their vehicle will travel (without flying off the road) and run right up the ass end of our horse cart.
We do see young girls riding horses along one of the larger roads and it seems incredibly dangerous because of the cars racing by. I slow way down, but then I worry about some idiot piling into us from behind.
Things to keep in mind here:
1) It used to be horse and carts here, and might be again someday.
2) If the road maintenance was to stop, these roads could become impassible after a single good storm. The fifty year floods are semi annual events now. The roads wash away. The authorities fix the roads. Then it repeats again. What if they don’t/can’t come out to fix the roads… HAHA
I assume you’ve already looked at tankless water heater? I’ve seen some models with very good efficiencies.
Kevin, i appreciate your work here very much! I’m currently thinking of a way to help you with the solar heater, the solar industry is really advanced in my country, so maybe shipping a system to NZ would be cheaper!? Did you already think about the size of the collector you need?
You wrote: What if they don’t/can’t come out to fix the roads… HAHA
I guess then you would be in exactly the same place peasants all over the world have been for like ALWAYS?
scrod, sorry to dissappoint you, but the tankless water heaters REALLY start to shine, when the electricity supply is gone! Modern water-tanks are _really_ efficient, with the possibility of powering the pump by a battery-bank being their biggest advantage imho.
@scrod
I’ve paid attention to the hot water cylinder. It only really comes on when we use the hot water; when we do dishes or shower. An on demand system wouldn’t help us much.
@ shephurt
We’re thinking about something like this:
http://whatpowercrisis.co.nz/images/products/Fuka%20004.jpg
Kevin,
I’m sending to Farmlet later re Amazon. I for one am personally enriched by your website, and your acknowledgement of those who contribute to Cryptogon and Farmlet is an amazing phenomenon. Even if you don’t take a shower every day. HA HA HA. You aren’t the only one brother. I just make sure to use the Neti pot more than worrying about a shower.
Re the chickens. My mistake was getting chicks and being naive as to how much these critters are tasty, and somewhat “easy” prey to hawks and night critters. Yep, my first clutch of 5 chicks were wiped out, all but one, by a critter (we think a fox) who got into our flimsy coop. After these chicks were killed, (devastating) I went the next day and got 6 more. I don’t think I would have kept on with the idea of raising chickens for eggs if all had been wiped out.
Now we are seven. Goldie, the surviving member of the first group is now equal in size to the rest. I buy organic food for them. It is expensive to do this but I hope will result in better eggs.
Anyways, yes. Protect from digging critters. Use the heavy guage wire two feet in, not necessarily down, from the base of the planned living area. Protect from above. I have two friends who have chickens. They have lost their chickens to the critters who swoop down from above.
My chickens now live in a reclaimed shed that my Dad built on the back of our garage for drying wood. Its about 12 feet high and about the same around. Dad put a brick floor in the space. I thought that I should take the brick floor out – but an elderly cousin by marriage who lived on a farm in his youth told me to keep the bricks there due to the copious poop factor. I’ve been taking the poop and putting it in a composter. I usually take the contents of the composter and till it into the garden.
Our coop structure is basically wire with a plastic roof, and the chicks don’t care for any nest at this time, but I don’t think they are old enough yet to lay eggs (less than 20 weeks – and Goldie may not ever lay eggs – too traumatized by surviving a slaughter).
The chickens have found a way to get up into the rafters – and roost there during the night. Above any and all, I think the chickens love places where they can perch/roost. Several years ago I bought a chicken coop bookcase – It’s just collecting junk and paper – this week I plan to put it in the shed and add roosting bars on the front of it.
I also live in a very humid climate. Nonetheless, I plan to enclose most of the structure with hay bales for insulation later this fall. We get weather below zero F in our climate during the winter. If I decide to build a more permanent structure it will be from wood scrap.
Chickens are amazing critters. They speak to you in BAWK. Mine LOVE tomatoes, corn cobs, the arugula that has grown haywire, clover weeds, etc. They are basically large composting machines.
Its getting towards springtime there in NZ – correct? I say go for it.
As for hot water – here is what I think I need to do.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/SolarShed/solarshed.htm
We have many shade trees over our house and the house is not south exposure friendly. This is my next project.
Great tips on the chickens, Eileen.
Thanks!
And that solar shed… Man, that’s incredible.