I wind up seeing a lot of interesting signs doing various jobs, most of which are rather explicit about their message. The funny thing is that there really wasn't any threat of high voltage in the area unless there was an electrical storm.
But, the weather is holding which is something that I really don't know if I should be talking about. There is always the chance that bad weather is just waiting to pounce on hubrous, but I'll take my chances. We haven't had any meaningful wind here the entire week which is absolutely amazing in as much as the area is completely flat and there isn't a tree within a hundred miles.
Though the weather up here is something that I've been thinking about more lately. One of the people we were doing a job for up here this trip is purchasing a few acres of land from his neighbor's property and we were subdividing and marking the new lot. His intentions for the land is to expand his suprisingly large organic farming operation. As we were finishing off the job he gave a quick tour around his operations and talked about the plans that he had for expanding.
The newest building is his farm is a small, unassuming looking structure that appears to be a small barn. He has maximized the utility of the building though and is hoping to have an almost entirely self supporting chicken farm with a composting system that requires very little energy to heat or power. The barn is three stories, the lowest completely undergound, a ground floor that houses the chickens, and then the enclosed hayloft. The entire ground floor has been surrounded by a rock wall save the main entrance.
The hayloft is used for the usual functions, storing hay and hanging dried herbs. There is a hatch in the floor for dropping the hay down to the chickens. The ground floor houses the chicken operation. Since the building is surrounded by the rock wall very little insulation is needed. The farmer ran ducts through the rock wall and channeled those ducts into both the chicken area and the basement. The rock wall stays around 31° in the winter, so he has to warm the air less than otherwise.
The basement also serves to supply the water for the chickens and irrigation for his crops in the summer. He dug a sump that is constantly filling up and he simply holds the water in a storage tank until he can use it. This area also is the home for ten plastic totes of earthworms that are working over the leavings from both his house and the chickens.
The reason those whole system is so damned amazing is that this is being done in an area where fresh foods, especially fruits and vegetables, are not simply prohibitively expensive, but require a tremendous amount of energy to simply deliver them to western Alaska. If you think about the amount of resources that is required to deliver a crate of lettuce from the field in California, or even further afield, to a village on the western edge of Alaska it really is not practical. However, if communities could begin to produce their own produce, the effects on the community and missed oppurtunity costs would be fantastic.
Alright, no more ranting for the night.
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