Maize Madness
Well, maybe we can debate the merits and ethics of using corn as a heat source in another post.
In the meantime, what we have learned is that two and a half tons of corn is more fun than should be allowed...
Corn angel!
C'mon in, the corn's fine!
It's raining corn!
Can you drive us around?The corn is surprisingly comfortable to sit or lay down in. Lori and I were thinking of starting a corn-mattress business. You tend to sink in up to your calves if you stand up, which is an interesting sensation. You can't dig a hole in it because the kernels just falls back in, but it's not too hard to submerge most of your body. It stays cool just below the surface, and compresses around your limbs just enough to feel good. It's very dusty, but the dust doesn't seem to bother your lungs. You end up feeling like your feet are covered in talcum powder, and with pockets full of corn.
Sorry, the photographer's wife declined to be photographed, and a self-portrait wasn't worth the trouble. But we all had fun... Strange. Do other people do weird things like this?
Sorry, the photographer's wife declined to be photographed, and a self-portrait wasn't worth the trouble. But we all had fun... Strange. Do other people do weird things like this?
posted by e4 @ 9/19/2006 08:35:00 PM
14
comments
14 Comments:
Very cool! I bet your daughter loved the sensory aspect -- both tactile & visual.
Wow...it's like a ball pit and a swimming pool mixed together! Where are you going to store the corn?
jbtw - Yes, she was very enamored, and complained quite a bit when it was time to get out.
suzer - The corn will stay in the bin. I put a few 2x4's together and built a simple support on top of the wagon to create a slight peak. We threw a canvas tarp over the top and tied it down. Hopefully it will keep the rain and snow off. There's a little door one side at the bottom that lets you get corn out as needed.
Can you believe almost 5000 lbs of corn was barely over $200? The cost of the corn *plus the wagon* was equivalent to about 5 weeks of winter heating costs with propane. It should last us through the winter, or close to it.
Wow...I wish we could say we heat our house for only $200 a winter. It's more like $200 a month!
Well, there are some hidden costs. We had the one-time cost of the stove itself ($2500), the gravity wagon ($300), and an old truck capable of pulling that much weight ($1500). (We needed the truck for other reasons anyway.) But if farm subsidies ever go away, or if corn-based ethanol takes off, that cheap corn may not be so cheap.
Our heating bill approached $500 a month three times last winter, which was a fairly mild one, and propane prices just keep climbing. (I hear natural gas is set to climb some more too.)
I think it would be cool if at some point we could grow our own corn supply. We've got the space. I just need to learn how to grow that much without owning lots of expensive farm equipment. I'm still reading and learning. I might want try sunflowers instead. The stove will burn sunflower hulls, wood pellets, cherry pits, and all kinds of other pellet-sized stuff. But corn is quite abundant around here, so...
I love the pics! There's nothing like some down home fun on the farm.
That corn really does look like fun - my kids would love it too. We live not far from a lot of wood, and even closer on the next place, so we'll be going with a woodstove, but I find the pellet-stoves rather appealling in a quirky sort of way.
bg - Thanks! While frolicking in the corn we wondered A) what neighbors and passers-by might have thought, and B) whether this type of silliness was a well-known but well-kept secret among farmers.
PS - I can't post comments on your blog! I assume it's related to my switch to Blogger Beta. Seems like they should have worked all this out a while ago. But I guess that's why they call it "beta".
mad - Yeah, we don't have access to much wood, or I'd have gone that route. If you have a wood lot, you're all set. If you don't, I guess you plant a wood lot and try Plan B, which is how we got here. There is something appealing about being able to produce your heating fuel on one acre, from seed, in a single year, but I think wood is probably better in the long run...
I definitely believe you got the corn that cheap, having read Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm quite glad you're putting it to such good use though. The fun, I mean. Not the heating. OK, heating too. Maybe you could start an elite corn spa with these heretofore undiscovered joys!
In the long continumn of heating sources we start with coal on the "ew" side and passive solar on the "ahhh" side corn is alot closer to ahhh than ew-basically carbon nuetral. The other ills of corn are inherent in growing anything commercially-I am calling corn heat a big net win similar to my hybrid car. Best case I shouldn't bedriving 19 miles to work, but doing so for .25 gallons is a significant step towards sustinability!
mia - Thanks for the book recommendation. From what I can tell, that sounds really interesting.
beo - Yeah, I'm not so sure about the carbon-neutrality of this corn. Between herbicides, pesticides, fertilizer, and fuel for machinery, etc. well... at least it didn't have to get transported very far. And I'm sure it's not scalable, for the same reasons ethanol and biodiesel are not scalable.
So, I'm not crazy about it.
BUT... it does burn very efficiently and very cleanly, compared to wood. The BTU's per lb are incredible when you can tap into them directly.
And I do believe it can be done sustainably. Like I said, I hope to someday grow my own - with zero herbicides, zero pesticides, and the only fertilizer being N-fixers and manure. I've practically got a custom-made instruction manual for it from Logsdon.
I'm thinking passive solar is the big one. But the hardest to retro-fit. We had it in mind when we built this house, and if I can ever get my grape arbor built, we can do the shady summer / sunny winter thing on the west side of our house.
Gosh, I should just do another post at this point. No time now though...
wow fun
can I play
It just occurred to me that an alternative title for this post would be
Maized and Confused
Sorry you can't post comments on my blog! I am checking to see if I inadvertently did something, but am a little computer illiterate. I hope it is just the beta thing and it gets straightened out soon.
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