With Barbara and Camille's Kingsolver's rhapsodies about eating foods grown locally by independent small farmers still resonating in my head, I decided to try an experiment involving eggs. Stew had been complaining about supermarket-bought eggs having too-fragile shells and yolks. A friend who raises his own chickens theorizes that's because hens at nearby American-style factory …
Vegetables in exile
Among the environmentally enlightened one of the newer sects is the "locavores," folks who vow to eat food that is not only grown organically but locally too, usually within 100 miles of the consumer. Proximity to the producers, they believe, reduces the environmental damage caused by diesel trucks and trains schlepping fruits and vegetables over …
Buy more panels and call me in the morning
After several suggestions and theories--from two installers, an electrician, Stew, various blog readers, friends, and equipment manufacturers, among others--it turns out that Stew's German orthopedic surgeon-cum-solar energy wizard was right all along. We don't have enough panels in our array to keep us going through the shorter days of winter. Doktor Schmidt says his house …
The case of the missing gay gene
Among the many stereotypes about gay men, a common one is that we all have fahbulously good taste, particularly in interior design. It's in the genes. It comes naturally.When Stew mentioned to his brother on the phone that we might be hiring an interior designer he heard his sister-in-law jokingly shouting in the background, "You …
Home alone
My Cuban relatives in Miami informed me several weeks ago that the weather had been so cold there--an overnight low of 37! the orange trees froze!--that some people didn't go to work. It just wasn't safe. We're retired and have nowhere special to go, least of all to work, so Stew and I stayed home …
There goes the sun
For all our obsessive planning and computing, Mother Nature, a.k.a. “The Lady Upstairs,” has had the last word by unleashing nearly three weeks of gray, clammy and rainy weather that culminated two days ago with a half-inch of snow. We had fretted about not having enough water but our cistern, thanks to a series of …
First impressions
After three days living in our new "green" house here are some first impressions of all the ecological features we incorporated into the design. Naturally these evaluations might change, as we gradually figure out how to work all these gadgets. Solar Water Heater: Biggest hit by far, helped of course by a string of sunny …
Clara's love offensive
In a blog a couple of months ago I told the story of an emaciated Doberman we had inherited and named Clara, as in Rancho Santa Clara. She had been abandoned by her owners in the fields somewhere near our new house. So Clara joined a pack of dogs who followed Luis, our young velador, …
Watt crisis?
One night, about three weeks ago we had our very own Thomas Alva Edison moment. We went to the kitchen, flipped a switch and the ceiling lights went on. Eureka! Indeed, our $30,000 solar electricity system came alive. Over the next few days the gauges reported more good news: The batteries were "floating," which in …
Painting your way out of a job
During the saga of building our house, at what point did we go from, "Golly, we're so excited about moving in!" to "For Chrissake, let's just move in and get this over with!"? We think it was about three weeks ago. Two couples who'd built houses here have reassured us our exasperation is natural. At …
El Rancho Santa Clara 