Pallets of Pellets

We can't figure out exactly how to heat our house. Our house can be heated with forced-air gas heat, electric (in one big room), wood (fireplace in living room), or pellets. As I noted on a previous entry, when faced with too many choices, we humans may not make any choices at all, and ultimately we may feel bad about those we do make. For heating our house, it's too early to tell.

Our home came with 2 pellet stoves. There is one upstairs and one downstairs. The downstairs one is an insert - it lives within the fireplace; the other is free-standing.





Pellet stoves are like wood stoves in appearance and general function - they burn wood to heat homes, but pellet stoves are more modern. They have a button to turn them on, have knobs and switches to adjust their settings, and an electric fan to blow the heat. They run on wood pellets which are fed by a motor into a little firebox to be burned at a regular rate. Because the fuel of the stove is standardized, pellet stoves run automatically and can burn more efficiently than wood stoves or other means of heating. They also have remarkably low amount of emissions.

But pellets don't grown on trees, you know. They have to be manufactured and ordered. Just as wood for heating has to be felled, cut, split, and aged, wood pellets are made from compressed wood waste from sawmills where they are squished into mostly uniform sized pellet resembling rabbit food. The pellets can be poured like grain into sacks which can be easily transported and dumped into the hopper of a pellet stove.



I could give you the hard math here, but I must admit that avoided that myself. I did not want to calculate BTUs and compare fuel prices. I just wanted a rule of thumb to go by. Basically, to heat a generic home you could use a bag of pellets each day. So I figured that I couldn't go wrong if I ordered 150 bags. If I ran out before winter was over, I could just fall back on our gas heat. Late this summer I ordered 3 tons of wood pellets. 3 pallets of pellets. 150 bags of pellets. 6,000 pounds for $750. It took them a month to deliver them.



Once they were left on the driveway, we moved them bag by bag to our secret lair which is an unheated room in our home accessible from only the outside that we simply cannot figure out.



Pellet stoves require some work, although definitely not as much work as wood stoves. We've only been using them a few weeks here, since we only got our first frost a few days ago, so I can't yet rely upon our heating experience.

Some regular tasks for pellet stove owners:

• turning on and off the stove when needed
  
• carrying in pellet bags regularly
  
• refilling the stove daily
  
• cleaning the stove weekly

If you were wondering why we are going through this. It's because pellet stoves are supposed to be a cheap sustainable way to heat your home. They pollute less, and their fuel is wood waste which is a renewable resource. Also our pellet stoves do deliver that glowy warmth and faint smoky aroma that you come to rely on when you burn something. Quite primeval actually, in a modern sort of way.

On my todo list:

• figuring out how to best heat the house using the combination of pellets and gas heat
• adding a thermostat to one of the pellet stoves, so it can go on and off automatically
• attaching a fresh-air intake, so the stove does not suck any heat out of the room
• getting a long brush to clean the stove pipe annually
  

Some links:

• General information about pellet stoves.
• Comparison of wood pellet prices in western Massachusetts.
• My follow-up post about thermostats.
  

Happy Halloween!!

Halloween Cheney - Impeach the pumpkin

Nods to the recent New Yorker cover drawing.

The Right Number Of Choices

My buddy Paul reminded me that there are many hours of provocative free video (and audio) of talks at the TED Conferences. TED, if I remember correctly, was organized by Wired Magazine types to celebrate those who make robots, write bleeding edge books on the business best seller lists, or have gone to MIT or started companies with significant number of employees who went to MIT. I'm no expert, I'm not rich, not famous, not a Thinker or Doer, and thus not likely to appear at one of these conferences. I do think and do, but in my own way and usually not in front of an audience.

My buddy Paul told me that he watches an occasional TED Conference at home on the TV, through ITunes, his Mac, and their TV peripheral - a pleasing low-cost experience, if you don't count the cost of the hardware and internet bandwidth. You do not need this hardware or even ITunes to watch them, but it is easy. If you are using ITunes, go to the ITunes Store and search for "TEDTalks", then subscribe to this and download what you want. Otherwise some talks are on YouTube, and they are accessible of course from ted.com.

I remember watching Theo Jansen talk long ago and show videos of his kinetic sculptures which are very much like large mechanical tumbleweeds crawling along a beach. Fascinating. Paul suggested I check out the brillo-haired Malcolm Gladwell author of "The Tipping Point" and the cartoon reading Barry Schwartz author of "The Paradox of Choice". Both have something compelling to say about our (product) choices.

Gladwell spoke at TED in 2004 about choices and why there are many permutations of different kinds of food products produced by a given company.

Gladwell says that as far as products go, there is no one best choice as far as human preference goes. If I make my own pesto, as I was doing while watching the video podcast, I am hopefully making what I think is the best pesto. But others may have their own best tasting or optimal version. (Note, audio-only is sufficient for this podcast, as there are no pertinent visuals, so you can make pesto for about 20 minutes while you listen.)

You see, if we simply average together all our preferences, then we'll end up with average tasting pesto. Nobody is truly happy with what they get. It might not have the right amount of basil, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, pine nuts, or Romano or Parmesan cheeses. But if we allow perhaps 3 or 4 varieties of pesto, then perhaps people will have the best dining experience meeting their preferences, provided of course they purchase and are served the one best suited for them.

This is not obvious, but makes sense to me. It also explains why you can get a Subaru Outback, which I have, which has a very high SUV-like suspension and a Subaru Legacy which is virtually the same car with a lower sedan-like suspension. Those who are used to driving at what I consider a normal altitude, low to the ground, could never consider high suspension, would never buy it, and might never be happy with it if they do. I took a chance, and am glad I did.

Barry Schwartz who gave a TED Conference in 2005 has an alternate but not opposite point of view. (His talk requires the video, although, if one existed, a Power Point presentation would do.) Through some thought provoking provoking thoughts (the proceeding was not a typo, but more of a tongue twister, so you might consider going back to the beginning of this containing sentence and read it again. Apologies for this digression.) and well chosen New Yorker-ish cartoons, Schwartz points out that too many choices give us paralysis and also leave us disappointed with the choices we eventually make.

Schwarts' ideas are not incompatible with Gladwell's thesis. Together the problems with too few and problems with too many choices explain the variety, the size, and the overwhelming and unpleasant experience at visiting the cereal aisle at your local supermarket.

Conclusion: most of us might be happy with just a few good choices. For me, a tea drinker who rarely has a coffee, a company like Starbucks has it wrong with their coffee menu, but of course they have too successful for this to be true. Dell may be a better example. They have dozens of product lines and under each you can get many options. Even the number sale items in their paper catalogs of their stock models number at two dozen. If you shop with them online where you can configure your system yourself, and you add in all the options, you easily get millions of permutations. Many times have I put together a system and abandoned my electronic shopping cart. Some of this is the nature of the PC industry, which allows you to put almost any components in a system. But Apple Computer got it right as far as choice and satisfaction goes, since for example their computers (here I simplify things) and even IPods usually come in three varieties: small, medium, and large. By the way, it is also clear that several best sellers and doctoral theses are probably hidden in the New Yorker cartoon archives.

Stacking Firewood

A cord of wood is a volume which measures 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet. Typically one makes a stack of firewood with split logs about 16" long, so a 6 foot high cord of that would be 16 feet long.

Last night I had our first firewood delivered here for burning. A few calls found someone who would deliver the amount we need. Since it's getting late in the wood season, we want wood that is dry and not green. Dry wood you can burn. They dumped it in the driveway and the pile smells like ... wood. This is more like lifestyle firewood, since we do not have a wood burning stove - we have pellet stoves (more on that another time). We do have a fireplace in which to burn the wood, but it's supposed to be woefully inefficient way of burning wood and actually rumored to draw heat out of a house because of the draft up the chimney. This is rather like the factoid that a person actually uses more calories chewing celery than one gets out of eating the celery. In the case of wood we're talking major Calories, which if you did not know is just energy like heat. I suspect we will indeed get some heat out of it, but mainly we will get warmth - the warm feeling, smell, sound, and light of a winter fire.


I just stacked 3/4 of the wood nice and neatly this morning. I feel like the president on vacation or something... clearing brush, stacking wood. There are a great many ways in which to stack firewood and rules to govern location of a wood pile. Rule of thumb is to stack it far away from your home, off the ground, with a small amount of shelter over it. This sounds like a pain, particularly when one is going for cozy on a cold snowy February day. I chose to put it to one side of our house under our deck. The deck will give it some shelter, thus keep it dry and let it continue to dry out. That side of the house is made of cinderblocks, so there shouldn't be a termite problem. I also made sure that the pile was elevated to keep the bottom from getting damp and rotting or attracting insects. The entire pile makes no contact with the deck or the house. On the cinderblock base I laid two old fallen limbs which made for a sturdy base. The ends are each stacks of criss-crossed relatively square logs which add stability. Having done this, I feel like the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy who uses natural material like stone, ice, leaves, petals and wood to create order - or sculpture. I actually have two of his books which I received as gifts from my good friend Dave. Goldsworthy's appreciation of nature in his works, I'm sure, added some inspiration for my move from New York City to this place.

I've been told stories of people being cheated on wood deliveries. You order 3 cords, get 2. The only way to tell is to actually stack the wood and measure the volume. My stack is about 9 feet long, 6 feet high, and 16 inches wide. This is just over 71 cubic feet, plus I have about a quarter extra wood. This means that my 1/2 a cord was actually a little more than 1/2 a cord. Not bad at all.

One last note, in a crate next to the pile is a tiny pile of petrified wood which I have been dragging around for years. My family got it 30 years ago outside The Petrified Forest in Arizona. Petrified wood is actually fossilized wood. It is rock. It is millions of years old and will never burn. I gave a small log to the carpenters who last worked on our house, perhaps I should have given a log of it to the guys who own the firewood service.

Gluten Free Eating

My buddy David's blog Gluten-Free NYC was mentioned in the Times today!

Hurray!

How to Cook Asparagus

The Pioneer Valley is famous for it's asparagus. Sasha, Lily & I have been eating very fresh asparagus the past month and a half, sometimes three times a week. It's a good thing at her age Lily gets habitual about food, so she doesn't complain about having the same thing every day. If it were pasta, she wouldn’t mind either. For those who haven't been so lucky, this is just like having fresh corn and tomatoes in August or fresh strawberries in June. And we will get the strawberries in a few weeks. I have to admit that I do prefer corn, tomatoes, and strawberries to asparagus, but who wouldn't? Meanwhile we pick it up at one of five places I have staked out in Hadley, The Asparagus Capital of the World, which it was called until disease wiped out most of the crop in the 1950s. New varieties were planted and some smaller farms continued the tradition, so the "grass" can be still be had for a mere $3 to a whopping $4.75 a bunch depending upon where you find it. Hadley is the town between Amherst and Northampton where the farms and the malls are and which we often pass through on our way to somewhere else. Often at the side of the road, near a house, near a farm, there is an asparagus stand selling bunches sitting in a pan of water with an unmanned box for the money. We prefer what we hear are the less desirous slender stalks instead of the stockier shoots. If you cook your own "grass" you probably break off the bottom segment or two to get rid of the dry bit of the stalk. Here, it's so fresh that you can eat the whole thing if you want, but instead I snap off the bottom 1/2 inch or anything that looks at all imperfect.

Yesterday I stopped to buy a bunch on East Street in Hadley. I had no small bills, so was forced to use the quarters and dimes we save for parking meters. As I was counting the coins, a small old man literally appeared smoking a cigar. He said that since there were two bunches left, I might as well take them both. I told him that I only had the coins for one. That's not what I mean, he said. Take them both. Last night we ate one bunch, and now I have another bunch in the fridge I must admit perhaps now not quite as fresh as the first.

I made some Asparagus soup two weeks ago and am making some now using leftovers. This is today's recipe for the soup and our family instructions for cooking "grass".

How to Cook Asparagus

• 1 bunch or 1 lb. asparagus

1. Snap off bottom most segment of each asparagus. It's fun and makes a nice noise. Discard.
2. Rinse asparagus thoroughly and lay in a wide frying pan or sauté pay with 1/4 inch of water
3. Put on stove, cover, and cook on high flame for 1-3 minutes depending upon the thickness of stalks and whether you like them crunchy or soft. I poke them with a sharp knife after a minute to see if they are done.

Asparagus Soup

• 1/2 to 1 lb. steamed asparagus from last night, coarsely chopped
• 1 to 2 cups chopped onions
• 1/2 to 1 cup sliced carrots
• 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil or both, too much is OK, since this is soup
• 3 to 4 cups chicken broth
• 6 ounces grated cheddar cheese (optional)
• Salt pepper to taste

1. Sauté onions in butter on med-low heat for as long as you can stand, about 20 minutes. They get sweeter the more you cook them, but don't burn them. Stir occasionally.
2. Add carrots about 10 minutes into the cooking of the onions. Stir.
   
3. Add asparagus and 1/2 teaspoon salt and some pepper, cook for another 15 minutes, stir some more.
4. Add 1/4 of chicken broth and buzz in a blender or food processor until smooth. Add more broth to the blender if it seems too thick to blend.
5. Return to pot, add rest of the chicken broth. If you want to do the compulsive French thing and impress people, then pour it through a fine strainer. It's probably worth it, since it will impress yourself. Tip: use a bit of chicken broth to clean off the blender blades and dump this liquid into the pot.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
   
7. Serve hot with grated cheddar in each bowl or if you need to put grated cheddar directly in the pot, remember the cheese will make your pot harder to clean, but the dishwasher, if you have one, won't complain about cleaning the bowl.

Author's note: I wrote this entry now while I was cooking. It was so good that I had to eat a bowl, even though it's 10am.

How Sweet Is My Valley

Yesterday afternoon I got out of the car in the driveway and I was puzzled. I thought, our driveway here smells so good. What is it? I paused for a while trying to figure it out. Was it the Lilac bush with only two clumps of flowers?
Nah, that's not enough to perfume a big area. Aha, it must be the Lily-of-the-Valley!

There is a huge patch near the entrance to our driveway about 20 feet from where I was sniffing, and a tiny patch in the back of the house. I thanked the plants and went into the house.

It was warm, so I opened the kitchen window when I got in. A few minutes later, as I was indoors I almost thought I was smelling Yankee (scented) Candle stuff. This time I had a shorter period of contemplation when I realized I now smelled the honey scent of the flowers outside wafting in.

Nice.

NPR Misses Story: Gluten-Free Fad

I'm not sure what's in the air, must be radio broadcasts today, but NPR this morning had a piece on the "fad" of going wheat-free. They basically discounted (my take) the "less than 1%" of the country who are celiacs. And they went on about the amazing trend of people to forgo wheat. Periodically they would return to a chef who was in the process of making the most amazing glutenous pizza dough.

Of course they missed that real story that people take many years to be diagnosed and their number at 2.5 million people is not an insignificant number, more than the number of blind people and about the same as the number of epileptics. Sheesh!

File under: making good use of your dead father's ashes

My, cremation has been a hot topic lately. Especially the disposition of remains. This lack of respect just burns me up. And rumor has it that there may be other news about Keith Richard's father's ashes. I'll tell you if I learn anything new.

Here are the recent stories:

What Keith told his cancer-hit mum about snorting his father's ashes

Father's ashes refused as art

No Diamond for Dad's Ashes

Oldest Woman Veteran

Charlotte Winters, the last surviving female World War I veteran, has died at age 109.

You can go into Microfinance

I lent $50 to a shoe salesman in Mexico. Leobardo Camacho will use the money to buy more merchandise and will pay it back in 12 to 18 months. After which I may lend it to someone in Kenya or Somoa.

The organization Kiva has partnered with local lenders in this case and several other countries to make these loans. Kiva charges (and pays) no interest and has a 100% repayment rate.

Do you have any PayPal money lying around collecting dust and benefiting nobody but PayPal? Then try lending some of it to someone who can use it. It takes minutes to set up.

Bowhead Whales Are the Oldest Mammals

Scientists recently discovered that Bowhead Whales live to be over 200 years old making them the oldest mammals on earth. Some have been recently found (and killed) with 100 year old ivory spear points still in their blubber. They can live longer than us humans who, if they are American, live to almost 80 years old. This is more than elephants which can live over 70 years.

Bear in mind that our other mammal and animal friends (except the very few in captivity) take no vitamins or medicine. None go to the gym, have annual checkups or modern medical care.

See this for information on the lifespans on some other critters.

Newest oldest person is older than last oldest person

A Vietnamese woman is reportedly 120 years old.

Bhling Talah is an ethnic minority resident of Tr’Hy commune in Quang Nam province’s Tay Giang district

Happy birthday to the world's oldest man!

The world's oldest man is 116 today!

Hryhory Nestor lives in the Ukraine and "attributes his long life to healthy outdoor living, and recommends a diet of potatoes, milk and cheese."

Sounds easy enough.

Newer and older World's Oldest Woman has died - age 128!

A Salvadoran woman believed to have been 128 years old and possibly the world's oldest person, has died. Cruz Hernandez gave birth to 13 children and ended up with at least 60 grandchildren, 80 great-grandchildren and 25 great-great grandchildren.

Guinness said the longest any woman has lived is 122 years.

Good news for oldest people

Two wonderful ancient women had good news this week. Each are 113, which means they have lived in 3 of our earth centuries and are almost 800 in dog years.

Chen Aixiang, the oldest resident in Zhejiang Province, China, was happy at Spring Festival to see all 230 of her family members together celebrating her oldest daughter's 90th birthday.

Saraswati Rai of Ghatana village of Myagdi district in western Nepal acquired a citizenship certificate for the first time in her life.

Newest old original Star Trek episode!

Pardon the exclamation points, but tonight I saw the newest episode of old Star Trek!

It's free and available for download and worth the price.
Tech and media savy fans have pooled resources and made new episodes.
The most recent one even stars Chekov as Chekov and was written by D.C. Fontana!!

Think I'm kidding? Check it out!

World's youngest person is born!

This time the news is more upbeat, at least on the surface.

A 21-week six-day old baby was born. Amillia Taylor, who weighed just 10 ounces, beat the previous record by more than a week.

Meanwhile there is a huge list of complications that can affect babies just born before 37 weeks. This miracle baby will undoubtedly will have some major problems.

World's oldest person dies again!

This time it's a 130 year old woman from Malaysia !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(That's 130 !s for Safiah Yusof)