Snow Continues / The Folly of Slumber Parties

We had a massive three-day snow event last week, and it is cold enough that it isn't going anywhere for a while. The stuff is heaped up everywhere. 

I have spoken before about the difficulty of keeping the solar panels clear. This week we generated almost nothing, because there's at least a foot of snow on top of them. It's not that I don't want to clear them, it's just that doing so takes a tremendous amount of time and effort, all of which is over your head, leaving you with fatigued shoulders. After you use the tiny squeegee on the end of the 30-foot pole to pull down a foot of snow off of a panel, you discover a 1/2-1/4" of ice that no amount of feeble scraping will remove. After great effort, I've managed to liberate about half of the panels. I will continue to make the effort, one at a time. And the weather seems to be on our side, with 30's projected for most of the week. If we can get any sun, we should be generating again relatively soon.

We've been keeping warm with the wood stove and electricity for the most part. We used 92 therms of natural gas in Dec. 2021, but only 19 last month. The electricity we don't generate from our solar panels comes from wind (we signed up for evil Xcel Energy's "wind source" program.) So we've made some pretty serious inroads on the sustainability front.

This has made no dent at all in the Xcel bill. In fact, it was precisely - to the dollar - the same as in 2021. $157. But we're not really doing it because of the money.

Another discovery that I made is that the IRS will not grant you a green home upgrade tax credit two years in a row. Who knew? Well, we know now. So the $1,800 tax credit we are supposed to get for the wood stove install will be carried forward to next year's tax return. That was disappointing.

The section on electric car tax credits was not yet finished. I am wondering if the same thing will happen to the $4,500 tax credit that I'm supposed to get for purchasing a plug-in hybrid. Or will the crooks in Washington figure out a way to break that promise, too?

In an effort to great the cabin fever, Kiki and I decided to have a "slumber party" and sleep on the lower level by the fireplace. We thought it would be warm and toasty.

We thought wrong. It turns out that when you put an airbed on a concrete slab covered only by a thin layer of carpet (the hated previous owners didn't bother to put down a pad) the cold seeps up through the air mattress. The blower on the stove is quite loud. The cats were confused. We slept badly.

The 5x12 package full of seeds that I ordered from Seed Savers Exchange arrived. It is difficult to believe that so little material will spawn the entire garden. 

This year we will wait until May to start the tomatoes, peppers & marigolds. 

Vacation planning and "fort" improvements (a new couch and a light for the basement) dominate the Steepmeadow "to do" lists. 

Next up on these indoor tasks will be turning bifold doors into proper doors that actually work.

Winter passes slowly.