A Little Spring Cleaning

Posted on Friday 30 March 2007 at 10:54

I don't do spring cleaning. I'm a horrible slob that way. In fact, I haven't really been here the last few days. We went to get our taxes done yesterday, which involved an hour-and-a-half drive on the worst icy roads I think I've ever had to navigate on my own/with a truck full of kids. This was followed by a run into the city (cringe, cringe, diesel binge) for a special dance practice for the kids.

Today, my honey was finally home from work. Only, I now find out, he's working all next week, doing vacation coverage for someone. It would've been the six-day week anyway, which happens once a month. But seven days is that much harder on the family.

Today, he did some spring cleaning of used vegetable oil out in the barn and got some biodiesel made, heralding the end of winter's cold. That was a huge relief. Just to give you an idea of Canadian fuel costs, we spent $500 on biodiesel supplies to run the truck for 5 months. Then we spent over $3000 on petro-diesel for the 7 months of cold weather/times when Dave was too busy to get fuel made.

We are totally working on a plan to go year-round with this. All I know is, it involves a heated slip-tank, a scheme Dave's cooking up with his dad's help. They're both very innovative guys, and Dad's particularly good at finding the right tradesmen to talk to about the ideas he develops. They're figuring out the right metals to use for the heating coil so the bio-D doesn't corrode it, how to run it off the truck's heat, and a bunch of things I will never comprehend. I just nod and smile and follow the Operating Instructions for Dummies that Dave comes up with for me.

Since we had the day at home, and it was dreary and rainy again, I actually did do some spring cleaning. I tidied the renovation junk out of the rec area of the basement. Although the drywalling's unfinished, it behaves like a room instead of a junk heap now.

Untitled Comment

Posted by Andrea on Friday 30 March 2007 at 11:32 - Link

OMG, your kids sound WONDERFUL in that taping!! Acappella (sp?).... I remember it well from my Mennonite days!! Your kids' voices are just too too precious. Your family should go *crazy* over hearing them!! :-)

Peace~ Andrea

Neat

Posted by Chas on Saturday 31 March 2007 at 07:55 - Link

What a cool idea. That is awesome to be able to do that for yourselves! Have a great day!!
Blessings,
Chas

Wow

Posted by MrsBurns on Saturday 31 March 2007 at 10:06 - Link

That is a huge swing in fuel costs. We have a 12 year old Camry that Mike drives 200 miles round trip (2-3 days/wk) and we're thinking of converting it to biodiesel. We've gotten some negative feedback on it from some people who are skeptical of the fuel injector and whether or not the conversion will cause it to malfunction/corrode/go kaput. Which would be most $$ to fix than we would save in fuel costs.

It's a Dilemma, capitalized. All I know is, we traded a mortgage payment in the city for a petro mortgage to Chevron......

Denise

Wonderful!

Posted by Darcy on Saturday 31 March 2007 at 01:47 - Link

I loved listening to your kids, they sound great! More! More! Good luck with that shed....maybe you can prevent a repeat of last years missing garden implements. Although your search for them made for fun blog entries :).
Darcy

Song

Posted by Vicki on Saturday 31 March 2007 at 09:51 - Link

I loved your kids song. I smiled all the while I was listening. Keep them at it, there`s nothing better than singing for the Lord!
Vicki