A Winter’s Day

It’s been bright and sunny for the past week. Nice to see the sun after several weeks of continuous gray skies. But along with the sun comes lower temperatures. Without the roof of clouds to reflect radiating heat back to the earth it escapes into the atmosphere resulting in seriously cold weather. Outside, it has been -10 to -15^oC (which it is right now), and this weekend it is predicted to go as low as -30C. Brrr. That’s cold.  

Inside is much better, although we find that this old house has need of improvement to make living actually comfortable. Indoor temperatures typically range from about 10-13^o on the floor and 15-20^o at waist level, depending on how recently the oven was charged with wood, or if cooking is in progress. In all cases it is sweater weather indoors, and my bald head also likes a cap!

Of course we must bear in mind that this house is typical of those build 50 years ago. They did well with what they had, but much better materials and know-how are available now. We are not eager to purchase a solution to the problem as much as to determine how to make the house more comfortable with what we can do ourselves. The easiest thing to do is to make the doors and windows tighter fitting and reduce the influx of cold air. This can be done with our existing tools, and will be a job for the fair weather months. Another thing that can make a big, big difference is to retrofit the oven box with a heat exchanger for a hot water radiant heating system, distributing the heat around the house. But for this we will have to spend some money.

You may ask: if our goal is simple living why should we spend money? If it was good enough for people a hundred years ago isn’t it good enough for us now?

Surely people made do with this typical arrangement because they had no other choice – this was all they had. But today, when there is a choice, a large number of those people are voting with their feet, going to the cities to live in hi-rise buildings, putting up with other inconveniences in order to have housing that is at least comfortable temperature-wise. This is why we see the villages dwindling to almost nothing. Ryabuino once housed more than 500 families, but today less than 10% of them remain.

Bottom line is that people, and our devotees included, are not going to undergo artificial austerities to live the simple life. And that is certainly not unreasonable. In the Bhagavad-gita Sri Krishna says nothing about such austerities. Instead He recommends austerities of the body as worship of the Supreme Lord, the brahmanas, and the spiritual master, cleanliness, simplicity, celibacy and nonviolence. Having to wear one’s coat inside the house during the winter months is not on the list.

Even better than retrofitting the existing old houses is to build new thermally-efficient housing, and that is in the works. Over the next few months we are going to plan summer construction with maximum use of local and recycled materials and minimal use of processed materials. We are looking at a variety of building methods including clay and straw, cob construction, rammed earth, and straw bale. We would like to have radiant floors if we can produce the tiles ourselves, and we hope to build a kiln for that purpose. There is plenty of clay locally so all we really need is a trained man to take up the task.

For cooking there are two ideas getting the most consideration right now. One is a biogas plant connected with the barn, but with just one cow that is not likely to deliver the needed amount. The other choice is wood gas. This is a simple technology developed over a century ago, and used extensively for internal combustion engines during WW2. The process carbonizes wood or other combustible materials producing a mixture of flammable gasses such as carbon monoxide and methane. It can be bottled under pressure, or used in situ to fuel a furnace or even an automobile.

Although somewhat austere, living here under such conditions is a great teacher. Knowing what mother nature has in store will certainly help us to have a comfortable time next winter when we hunker down for increased hearing and chanting—the prime reasons for living the simple life.