Good News in the Electric Bill

Sun Above the Prairie Horizon

A storm blew down from the north last night
and the land received a little less than an inch of rain.
This morning,
glorious cool temperatures pervade.
Already this summer,
though it’s still early,
we are grateful for every raindrop
and every moment of cool breeze.
With a warmer-than-normal May,
we are concerned about heat this summer.
And still, we’re concerned about drought:
pastures that were lushly green two weeks ago
are already turning brown,
an indication that last summer’s drought
went deep
and this spring’s rains
haven’t gone deep enough
to reverse it.

So it was especially good news
that arrived in the electric bills this morning.
They reflect the second
of the first two full months
since solar panels were installed
on the pond house and farm house.
At the pond house,
the solar panels have produced
1.64 megawatt hours of electricity.
That’s enough to supply energy
to  54 houses for one day
and to offset 1.13 tons carbon,
or the equivalent of 29 trees.
At the pond house,
the solar panels have provided 408 kilowatt hours
of electricity in the last month.
Here at the farm house,
my electric bill reports
that I used an average of 0 kilowatt hours each day
as compared to 6 kilowatt hours each day
in the same period last year.

Bottom line:
we are not burning as much fossil fuel
and not releasing as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
so that there isn’t as much global warming
or climate change
as there would be
if we weren’t.
It’s not enough difference
to solve the problem,
but part of the effort we can make
to contribute to the efforts
so many are making.
We have to.
Here’s a link to a piece by NASA climate scientist
James Hansen,
printed recently in The New York Times.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

 

A Prairie Wedding

Play Days at the Big Pond

Jay Miller building a fire a few years ago

My son Will spent the first five years
of his life
here on the farm.
And, honestly, he was thrilled to get to move to town.
“The sidewalks go all the way to Oklahoma City!”
he told me when we moved to Enid.
We visited the farm often
and, an only child,
he usually brought friends with him.
One of them was Tanner Bryan.
Another was Jay Miller.
The stories of adventures they had on the farm
are now legendary among their friends.
Will lives in Los Angeles now,
and when he’s home,
back on the farm,
friends still come to visit.
I am so grateful
they all have time on the farm,
roaming the pastures,
playing on the pond,
jumping hay bales,
taking night-time walks.
And I like to think
that freedom in nature
helped form them,
just a little,
into the fine young people they are today.

So it was a great joy
when Jay Miller and his fiance Erin Nordquist
asked if they could get married at the farm—
on the prairie,
atop the hill
overlooking the Big Pond.
Both Jay and Erin are nature-lovers,
outdoor adventurers,
and conscious of protecting the environment.
It seemed perfectly fitting
that they begin their married life together
in a simple ceremony
on the windy prairie
surrounded by a vast sky,
with a view of the world
that goes on forever,
and held in love and well-being
by scores of happy family and friends.

Family and friends follow Jay and pastor Bill Inglish
onto the prairie to the top of the hill.

Erin’s father, Mark, built a canopy
from fallen native brush.

The wedding party processes across the prairie

Tanner plays sweet, sweet music.

Jay and Erin proclaim their love and promises

Bride and groom take the shortcut
back from the hill

Erin and Jay

We are here,
back on the farm,
because we are fortunate
to have been gifted with care of this land.
We are here,
back on the farm,
because we are profoundly concerned
about the health of the planet.
We are here,
back on the farm,
to give people the opportunity
to connect again with the natural world
and learn to live sustainably with it.
We are here,
back on the farm,
for days like this—
when we get to celebrate
the coming together
of two young people
who not only care deeply about each other,
but also the planet.

They are off
to the world now,
and still
we hold them
with the everlasting bond
of the prairie.

 

Sabbath Meditation

Hurricane Ridge
Olympic National Park, Washington State

 

The Sabbath is one-seventh part of our days. Far less than one-seventh part of our land remains in wilderness. If we understand the lessons of restraint and liberation conveyed by the Sabbath, then we should leave alone every acre that has not already been stamped by our designs, and we should restore millions of acres that have been abused…

Some people object that our economy will falter unless we open up these last scraps of wild land to moneymaking. They warn against the danger of ‘locking up’ resources vital to our prosperity. But couldn’t the same be said of the Sabbath? Why ‘lock up’ a whole day of the week? Why spend time worshiping, why meditate or pray, when we could be using that time to produce more goods and services? If it is really true that our economy will fail unless we devote every minute and every acre to the pursuit of profit, then our economy is already doomed. For where shall we turn after the calendar and the continent have been exhausted?

To cherish the wilderness does not mean that one must despise human works, any more than loving the Sabbath means that one must despise the rest of the week. Even if you do not accept the religious premise on which the Sabbath is based, as many people do not, then consider the wisdom embodied in the practice of restraint. Through honoring both Sabbath and wilderness, we renew our contact with the mystery that precedes and surrounds and upholds our lives. The Sabbath and the wilderness remind us of what is true everywhere and at all times, but which in our arrogance we keep forgetting—that we did not make the earth, that we are guests here, that we are answerable to a reality deeper and older and more sacred than our own will.

— Scott Russell Sanders
A Conservationist Manifesto