for the goat, sheep and alpaca. We had wanted to use our shed as a barn, but it's on a solid rock ledge, so sadly we couldn't use it. New barns run $1500-$3000 depending on size and materials used. And we weren't up to building a barn from scratch. Instead, I found a shed on craigslist that we had to disassemble for transport and reassemble on our property. Another ghetto project and it only took us a WHOLE month…
We also thought that the garage (where we house the rabbits and cats) would maintain temperatures above freezing, but it doesn't. We were fortunate enough to get a wood stove for free! But there's this little issue called wood that we didn't think through. As noted in a previous post, Mark is a pyromaniac. He has been cutting up fallen trees and using them as wood in our (now-ruined) outdoor fire pit, since we moved in.
So it didn't seem like much of a leap to use that wood for the woodstove in the garage. Well… Mark says it's not as easy as we thought. Especially since he's now cutting and splitting wood in sub-freezing temps. Thankfully, he does it and now the garage is toastier than the house!
Besides our hot water… you know what else runs on oil – our HEATERS! We dumbass city slickers thought our heaters ran on gas. When we ran out of oil a few months ago, the weather was mild so we didn't realize the heaters weren't working. We went through the last oil fill-up fast! Now that it's cold – it was -1* (minus/negative one degree) the other day – we noticed when we ran out of oil! It's funny how you use more oil in the winter. And we didn't budget for this. We still have animals to feed, not to mention feeding ourselves. Fortunately, the oil company is willing to work with us. They only charged us half of the non-route/emergency fee that they would have… Mark is now rethinking the wood stove project I lobbied for, that he previously protested when it was warm outside. We are not going through this again. It sucks.
I've been riding to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for the past four months on a commuter bus. Although it's only 30 minutes from my exit to the hospital exit, on the bus it's about 90 minutes each way which includes the various stops on the way. It doesn't make sense to drive everyday when the bus is only $1 each way. Although I did start ridesharing two days a week.
It's been rough (for me) on the bus since I have motion sickness issues, I leave home at dark and get home at dark, and from the time I get on the bus in the morning to the time I get off at the end of the day is 12 hours. Although it was a great place to work, I won't have to worry about all that anymore. Anyway, some of us were chatting the other day and this one woman was talking about how she spent $6500 on oil to heat her home in one season. She was trying to be frugal and kept her heat set at 60* - which is cold. She said she dressed in layers and slept with her dogs. $6500 to be cold?!?!?!?!? Another woman was saying that they kept their thermostat at 65* and dressed in layers. We all agreed that we want to be able to walk around in our undies and be comfortable, whether it was winter or summer. The woman with the dogs just moved into an energy efficient home and her house faces south, so her heating bills are a small fraction of what they were, plus her electric bills are under $50 month! That's what I'm talking about.
