One more newbie

[ecofarmer]

Hi every one...

I?m just a farmer that has a wife, 3 kids, and were trying to change our lives to change our lives to use less of the global rescores but to still live regular lives.

This year were trying to reduce the amounts of gas we use in our lives. We traded in her Outback and my Bravada to buy a 3 door Yaris for me and a 5 door Yaris for her. We still have an Outback for trips and for her when the weather turns bad. I will use my smaller farm truck when needed with the weather.

Our house and shop are both grid tie and both ended the year selling back more power then they used for the year. The shop has 2 small sized vertical wind turbines solar hot water heating and a wood stove for the few times in the winter that we must use the shop.

Our house has a single 2 axis solar array and 3 medium sized wind turbines. Summer heating is done with solar and for winter we use our indoor wood boiler.

[theholycow]

Cool stuff. Welcome.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

Welcome to the site! You seem pretty serious. That's great that you can have vehicles specialized to the road conditions. In general it's hard for a lot of people to pull that one off, but a farm probably gives you more than enough room! Since I don't commute I usually can just sit out the really nasty stuff, so my 2WD vehicle does the job.

[ecofarmer]

Being on a farm you do need a few different vehicles. If you play with the insurance and the amount of miles you put on a vehicle in a year you can come up with huge savings. They look at it being less of a risk for me to drive a Yaris then a huge 4by4 dooly that that could pull a load of cattle down the high way like you don’t have a trailer. With a few vehicles in a house you can play with the primary, secondary, and special use on the vehicles.

I sat down and looked at the difference in insurance, gas mileage, and matinee cost of the Yaris to what our daily drivers were. For us it looks like the 2 cars will pay for them selves in 8 years. When the cost of gas goes up and when my wife learns to drive a little smother it will be 5 to 6 years. When we go someplace together in her car I will reset her fuel map and then drive it till it smoothes out and let her drive; she’s getting a lot better but she still has a bit of improvement to get.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

What sort of bad weather do you get there anyway? Rain causing mud? Ice? Just curious. Up here it's snow, of course, but our snow removal services are pretty aggressive.

[ecofarmer]

This winter we got one 6? snow / ice mix. We do get some mud and a lot of water that piles up on the road because people don?t keep there ditcher cleaned out.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

I imagine when you get snow & ice it must stay a mess for a while. Even up here the varying rates of effectiveness of snow removal and icing is pretty dramatic. I avoid the town roads and stick to the state highways until things thaw out (usually at the end of March).

[ecofarmer]

I don’t mind driving in the snow or ice but have never done it in a smaller car. With the 6” of mix we got I ended up scraping a mile of the driveway and a forth mile of access roads so I could get to the cattle. I did not try to clean my driveway and stuff I just hit it with the blade to nock off the bulk and kept on going.

It was on the third day they cam out our way and put down sand and gravel mix where the sun doses not shine. When the weather is bad we stay on the farm unless something is needed.

The cows are fine if it’s wet or cold. But once you combine the two of them together I see $$$. The cows need extra protean so I have to feed hay that took fuel to cut, bale, and move the hay around.