Of Chickens and Chainsaws

So I'm very pleased with the chickens lately. I'm averaging 11 eggs per day. The New Hampshire Reds are laying more than the Aruacanas, which is expected. I'll get about seven brown eggs and four green eggs. And the baby chickens are starting to look like real Aruacanas, with the black and gold feathers. Very pretty.

The chainsaw, I am less pleased about.

Damn cover keeps popping on it, which means I have to tighten the chain about every five minutes. I just need a new chainsaw. I got the boys off to school about 645a, and cut wood until 8a, when the screw that holds the cover popped off. Couldn't find it, so I had to quit for the day.

Wrapped up the day job early and went for a 5-K. A rather vegetative experience, but good for me. I usually do a lot of thinking -- get some of my best ideas while running -- but I just turned the brain off for 27:03 and enjoyed the movement.

Wrapped up the run and took cans to be recycled, got my hair cut, grabbed some groceries, bought a new screw and chain for the chainsaw and picked up a bag of corn at the Agway. Came home, made dinner for the kids. Lisa's making semi-local pie -- Grafton cheese, CSA kale and onion, and our own green eggs.

Hope to get the damn chainsaw working tomorrow and throw some compost on the garden over the weekend. And in the "enough, already!" category, from WCAX-TV:

Brattleboro Considers Nudity Ordinance
Brattleboro, Vermont - November 7, 2007

The select board in Brattleboro is once again working on an ordinance that would ban public nudity.

They have asked Interim Town Manager Barbara Sondag to prepare a draft ordinance for them to review at their next meeting in two weeks. The select board enacted an emergency nudity ban this summer, but later voted down plans to make it permanent, because they couldn't agree on a punishment.

The board has reached a compromise that would make public nudity in Brattleboro a civil violation.

Passing an anti-nudity ordinance in Vermont in November seems like the height of unnecessary legislation. It's getting down to 20 already at night; another month, and anyone walking around Brattleboro with no clothes will confirm Darwinian theory.

So we're worrying about frostbitten wee parts in this neck of the woods, while other places are doing some really interesting stuff, like this:

In Berkeley we're thinking a lot about solar this week, because on Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council approved a breakthrough financing plan aimed at encouraging local solar panel and solar water heater installations.

Green Wombat has the full story, but the basics are simple. The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house.

(Disclaimer: Green Wombat is not only a co-resident of Berkeley, but a fellow member of the Malcolm X Elementary PTA. I will now shamelessly steal from him: "Solar power in Berkeley: By Any Means Necessary.)

The math sure looks good to me. The annual property assessment fee adds up to about a year's worth of electricity bills. Like many homeowners, I've been daunted by the $20,000-$30,000 price tag for a solar installation. But I'm going to be lining up with my Berkeley brethren to apply for participation in the "Sustainable Energy Financing District" when it is up and running, perhaps as early as 2008.

Imagine if the federal government supported a similar program. My guess is that leadership on this issue might make buying some shares in a solar power start-up a pretty good investment. Oh, wait a minute: Solar power start-ups are already some of the hottest action on the market, without the federal government doing a damn thing. As Green Wombat also reported on Thursday, the stock price of thin-film solar module maker First Solar shot up 34 percent on Thursday, to a Googlish $224.43. The performance is all the more remarkable when considering how badly the rest of the market did this week.

Green Wombat bills itself as covering "the intersection of the environment, technology, business and policy." But if you review the last six posts as of the morning of Nov. 9, every single one concerned some aspect of solar power, with a heavy focus on California. Solar power is exploding in California, and a horde of venture-capital funded start-ups are jostling with each other to get a piece of the action. So while Democrats and Republicans trade jabs over who is responsible for the current price of a gallon of gas, and by the latest reports are fumbling a major opportunity to pass legislation that would significantly boost the production of renewable energy, here in California, something powerful is actually happening.

Then again, almost all our power in Vermont should be coming from the Quebec hydro plant on Rupert River by 2012. So nyeah. We're cleaner and greener and can afford to bicker about trivial crap like clothing-optional towns.