NH Outside: Energy conservation Archives

The room was pitch black as I lay in bed searching the darkness outside my window for the momentary flash of light. As a child, my excitement at seeing the first fireflies of the summer rivaled the anticipation of waiting for Santa or the thrill of waking up to the first snow of the season.

Now, each year I am transported back to my childhood when I first spy lightning bugs gracefully dancing in the darkness of the backyard.

It never ceases to amaze me, that split-second burst of brilliance in which I think my eyes are playing tricks on me. I stop, stand stock-still, and wait for the next twinkle, then another over by the edge of the lawn and yet another higher up near the first flash.

My heart soars, and I run inside to alert my family and insist that, they too, come to watch the show. To me it’s as impressive as the Perseid meteor showers that we watch from our roof, because these lights are alive and that seems even more special.

As children, we spent most of June and July with our maternal grandparents. It was our favorite time of year, filled with the freedom that only comes when you’re young and the summer promises to last forever.

My two older sisters took special delight in the pursuit of fireflies on balmy June evenings, carefully capturing them in a jar with tiny holes poked in the lid. Once they’d collected enough flies, they would silently sneak upstairs to my grandparent’s bedroom. Gently they would slip their jars under the light summer sheets and unscrew the tops, releasing the bugs. Then they would turn off the lights and watch as the sheets lit up in a beautiful ever-changing light pattern.

Racing back to their own bed, they would huddle together and attempt to stifle their giggles when my grandparents discovered the “gift” my sisters had left them. Leaving their windows open usually meant that more mosquitoes entered than fireflies escaped.

Bioluminescence is the name scientists give to the ability of living creatures to use body chemistry to produce and emit light. There are two critical purposes behind the firefly light show. Fireflies (actually beetles in one of several genera) use their tail lights, or lanterns, to attract mates and to lure prey. Flashing in their society isn't only encouraged, but necessary for survival.

Males and females identify each other by the timing of their flashes. The pattern of the flash differs for each species, allowing members of that species to recognize each other. However, the females of the genus Photurus have evolved the ability to imitate the flash patterns of female Photinus (another genus of firefly), to attract Photinus males, whereupon she attacks and eats them. Because of this deceptive ability, Photurus females are often described as the femme fatales of the firefly domain.

By consuming a male Photinus, the female Photurus firefly gains both the nutrition from her prey's body and certain compounds (lucibufagins) it contains, which make her unappealing to certain predators such as the Phidippus jumping spider.

With such great survival mechanisms, you’d think that lightning bugs would outlast us all, but I’ve noticed fewer and fewer lightning bugs in my yard over the years. Scientists are concerned about this, too, and their research reveals light pollution as one reason behind their disappearance.

It seems that the artificial light we produce outside our homes at night confuses the fireflies and shuts them down. When they can’t tell day from night they tend to keep their lanterns off. When they stop flashing, the beetles aren’t attracting mates or their much-needed food sources.

Sadly, scientists predict that in certain parts of the country, lightning bugs may be gone in as little as a decade. One simple solution is to cut down on light pollution-but urban sprawl shows no signs of reversing itself.

Still, if you’re fortunate enough to live away from urban bright lights, try turning off your own outdoor lights. You’ll save money and reduce your carbon footprint. Then, when the weather turns warm, turn off your indoor lights, too, take a seat by the window and be patient. With luck, you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful light show that may transport you back.

By Susan Ferber, Master Gardener

Splitting and stacking firewood in the 80-degree heat of a steamy August afternoon, I got to thinking about the old saying, “Wood warms you twice.” As someone who’s burned wood, and only wood, to heat my home for 37 years, I came up with a list of ways wood warms me and my family—and we don’t even fell the trees or clean our own chimney:

• Sawing loads of 16-foot logs into 16-inch lengths
• Splitting these rounds into two, four, or sometimes six or eight pieces so they fit into the stove
• Stacking the split wood in the woodshed
• Hauling armloads of wood from the shed into the house during heating season
• Loading the stoves and basking in their radiance
• Cleaning out the ash pans and hauling buckets of ashes into the cellar for storage in steel garbage cans
• Spreading the accumulated ashes on our lawns and gardens in the spring

Wood also preheats the water we use for bathing and dishwashing and warms our bellies with winter soups, stews and sauces simmered on the stovetop.

By any standard, our household firewood operation qualifies as primitive and labor-intensive. We have a Husqvarna 350 chainsaw and tools to maintain it, two 8-lb. splitting mauls (in case the urge to split strikes two parties simultaneously), a couple of wedges, a lightweight axe for splitting kindling, and a cheap plastic wheelbarrow for moving split wood across the driveway to the woodshed. The rest of the work we accomplish with what my dad called the “Armstrong Method.”

Wood does more than keep us warm. It supports our values and our way of life. Wood heat dries the laundry we hang on racks around the stove on winter evenings, simultaneously humidifying the dry indoor air. It gives us a concrete form of homeland security, keeping us warm and able to cook and heat water from the gravity-feed well when the power goes off.

Wood ashes neutralize the acid soil in our big vegetable garden and add minerals our crops need for optimum health. We use the strips of bark that accumulate on the ground in our wood-splitting area as mulch to mark the aisles between planting beds in the garden.

In a nation where obesity has reached epidemic levels and threatens to overtake smoking as the Number One public health concern, working up our winter wood supply helps keep our weight in check. Exercise physiologists say a person my weight burns between 300 and 400 calories an hour doing various wood-working activities. I once did the math and figured that a single intense weekend of wood-splitting and stacking provided the calorie-burning equivalent of running 50 miles. Not bad! As a side benefit, splitting wood relieves stress better than anything else I’ve tried.

Living in a state that’s 84 percent forested, I’ve always assumed it makes economic sense to heat with wood. The various years I’ve looked at charts comparing the relative prices of firewood, propane and home heating oil, the facts have borne out my assumption. No matter how low the prices of fossil fuels have dipped, wood has always come out ahead, even in years when we bought our wood cut, split, dried and delivered. Because the work of it adds so much to our quality of life, I don’t factor the value of our unpaid household labor into the price we pay for our fuelwood.

I like knowing that my decision to heat with wood supports the New Hampshire economy. Joe Broyles, energy program manager at the State Office of Energy and Planning, estimates that two-thirds of the $2 billion New Hampshire consumers spend on energy products leaves the state. But the money I spend on firewood stays right here in New Hampshire.

The firewood business represents a significant and essential component of New Hampshire’s forest industries, which collectively provide jobs for 10,000 to 15,000 New Hampshire residents and pump $1.7 billion directly into our local economy.

Even if you don’t cut down your own trees or learn to use a chainsaw and splitting maul, home woodburning does require savvy. You need to learn to evaluate the quality and energy value of the wood you plan to burn. You need to know how to season and store firewood, how to size, install and maintain your woodburning appliances for safe operation, how to burn wood safely, maintain your chimney and handle your ashes.

 “It’s worth building a long term relationship with your wood supplier,” advises Sarah Smith, UNH Cooperative Extension’s forest industry specialist. “That’s the best way to ensure you’re buying a good cord and getting a good mixture.”

11/08/06

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

It’s hard to imagine the field of spectacular yellow sunflowers that bloomed in a four-acre field at UNH’s Kingman farm will end up as fuel for Dorn Cox’s farm equipment and feed for his pigs, beef cattle, and chickens.

Cox, a family farmer from Lee, joined forces with UNH Cooperative Extension and the manager and crew of UNH’s Kingman Farm earlier this spring to conduct some applied research into the feasibility of using locally produced sunflowers to make biodiesel to help power the region’s farms.

Biodiesel, a fuel manufactured from vegetable oils, has attracted a lot of national attention as a domestically available fuel for engines that ordinarily run on petroleum-derived diesel.

 “I wanted to grow my own sunflowers, but we have a certified organic farm and I couldn’t get organic seed this year,” says Cox, who’s already using the biodiesel he processes from waste cooking oil collected from local restaurants to power some of his farm equipment. “I approached John McLean, manager of UNH’s Woodman and Kingman Farms, to see if he might have land available.”

Cox and McLean brought the idea to Becky Grube, UNH Cooperative Extension’s sustainable horticulture specialist. Becky also found the idea intriguing, and the three embarked on a pilot project to evaluate how sunflowers perform in this area and to test the feasibility of small-scale oil pressing.

“The project will measure the yield of oil, the feed value of the meal that remains after the oil has been pressed from the sunflower seeds, and the food quality of the oil,” says Cox, who has a degree from Cornell in international agriculture.

Grube took to the idea immediately. “Because they’re in a different plant family from most of our important cash crops, sunflowers might make a good rotation crop for many New England growers,” she says. “Plus, they can be planted with equipment that many farmers already have. Dorn used his two-row corn planter to plant the four acres at Kingman Farm. Also, sunflowers have multiple uses. The oil has excellent culinary properties and the meal that remains after pressing makes a nutritious feed for cattle and other livestock.

“Several questions remain, which we hope the pilot project will help to answer,” she says. “Will harvest and pressing for oil production be cost-effective and feasible on a fairly small scale? Will sunflower yields be sufficient to make them economically viable? Will the climate permit harvest of quality seeds without pest and disease problems?”

“The project is a model of farmer-driven research and teamwork,” Grube says. “Dorn proposed the idea and used his planting equipment and labor to sow the sunflowers. I contacted Land O’Lakes/Hytest seeds, who donated seeds of five hybrid varieties likely to be adapted to this area. John and the rest of the UNH Farm crew, including students, prepared the ground and have weeded and mowed around the plots. Seth Wilner, the Extension educator who manages the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grants program in New Hampshire came up with a small grant for the project.”

“The experiment got off to a slow start, with the heavy rains this spring delaying the first planting until mid-May,” says Grube. “The second planting was delayed to mid-June. Hopefully the harvest will go off without a hitch.” If the harvest is successful, Grube says the team hopes to broaden the project and evaluate the economics of sunflower oil production by other local growers.

Cox has ordered a small oil press from China that should arrive any day. He plans to harvest his crops in late October and press them in late fall. “We’re just waiting for the seeds to dry,” he says.

He’s also begun fabricating a mobile biodiesel processing unit that will turn out about 80 gallons per hour. With such a machine, Cox says, “A couple of weekends each summer would produce all the fuel our operation would use in a year.” He plans to exhibit the processor at fairs and other venues so people can learn more about biodiesel technology.

As for his experience working with the UNH farm crew and Cooperative Extension, Cox says, “They’ve been fantastic. Within a couple days of approaching John [McLean], we had a project up and running.”

By Peg Boyles, Writer/Editor, UNH Cooperative Extension

9/20/06

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.