electric cars

Here we are once again in Forest fire season, hearing about the millions of acres of trees that have been burned in Canada. Trees that provided us some protection from Climate change, creating more climate change in their demise. Hard not to dwell on, but……. Looks like a full…. sun?

Perhaps in remembrance of all of those trees lost we can start using Bamboo (or recycled TP) to wipe our butts, instead of having more trees cut down for that purpose. I read once that Costco was using old growth forest trees to make toilet paper. I guess we never talk about these “things”. ( I remember wondering, as a kid, if the Flintstones ever used the toilet. )

I guess we are puttering along attempting to do our part in cooling this planet, or at least not warming more. I am sure that there are those whose carbon footprint is much smaller than ours, but also there are those with greater footprints too. We have found that many of the changes we have made have actually started saving us money as well.

In March of this year we tripled our solar panels.

There is a government program that provides for a 5000.00 grant as well as a 10 year interest free loan for solar panel installation. (Our additional panels cost 14,000). So we figured that we pay an average of 180 per month for electricity, it would not make a lot of difference to be making loan payments instead, so technically we figure we got the solar panels for free. Our loan payments have worked out to 120 dollars a month for 10 years interest free, and our electric consumption looks like this.

So this is what the usage looks like. All the power we generate that we do not use, goes back to the grid giving us a credit. (you can see the negatives on this graph) What this means is that we are actually making money in this heat. The way BC hydro does it is that they balance all of the numbers each March and if they still owe you, you get a check. We actually have 2.5-3 months in the winter that the sun does not hit our panels, so the money we are “making” now, might just be spent in the winter 🥶

8 years ago we bought a fully electric car, and the power that our solar panels capture, is actually charging our car. SOOOO for most of the year we are not affected by gas prices. We essentially drive for free from energy from the sun.🌞

It is a freeing feeling, not being affected by the price of oil, or the price of electricity.

I should point out that I never took on any of these endeavours to save money, and am reminded all the time that these changes in energy consumption are expensive. But they have worked out well for us at a time we are heading into retirement and lower income.

I am continuing to make my toques, despite poor sales in this heat. 🥵 (but fall is right around the corner, RIGHT?) The yarn is made from recycled plastics, which is where fleece also comes from. I have recently read a book called “Unraveling” that defends the use of wool over recycled plastics (fleece) because tiny particles get into the water system and eventually to the oceans. There are apparently special filters you can use on your washing machine to prevent the particles from getting further down the water chain.

We have completed our garlic harvest and they are hanging to dry in our shop. We are thrilled with the size our garlic. We owe that to the large load of compost we had delivered from Spa Hills, a company that has bins all over Salmon arm and area, that composts everything, from animal remains at the chicken farms to food waste from restaurants. They compost at a very high temperature to ensure the material is disease free. SOOO it is strong stuff, and….. yes, smelly to begin with.💩

We have been selling “fresh’ garlic at the market for now before it is fully dried.

We did make a large batch of dill pickled garlic scapes and are now waiting the 6 “recommended” weeks to try them.

We have been camping at some lakes near where we live, and I discovered that you can really sneak up close to a bear in an electric car. …… to get a great picture. He did not ..hear… me coming. Isn’t he HUGE? (or she)

We have become a smoothie family, in trying to have smoothies for lunch each day. We have picked and frozen 20 lbs of fruit so far this year with direct plans for Smoothies. Although we get all of the recommended vegetable servings each day, I find it hard to meet the fruit recommendations. Hence the smoothies. We just put whatever fruit we have in freezer plus some cashew milk and then veggies such as celery and cucumbers. I throw in some rolled oats as well. We are studying up on the best machine for making them as my mini bullet is on its last legs.

Well so there is another blog, I have fallen behind as I let my subscription lapse, but am all paid up now.

thank you for reading much love

Janet, Ken and Tucker

We are now in central Oregon, heading south. With the snowing in the passes in BC at the beginning of November, we opted to avoid passes and head directly south, through central Washington down to central Oregon.

My car, the electric car, is currently traveling around BC without me. I work in Kamloops, live in scotch creek and have an hours drive to work. On my very last day of driving in to work this year, I hit a deer on the 4 lane, HWY 1. Not sure if the deer survived, but left the scene. The right front end was crunched in, and the car was UN drivable because the wheel well was down wrapped around the right front tire.

Not having been in an accident I was at a bit of a loss in dealing with ICBC (british columbia’s Govt insurance). SO the car sat in Kamloops for a few days, due to my inexperience with insurance companies. I was told that they would only tow the car to the closest town (Kamloops), despite my information that there was no places in Kamloops that work on BMW cars.

So we used our BCAA insurance to have the car towed to Kelowna to a place that IS BMW certified. I made it VERY VERY clear that this was an electric car. She assured me that YES they work on all BMWs. So then we are driving along the Columbia river when we got a message from the car repair place in Kelowna to say that they, turns out, cannot work on an electric car. Apparently there are special tools, AND specially trained technicians to deal with the batteries.

So there we were thinking that we had used up our BCAA free ride and were going to get stuck with a huge bill to get the car to Vancouver. Then we found out a little known thing about auto insurance that I wanted to share with you all. Auto insurance companies guarantee to fix your car. If for some reason your car cannot be fixed in the closest town, it is their responsibility to tow it to where it can be fixed (for me it is Vancouver)

So the car is sitting in Kelowna, turns out they had taken it apart and not put it back together for the tow, so it will likely not get to vancouver until late next week. This is good for us, because we have no idea how we will get it back to Scotch Creek when it IS fixed.

So in the meantime, we have gone MINING………

NOW this is a kind of rockhounding that you can really get IN TO…. THUNDEREGGS. Oregon’s STATE rock.

They lie just under the surface, so you have to get a bit DIRTY… as you can see, I really get into my work.

A thunder egg is essentially an agate (or jasper) inside a volcanic rock shell. We were staying in Prineville, OR, which is the rockhounding centre of central Oregon. Beautiful forests, sadly many of them burned last summer. It is

We are managing to get way further in our side trips because we now have a jeep we are towing. We are just leaving the motorhome in one place and driving to other destinations with the jeep. MUCH better on the motorhome, not having to 4×4 anymore 🙂

We are actually today in North eastern California, hoping we can get through MEDOC forest today.

Bye for now, much love to all.
janet

mymostrecentobsession

All the sun brings us.. and more🌞

Electric cars, accidents and insurance company logic