by Eric Richard

One week has already come and gone. The good news is that we got through nearly everything in the week 1 distribution. So, we’re on track so far!

Here’s the week 2 distribution:

• 1 bunch (1/4 lb) of scallions
• 1 bunch (1 lb) of summer turnip
• As much as you want of oregano, golden thyme, and sage (we took about 1 oz. of each)
• 1 lb of spinach
• 2 sprigs (1 oz.) of basil
• 1 bunch (1/8 lb.) of parsley
• 1 lb of broccoli (we had our choice of broccoli, radishes, tastoi, mizuna, green chard, or arugula)
• 1 bunch (1/4 lb.) of tosano kale (we had our choice of tosano kale, green leaf kale, or russian red kale)
• 1 head of boston lettuce
• 3 quarts of strawberries

One other observation is that we’ve been tracking the monetary value of the food we have received and almost 50% of the monetary value has come from the strawberries. Our understanding is that we’ll get another couple of weeks of strawberries.

by Eric Richard

You may have already seen this, but yesterday, the Senate passed the CLEAN Energy Act of 2007.

I haven’t yet had a chance to read through all of the details, but from most of what I have read the “good guys” won.

The New York Times described this as a “major defeat for car manufacturers” and the AP article said that “Republicans complained that the energy bill is tilted too much toward renewables and fuel efficiency and does nothing to boost domestic oil or natural gas production.”

If the auto manufacturers and Republicans are complaining that is was not enough about oil, sounds like a victory to me!

The key provision of the bill is that the CAFE standards be raised to 35 mpg by 2020 and, most importantly, this standard will include SUVs, unlike today’s standard.

I know there was some disappointment that one provision related to renewable energy tax breaks didn’t get through, but there has also been discussion of re-raising that vote in the future. It was a very close vote and six senators didn’t vote.

I am sure we will be seeing more on this in the days to come.

Of course, just passing the Senate is only 1/3 of the process. The bill still has to pass the House, the two versions need to get reconciled, and then the president needs to sign it. So, there is a long way to go.

But, after 20+ years of no change here, this is a great step forward.

by Eric Richard

Normally I don’t just post links to other articles, but I thought this one was worthy of pointing out.

For those who don’t know The Onion is not a real news site. This is pure parody.

A Homer Simpson once said, “It’s funny cause it’s true.”

by Eric Richard

A few months ago I wrote a posted called Google is also going solar powered.

Well, it no longer is in the future tense.

Google just turned on over 9,000 solar panels instantly becoming the largest corporate solar panel installation in the world.

What is amazing is that while these panels generate 1.6 MW of power, it still only powers 1/3 of their entire campus. That has to be some electric bill that they get!

On a side note, I learned something recently about how companies and municipalities buy energy that might point to why even more companies may follow Google down this route.

When you and I, the average citizen, buy our power, we do it on a metered basis. This means that we get charged for what we use and our electric bill is a direct function of our usage. If we cut our usage by 10%, our electric bill gets reduced by 10%.

However, for many large institutions, they will pay for the “peak capacity”. The basic idea here is that the electric company says, “The fact that we have to be able to have the capacity to produce enough energy to handle your peak load costs us money. Because of that, we are going to charge you for your peak load, not your total load.”

This has a couple of interesting side effects. Some good for us, some not so good.

One good effect that it has is that it gives these companies a huge incentive to cut their peak load. If they can find some way to reduce their peak, they can cut into their electric bill nicely.

Now, if you imagine the electricity usage of many of these companies, you can also imagine that peak load is likely to occur during the middle of the day when the sun is beating down and the A/C is running fast and furious. Well, the great news is that this is also when you will get peak production out of a solar panel.

So, it really starts to be a match made in heaven — the most effective period of the solar panel is the time that the company can most use the extra energy.

Now, the odd corollary to this is that it also means that there actually isn’t so much of a financial incentive for companies to save electricity in the off-peak hours. For example, turning off lights at night.

I have only heard about this second hand so hopefully I got this right and would appreciate anyone’s providing some more information about peak metering and how it might impact company’s thoughts on energy savings.

by Eric Richard

By the end of this week, we may know the fact of Senate Bill 1419, the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007 .

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee approved a set of proposed changed to the bill that will now go to the floor as an amendment. While the actual text of the changes have yet to be made public, a summary of the changes is available.

There is a lot to digest here, but from what I understand, a couple of conclusions can be drawn:

• There is a tremendous amount at stake in this bill
• Because of that, this is going to be a very bruising battle and the outcome is far from certain

It has been difficult to get many details on all of the political wrangling going on, but the little I have seen seems to indicate that horse trading is the name of the game today as senators try to work around potential filibusters.

Of course, if it makes it through the Senate, it then has to make it through the House as well, which has an equally challenging set of issues.

This one deserves some pretty close attention. If this bill is passed, I think it could be one of the most significant pieces of energy legislation in at least a decade.

I’ll be watching this one and let you know what I find.

by Eric Richard

We got our first official distribution this week. The distribution included:

• 1 bundle (approximately 1 lb.) of bok choy
• Our choice of turnips or 1/2 lb. of broccoli (we can’t remember what the amount was of the turnips — as you can probably guess from this, we chose the broccoli)
• 3/4 lb. of spinach
• 1 bundle (approximately 1/4 lb.) of arugula
• 1 bundle (approximately 1/2 lb.) of kale
• 1 head of lettuce (we had a choice of romaine, red leaf, and green leaf)
• 2 quarts of strawberries (pick your own)
• As much as you want of sage and oregano (we took about 1 oz. of each)
• Hand-picked flowers (we didn’t take any)

As you can see, it was a very “leafy green” distribution. So, we are planning on having a number of interesting salads this week.

One other helpful thing that the farm provides is a weekly newsletter and in that they will provide some recipes that you can use for some of the foods you picked up that week. We’ll probably use one of these recipes this week.

One of the other fears that we had going into this was that the actual distribution process itself would be pure chaos. During the orientation, they talked about how the distribution can sometimes take up to 1 hour. This was not very interesting to me and so I was very nervous.

The good news is that since we had just finished working our shift at the farm, we were actually there about 15 minutes before the distribution actually started. So, they told us to go pick our strawberries (which meant that we got our pick of the crop before everyone else streamed in) and then by the time we were done, they had started the distribution.

End-to-end, I am guessing the total time for the distribution was about 20 minutes, and this was dominated by the strawberry picking (about 15 minutes).

I bet that we could have even gone faster if it wasn’t for the fact that we were weighing every product so we could report on it in the blog.

So, our first real pick up was definitely a success. Now we’ll have to see how the first week of eating goes and then move into week 2 pickup.

This will likely be the last CSA-related posting until next week’s distribution.

by Eric Richard

For reference, I will post a blog entry each week outlining what food and how much food we got in our distribution.

This is mostly to help out future people who are trying to get a feel for how much food they would get (since this was one of the biggest questions we had going into the CSA).

Obviously, the actual size of the distributions in any given season is going to be highly variable.  Even the types of foods available are going to change some from season to season.  But, again, hopefully this gives folks some general sense for what to expect.  As we went into the CSA, we had no idea what to expect, so hopefully this is more useful than going in blind.

In general, I will try to limit this to one post a week so folks who aren’t interested in the CSA information aren’t overwhelmed by this.  However, this week, I will do two since I need to catch up.

The week before the season actually began, we worked at the farm.   And at the end, we were told that we could pick up an early distribution.

It contained:

• 1 quart of strawberries (pick-your-own)
• 1 lb. of broccoli

by Eric Richard

A few posts ago, Josh asked a really great question: What is the value of joining the CSA?

Not some theoretical soft value about the environmental effects of buying local food or supporting the local economy, but the bottom line effect on our budget. Does this save money or not?

I think it was a great question and deserves very thoughtful consideration.

To that end, I will endeavor to collect enough information to try to answer the question by the end of this CSA season.

In particular, there are two pieces of data that my wife and I will be collecting and reporting on throughout the year.

Method #1: Computing “Real Value” of the Food

One way of computing the value of joining the CSA is to look at the “real value” of the food we are getting and comparing that against the actual cost of joining the CSA.

Therefore, each week, when we get a distribution, we will put the following information into a spreadsheet we are keeping:

• The amount of each type of food that we got in that distribution (e.g., 1 lb of broccoli, 2 quarts of strawberries, etc.)
• A reasonable representation of the “market value” of that food.

In order to compute the market value of the food, each week we will go to the website of a local grocery store and record the price that we would have paid for this food.

We are expecting to run into some problems with this experiment. For example, it is quite possible that we will get food distributed to us that is not available at the store. Or it will be difficult to get prices on the exact variety of lettuce or tomatoes or whatever.

In addition, we have already run into questions about whether we should record the price for the organic variety of food or the non-organic variety. Given that we didn’t choose the CSA because it is organic, we are not going to factor this into the “real value” — when we lookup prices, we will use the non-organic foods when possible.

Our suspicion is while this will be an inaccurate science, it should give a reasonable approximation of the real value of the food.

At the end of the season, we will add up all of the cost and report on how much “value” we got out of the CSA. Did we get more or less out of this than we paid?

Method #2: Computing Actual Impact on Money Spent

The first method is useful at determining how much the food is worth. But, nothing says that we will get the full value out of this food or that, outside of the CSA, we would have bought this same food.

For example, maybe over the course of the season, we get a bunch of food that we just don’t like or enjoy. While it is fair to say that this should be computed in our “real value” calculations, it isn’t obvious that this is a practical way of looking at the impact of this on our budget.

Therefore, we will also be looking at a much more realistic metric as well.

Through our records in Quicken, I can get a pretty reasonable estimate for the amount of money that we spent on groceries and restaurants from June 2006 - October 2006.

Once the season is over, I will compare that amount to the amount of money that we spent on the CSA membership, groceries, and restaurants from June 2007 - October 2007.

There are a couple of interesting statistics to watch here:

• Did we spend more or less money on these categories this year compared to last year?
• How did the allocations shift? Did we see a big change in where money was spent?

I don’t have a really good feel for the first answer, but my gut answer is that we will see a pretty dramatic decrease in restaurant spending and my general feel is that this will more than offset the spending on the CSA and groceries.

It is my belief that there are no other substantial factors that would affect this comparison. (In fact, as a control, I might be able to do a comparison of January 2006 - May 2006 and January 2007 - May 2007 to see if they were comparable.)

Therefore, this year-to-year comparison should pretty accurately reflect changes due to membership in the CSA.

by Eric Richard

I am guessing that over time, there will be enough posts on working on the CSA that I have created a new “category” on the blog specifically for this content.

My goal is to make it easy for someone in the future to come and find all of the CSA-related content; for example, if they were going through the same decision process that we did about which CSA to join, what to expect, etc.

I am not sure if or how this will experience the viewing of the site, but just making folks aware that there is a new category for this.

by Eric Richard

This is the third part in a series on my experiences joining a CSA. For background, you can see the first article.

Another requirement of the CSA (this varies from CSA to CSA) is that you put in 4 hours of work on the farm per adult.

My wife and I worked the farm this weekend and last weekend to put in our hours. We explicitly choose to do this early in the season because we didn’t want to be working out in the 90 degree heat and humidity of the summer.

We also choose to work morning shifts, both times working from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM.

I think both of these decisions were pretty good. While today was sunny and slightly hot, it wasn’t too bad. And last weekend was cool and rainy. Both my wife and I agreed that we’d much rather be working in a nice rain than out in the scorching heat.

Last weekend we were assigned to weed the raspberry bushes. So, for two hours, we, along with a group of about six other workers, hand weeded rows of the bushes.

There was something very satisfying about being able to see the direct results of the weeding — bushes that had previously been pretty smothered by weeds were now much more open and had room to breathe, get sunlight, and expand their roots.

We also started to learn about how to use your different senses to do different types of weeding. For the raspberry bushes, it was almost purely tactical — we’d reach into the bushes and just feel around for anything that wasn’t prickly and rip it out. I think that we could have done much of this job blindfolded since it was so much about touch. I am guessing that for other weeding jobs — where you don’t have the distinct difference between the weeds and what you want to keep — you would go about things completely differently.

One downside of using the tactical approach is that the backs of my hands got completely scratched up. It looked kinda like I had been in a pretty serious fight with a cat with dozens and dozens of scratches. It didn’t hurt at all and, a week later, is totally healed over.

Of course, we could have worn glooves — they even offered us gloves — but I think that would have totally changed how we did the weeding.

This week, we did two hours performing weeding of a very different type. We weeded cauliflower, tomatoes, and basil.

For all of these tasks, we used an “oscillating stirrup hoe“. For the cauliflower, we had to use a combination of the hoe and hand weeding. But, for the tomatoes and the basil, we could do everything standing up and with the tool.

It was very different than the raspberries since this was nearly all visual weeding. It was also much faster doing this type of weeding. We probably covered five to ten times more ground today than we did last week.

Both my wife and I thought that our parents would be quite amused by the idea that we just spent four hours weeding. There was probably a time in each of our lives when our parents wished that we would have agreed to fifteen minutes of weeding, let alone four hours.

So, we’re now done with our mandatory work. It’s possible that we might go and do more work during the season just to help out.

When we were picking from the CSAs, I think we looked on the work requirement as a real negative. Had other CSAs had the same pick up times as Lindentree but not had a work requirement, we might have gone with them.

But, in retrospect, I am not sure that this should have been nearly as large a factor in the decision. I’m certainly not saying that I want to quit my job and become a farmer. But a few hours here and there wasn’t so bad.

Now, with our work behind us, we get to focus on the real fun — getting the food. I’ll have a post tomorrow on the first distribution (though Liz has already provided a view into that since her distribution was before ours.)

P.S., Josh, we forgot to take pictures today. If we do work the farm again, we’ll try to get some then.

With Father’s Day coming up, you might want to have your family consider some environmentally friendly gifts for dad.

Something like this or this.

Remember, it is just for the future of the planet.

Note: While I do not have any children, for the sake of Father’s Day presents of this ilk, I would be more than happy to get these presents from my dog.  So, Heidi, if you are online reading, I’ll give you extra treats if I get either of these for Father’s Day.

by Liz A

I went to the CSA farm today for my very first produce pickup. There was a very short PYO (pick your own) session, a few flowers, lots of fresh greens and some nice surprises. I kept thinking that if this produce were being shipped beyond a few miles, or if anyone was planning to eat it more than a few days from now, the farmers would have to select entirely different varieties to grow. (ERR & VT — I’m deliberately witholding details so that you can be surprised — that is, unless you want to know what’s in this week’s order in advance.)

I also want to mention that just being on the farm feels good. You’re asked to drive at no more than 2MPH, which is very very slow. But it forces you to slow down, breathe, and watch for chickens. Things smell good. We were able to greet Moira and Ari, the people who run the farm and grow our food. People are friendly and relaxed. It’s a nice contrast to the typical running around craziness that constitutes most of life, like a little bit of a breather in the middle of the day.

Afterwards, my farm buddy and I decided to pick up a few extra items (local asparagus, anyone?) We stopped off at another local farm, one that is famous enough to be mentioned on moderately fancy restaurant menus as a supplier. And I suddenly felt totally guilty, even though typically when I stop at that farm, it feels good to be buying from local growers. I suppose I’ll get over that part, too.

Oh, and I just discovered that the new website is up (all sorts of things sprout in the spring) — http://lindentreefarm.com/. It’s fairly straightforward. Moira says that she’s kicking and screaming through the process of creating the site, but perhaps there will be more eventually.

By Carl

If you want to conserve energy, a good way to start is by understanding how much you currently use, and what you use it on.

A classic example is the MPG indicator in many new cars, such as the Prius. There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that this indicator alone increases gas mileage by changing driving style (although this has never been formally studied, AFAIK). People try to get the best mileage they can, family members compete against each other, etc.

There is now an analogue for electricity use. A Smart Meter is a device that measures your instantaneous electricity use. The wide-scale use of Smart Meters, was in Woodstock, Ontario, where they were introduced as part of a prepayment plan. According to one account:

The utility soon noticed that consumption had fallen for those on the program by an average of 15%. This had not been anticipated as no conservation information had been provided. Indeed initially, the utility thought the reduction must be some sort of technical problem and attempted to solve it. Eventually they realized that the effect must be real and began to study it. The program was opened up to the whole customer base and has become so popular that there is a waiting list to be part of it. Customers typically save more per month from reduced consumption (15-20%) than they pay (as a small daily supplement to actual consumption) to be part of the program.

What Woodstock Hydro had inadvertently discovered was that they had managed to design a program which tapped into customers’ psychological drivers for conservation. With real-time feedback, consumers could immediately see the price consequences of any given act of consumption. By watching the display unit in their kitchen, they could see the balance on their card decrease at different rates depending on their own actions. As a result, they quickly learned for themselves how to keep that decrease as slow as possible. In short, they had been transformed from passive consumers into active consumers.

Since then, Smart meters have been widely deployed. The largest utility in Italy deployed Smart meters to 27 million customers between 2000 and 2005. In various publications, it “estimated the cost of the project at approximately 2.1 billion Euros and the savings they are receiving in operation of 500 million Euros per year, an astonishing 4 year payback.”

Here in the US, they are just beginning to be deployed. One of the very first deployments in the nation is right here in Massachusetts. (NStar calls it the first in the nation, even though PG&E appears to already have a similar program in California.)

NStar will be selling Blue Line Innovation’s Power Cost Monitors for $30 to the first 200 customers who sign up. (It costs $135, if bought directly from Blue Line). Technically, the Power Cost Monitor is not a Smart Meter, since it doesn’t connect to the Net, but its pretty close.

Mine arrived a week or two ago, and its very nice. I installed one unit on my meter, and put the display on my kitchen counter (the two parts communicate wirelessly). The display is about 6 inches tall; it gives the rate at which I am currently using electricity (in kwatts or $$), the amount of killowatts used since I last reset the counter, as well as random pieces of information like the outside temperature.) I have learned quite a bit about how I use my electricity.

For example, by using the Power Cost Monitor with my trusty kill-a-watt (which tells how much electricity a single device uses), I learned that my refrigerator 1) uses almost as much electricity as the rest of my house put together, and 2) uses roughly 5 times as much energy as a new energy-star fridge would. (I also estimate the payback time on a new fridge at 3 to 5 years.)

Its also fun to walk around the house watch in real time (ok, 30 second delay) my electricity usage change as I flip lights on and off. Easy to see that, yes, CFLs really do save electricity and money.

And I now have a pretty good understanding exactly how I use all my electricity. This makes it easier to focus my conservation efforts on the low-hanging fruit (i.e., biggest energy wasters).

The $30 price (which includes shipping) is only available to the first 200 NStar customers. NStar is planning to see how much electricity these customers save. If results warrant, the monitors will be rolled out on a larger scale.

At $30, I would definitely recommend buying one. If the average customers uses one to cut electricity use by 1% (much less than the average), it will pay for itself within a few years at most.

If you’re an NStar customer, go to http://www.save-electricity.ca

and click on “Buy now” or call 1-866-607-2583. You’ll need your NStar account number.

PS Late-breaking note: See this DailyKos post describing how WBZ-TV ran a segment on a feature on an early adopter of this program earlier tonight. The two minute video is here. (NStar is working closely with local TV stations.. they also contacted me, but unfortunately I’m generally not in Sudbury during business hours).

(Disclaimer: Despite the fact that this may read like an advertisement, neither I now anyone I know personally has any financial interest whatsoever in any of the companies or products mentioned in this post.)

by Eric Richard

This is the second part in a series on my experiences joining a CSA. For background, you can see the first article.

One of the requirements of the particular CSA that we joined is that all new members attend a 2-hour “orientation”. We attended our orientation last week.

We didn’t really know what we were getting into with the orientation and had no idea what they could talk about for 2-hours, but we figured it was mandatory, so we didn’t have much of a choice. =)

The meeting started off slowly as people slowly meandered in, but once it did get rolling, the first thing we did was go around the room and talk about what people were looking to get out of the CSA. I have to say I was pretty astonished at how many people were looking at the CSA as an opportunity to really roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty. While my wife and I viewed the work requirement of the CSA as an inconvenient necessity, many folks were really excited to help participate in the farming process itself.

Then we got to meet Ari and Moira, the couple who runs the farm. Ari is basically in charge of everything related to the actual farming (figuring out when to plant what, where to plant it, when to harvest, etc.) while Moira is in charge of all of the operations (contacting all of the members, recruiting new members, etc.)

One of the things that I found surprising was how many members the CSA has. I forget the exact number, but Moira said that they have over 200 shareholders this year. For some reason I was imagining a few dozen folks.

They talked some about the history of the CSA. According to Ari, they started the CSA about fifteen years ago. Ari had seen a presentation by Robyn Van En — the founder of Indian Line Farm, the first CSA in the U.S. that just happens to be located in Massachusetts.

They talked a little bit about the philosophy behind CSAs (much of which was covered in the previous post). One point that they touched on was that being part of a CSA can really help you get a much better understanding of the natural cycle of food in your local region. They talked about how we’ve become accustomed to being able to have strawberries at all times during the year since we can import them from Chile or wherever they are growing at a given time.

They pointed out that as part of a CSA, you will learn to live by the farm’s timescale, not your own. You don’t get to choose when you want broccoli or strawberries or tomatoes; they will come when they are ready and in the amounts that the land can produce.

One thing that is a bit exciting, but also a bit intimidating is the wide variety of foods that they produce. Ari talked about all sorts of vegetables that they are farming and how you’ll show up one week and have edamame or bok choy or many other more exotic foods and it will basically be up to you to figure out what to do with them and how to incorporate them into your meals.

They talked a little bit about the actual process for food distribution. I have to say that I am a bit scared for how this is going to work. They sure did make it sound like a bit of organized chaos. Our first food distribution is this upcoming Saturday, so we’ll know more then.

One thing that is interesting (that Liz already alluded to) is that they have a fair amount of “pick your own” food during the weekly distributions. Ari explained that they do this for foods that are simply too costly to harvest en masse. For example, when the strawberries are ready, we’ll show up and they will tell us that as part of our distribution, we can pick 1 quart of strawberries.

I haven’t figured out if this is a positive or negative yet. We’ll have to see how it works out.

The good news is the meeting only lasted about 45 minutes or so. I think we walked out feeling nervously excited for the interesting adventure that lay in front of us.

by Eric Richard

I just noticed that the last post was the 100th article posted to the blog.

Pretty nifty.  Hope you are all enjoying it and thanks to everybody for their contributions.

by Eric Richard

About 4-6 weeks ago, my wife and I decided to join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. We were introduced to this concept by one of the readers of the blog.

I figured that this might make for an interesting series of articles. So, this is the first in a series of articles that will likely span several months as we go through our first ever experience with the CSA.

There will probably be a few articles in a row at the beginning as I “catch up” on what we’ve already done.

What is a CSA?

[One note about terminology. Technically, the term “CSA” is an adjective. For example, you would have a “CSA farm”. However, the term has been nouned so people now say things like “I belong to a CSA.” While this is not technically correct, I am going to break this rule and use the term “CSA” as a noun. Sorry to offend anyone’s grammatical sensibilities.]

At its heart, a CSA is an economic model for a farm. The idea is that individuals buy a “share” in the farm at the beginning of the farming season. The farmer uses this money to then run the farm. Then, as the crops are harvested, the shareholders receive a portion of the crop.

From an economic perspective a CSA allows the farmer to offload the risk. If the farm has a bumper crop, the shareholders get the reward by getting extra food. If the farm has a poor crop, the shareholders get less food.

One thing to be clear on is that being a CSA neither dictates what you farm nor how you farm it — it is purely about how the farm is funded and how the crop is distributed.

This model can be applied to lots of different types of farms. For example, the farm we joined is primarily growing fruits and vegetables, but we’ve seen the CSA model applied to flower farms, poultry farms, tree fruit farms, and even beef farms.

In addition, there are both CSAs that farm organically (with no chemical pesticides) and others that farm with chemical pesticides.

Why Join a CSA?

There are lots of different reasons that one might join a CSA.

For my wife and I, we really wanted to try to eat healthier and thought this would be a good forcing function to eat more fruits and vegetables. We’re still not really sure what we are in for, but we are guessing it will be an interesting adventure. I am absolutely sure that by the peak season we will not be lacking in fruits or vegetables. In fact, our biggest concern is that we are going to be overwhelmed by the amount of food we get.

Some people will split their shares with other families to deal with this issue.

A second reason is to get really good, fresh fruits and vegetables. The way most CSAs work is that you get distributions on a weekly basis. As the crops are ready, they are harvested and distributed. So, by the time the food is on your table, it is really, really fresh. As my wife put it, “There really isn’t much better than a pea fresh off the vine or a really ripe tomato.”

A third reason for joining is environmentally focused — buying local food is a far more environmentally friendly than buying food that has been shipped from all over the world.

A fourth reason is to support local farmers and your local economy. I think one of the real gems of the area I live in is all of the natural beauty that still exists and farmland counts as part of that. According to the Sudbury Master Plan, in 1962, the two largest land uses were vacant (47% of the land) and agriculture (21%). Between 1962 and 1998, these two numbers dropped radically down to 8% and 10%, respectively. I am sure that there is a tremendous amount of economic pressure driving local farms out of this area and I’d like to see them stay.

How to Choose a CSA?

When I first learned about CSAs, I started looking to figure out what my options are.

The good news is that we are in an area that happens to have lots of choices.

I found the Northeast Organic Farmers Association and the LocalHarvest websites that had a lists of CSAs.

I then started to look at the options to see how they compared to one another. I broke this down into the following factors that we would use to determine which CSA to join:

• Location Obviously, this is important since it needs to be somewhere convenient to pick up the food.
• Cost Pretty obvious why this is important. Unfortunately, this was also one of the hardest to compare since every CSA has its own way of measuring things.
• Required Work Different CSAs have different philosophies here. Some CSAs require you to put in a certain amount of work on the farm and others require no work. We weren’t particularly excited about doing lots of work here, so we needed to consider this as we evaluated our choices.
• Pickup Times This wound up being one of the biggest factors for us. Since we both work, we needed to find a CSA that was going to be convenient for us to pick up the food each week. There’s no point in belonging to the CSA if you can’t get your food each week.

Clearly, this list is not exhaustive. Some people might want to know whether the farm is organic or not.

Here is a chunk of what I found. (Note: All of this information is likely to get stale from season to season, so I encourage you to check with the farms themselves before making any decisions off this information.)

After looking through all of these choices (and a few others not listed here), we decided to join the Lindentree Farm. Honestly, the thing that made the decision for us was the pickup times. On almost every other factor, they “lost”, but we just thought that Saturday pickups would work the best for us and no one else offered times that were as convenient.

In coming entries, I will share our experiences with this CSA. Hopefully this will span over the entire 20+ week season so you can get an idea of how the whole thing goes.

By Dean Holden

I installed one of these $45 EV mode switches in my 07 Prius a few months ago

http://coastaletech.com/electric_only_mode.htm

I wanted to see if it would save more fuel, which it doesn’t claim to do, and from what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t. What it does is allow you to use the built-in EV mode that comes standard on the Prius outside of the U.S. Once installed it works with the car’s computer like it had always been there, and allows you to drive electric-only up to 35 MPH.

It is kind of cool to be able to run in EV mode, but the Prius battery only lasts for a mile or two before it is depleted enough for it to automatically switch back to gas/electric mode. So for 2 miles you get a million MPG, but then for the next X miles it doesn’t use the electric motor much because the battery has been depleted, so you end up
breaking even in the end.

I am optimistic that at some point in the not-too-distant future I will be able to get an add-on battery that will allow me to go farther in EV mode, and I will be able to go EV for short trips around town.

There are now solar panels for the Prius, so you can charge extra batteries while parked in the sun, but the units are expensive ($4,500, add plug-in capability for another $1000), and it only increase your mileage to about 70 MPG.

http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/

I’d like for my Prius to be able to travel 25 - 50 miles on battery, and then have the gas for longer trips. Even 12 miles would get me to work, if I could then plug it in, or solar charge it during the day for my drive home.

by Liz A

A few days ago I wrote about deciding to switch to solar hot water. The installation is done. I’ve put together a short slide show to describe both the process and a little about how the system works. Click on the picture below and then click on “Slideshow” to see the pictures.

adventures with sunshine

by Eric Richard

As mentioned in a previous post I was a little skeptical of President Bush’s newfound commitment to the global warming issue. The real test, I mentioned, would come this week at the G-8 meeting.

As background here, the presidency of the G-8 meetings rotates amongst the membership and this year, it is Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel who has the helm.

Merkel is a physicist by background and has a strong environmental background. She was the minister of environment for Germany and was Germany’s representative to the Kyoto negotiations.

According to the New York Times, Merkel has “made global warming her signature issue” and “has staked her reputation on making real and significant progress on the problem during this year’s meeting.”

So, here’s someone who both really knows about this stuff and understands that we have to do something.

As president of the G-8, Merkel gets to set the agenda and coming into this meeting, Merkel made it clear that she wanted climate change to be front and center. As part of this Merkel was hoping to get the G-8 to all agree to “cut emissions in half by 2050″ and to “limit the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius.”

(As a side note, most climate change experts would say that we need to cut our emissions by 80% not 50% by 2050, so this goal while nice is far short of where we really need to be.)

This is really just a continuation of work that has already been underway for months. In February, the members of the European Union agreed to unconditional, mandatory 20% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2020. In addition, the EU members said the would up this from 20% to 30% if “matched by other developed nations.” Hmmmm… I wonder who they could be talking about?

So, coming into this week, we have Chancellor Merkel using her presidency to push forward an issue that is near and dear to her heart and for which the members of the EU are already largely on board.

And what do we do?

Well, it appears that President Bush has successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. According to the Times, the Whitehouse has “effectively derailed” Merkel’s plan.

Yeah America! What’s that song by Lee Greenwood? “I’m proud to be an American…”

I wonder if this is what Bush meant when he said, “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”

Sigh.

Anyway, we still have to see how things play out. There is still room for Merkel to stand up to Bush and force this issue through, but that seems unlikely.

If anyone is wondering why people from around the world think America just doesn’t get it when it comes to climate change, I think this is a great example. We are on the cusp of a dramatic agreement amongst the industrial leaders of the world and the U.S., says, “Nah…”

by Liz A

My house is nearly 25 years old. The builders did some things right, but curiously cut some very odd corners. One decision they made was to create an all-electric house. There’s no gas, no oil, just electricity. Oddly, there is gas available at either end of our street, but no gas lines go down our street. I imagine that if these houses were built today, the gas company would be lining up to provide services to the street.

This has been mostly fine, but bills have gotten expensive recently, especially in the winter with heating costs and a recently-expanded house. Last summer, we started to investigate some alternative energy options and looked into solar hot water and solar panels to offset some of the rest of our electric bills.

We found a broker relatively nearby, but did not click with him very well (actually, he was fairly nasty to me from the beginning). His estimate went kind of like this: “Here’s how much we’ll charge you for the parts. If you ask again, we might be able to find out how much it costs to *install* the parts.” It was hard to make sense of what he was telling us.

Recently, I read that our esteemed editor of these very pages had talked to another solar guy, so I wrote and asked about the experience. Eric liked his dealings with the person but realized he couldn’t make any changes right away (something about having to replace a deck this year). I gave the person a call and was immediately impressed.

His name is Mark Durrenberger, of New England Breeze. He came to the house, and I was again impressed. We talked about solar hot water vs. other electric replacement — they’re two separate systems. The SHW has a 5-8 year payback, while the PV panels have more like a 20-year payback. The payback period means that the alternative energy system costs as much as that many years of energy expenditure for the item you are replacing. After the payback period, the system is working “for free.”

So we got an estimate on the SHW system and liked what we saw. Mark is a former project manager and is extremely organized and clear in presenting information. This time, we learned the cost of the entire system, including installation. Also, there will be a $2000 rebate on our federal taxes and a $1000 rebate on the state taxes, bringing the cost down significantly. (I’ve figured the rebates into the 5-8 year payback quote.)

We signed the contract, and Mark and his team started the installation today.

The system is complicated (I’ll try to describe it in another post.) But the single step for us involves writing a series of checks, fairly painless in the long run. And in the even longer run, assuming all goes well, the system will be paying for itself.

We will consider PV another year. I’m kind of hoping the cost will come down a little, especially since our local PV panel manufacturer, Evergreen Solar, is expanding its plant capacity.

– liz