The nautical efficiency is carried on in our selection of a home for the kids’ computer. The only public spot we had available was in the dining room, in the corner by the table. Our tax return budget included money for a new computer, and we’ve wanted to put the old one downstairs in a public area where anyone could use it and we wouldn’t have to worry about what they were doing. (We’ll be purchasing NetNanny shortly to keep the porn epidemic out of our house, and Jessica will be the admin on all computers—just to keep it safe.)

But we didn’t have space for a computer desk—not to mention no money. So I bought this 2’x2’ sheet of plywood at Home Depot for about $6 (yes, it’s expensive for a small piece of wood, but it’s cheaper than buying a whole sheet that I don’t need) and ripped it in half diagonally to form a triangle. I also nipped a couple of inches off the angle at back to leave space for cords in back. I found a couple of 1×2 scraps at home and, after measuring and levelling, had Emma screw them into place. (She’s been wanting to use tools more.) Then she helped me screw the shelf to the wall supports, I stained it, and brought the old computer downstairs to its new home. Viola! (or was that voila?) The $6 computer desk.

It’s quite comfy; I’ve tried it. It’s not in the way, since people don’t make a habit of walking into corners. I’ve run a phone line along the wall and over to the kitchen phone jack so that we can get “internet access” from this computer. (I hope to have a wireless connection one of these days, but in the meantime we’ll enjoy having The World’s Slowest Internet Connection: one page every ten minutes!) Kids still watch movies, play games, and twiddle in Illustrator and Photoshop like they do now; but they don’t have to throng Dad’s studio while he’s at work. Mom can do her Facebeook, and everybody enjoys the screensaver slide show with its 15,000+ images I’ve taken over the years. As soon as I have 20 minutes to get the external hard drive moved downstairs, we’ll even have dinner music.

But enough about buckwheat already! This post was supposed to be about our butter. (Which is quite tasty, if somewhat chunkier than the storebought “bread spread”, which we have taken to calling PHVO at our house [for Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, which is what it is.]). (Can anyone suggest how I can avoid using parenthetical statements all the time? [I’m so distractable that I’m always inserting parentheses (which frequently have nothing to do with the subject [which in this case has become so lost that my (parenthetical observations have completely overpowered the post [Parentheses are neat. (You can keep stacking them inside each other [like those little Ukranian dolls (and at the end of the statement [they all unwind at once (like this)])])])])]).

Back to the butter. Since we now get raw milk from the neighbors (someone alert the FDA! Help! Help! I’m engaging in Non-Government-Approved Agricultural Activity!!!), we have plenty ‘nough cream to make bucketloads of butter every week. Last time Jess just gave a quart jar of cream to each child and had them shake it till it butterized, but I don’t see that activity holding its appeal for very long. It will quickly turn into Work. I can just hear the kids now: “Make bed, clean room, throw jammies on floor, practice piano, feed chickens, gather eggs, make butter. Mommmmm! Do I hafta?” So, being the good Dad I am, I called in the aid of the (dramatic music here) Power Mixer. Da da taaaaaa!

Rule Number 1 of making butter with the Power Mixer: Always Put a Lid On First. This is the sad voice of experience.

Rule No. 2: Get the cream out of the fridge first thing in the morning and don’t plan on making butter till sometime after lunch. This is because cream needs to be not cold if you want it to butterize. This is the impatient and frustrated voice of experience.

Rule No. 3: Send a couple of kids all the way down to the end of the driveway without a coat (and preferably toting something fragile) so that Mom will go running out of the kitchen when the cream turns to butter. This is because the butterization happens quickly, and the buttermilk will come spurting out of the holes in the Power Mixer lid, and your wife will be not happy with you when she sees buttermilk on her counter. Buttermilk is great for homemade biscuits. (Not for the Pillsbury Detonating Canister kind. If you add homemade buttermilk to those, the chemical reaction will cause your kitchen to burst into flame.) This is why you must distract your wife first.

Rule No. 4: Rinse butter. If you do not rinse butter with cold water until the water runs clear, the milk stays in the butter and goes rancid. This is icky.

Rule No. 5: Enjoy. It is especially helpful to get bread crumbs and butter globules all over your keyboard. You are not allowed to gloat at the wretched mortals who must eat PHVO on their Pillsbury Remotely-Resembles-Biscuit Food Product, since you yourself were eating PHVO not so long ago.

How? Well, for one, we teach our kids to turn off the lights. Kids came pre-programmed to leave everything in exactly the state it was when something new distracts them (every one to 90 seconds, depending on age), and that includes bedroom lights, bathroom lights, computers, buzz saws, etc. If we sit down to dinner and I see a light on anywhere in the house (our house is so small I can just about tell, from where I sit), the most likely offender gets to stand from her meal and go “peg it.”

Also we have mostly new appliances, low-flow faucets and shower heads, etc. Most appliances nowadays are pretty darn efficient. My parents just got rid of an old upright freezer at their house that was costing them $20 a month to run. We have three freezers at our house, including two large uprights each the size of theirs, and combined they don’t cost a fraction of that.

Also we have a tankless water heater that runs on propane. This is a big deal for a big family. I was talked into a tankless by the analogy of your car: would you leave it running all night just because you’ll be using it in the morning? Yet water heaters run all the time to keep the water hot, andthey’re still liable to run out. It makes lots more sense to just heat the water as you need it. A tankless is expensive to buy and install, but with multiple teenage daughters in the house we figure it will pay for itself in about five years.

Also we don’t have an air conditioner. This is an unfair comparison if you live where you really need it. After driving Dexter around all summer with no AC (which means windows down at freeway speeds, which deafens me and positively ruins my ‘do) I understand that AC is a necessity sometimes. But because our house is so well insulated, we leave the windows open all night in the summertime and close them in the morning, trapping the cool in the house during the day. Sometimes I’ll see people’s AC units running at night when it’s 68° out. Shut them off and open the windows!

The two biggest power draws at our house are our well pump (non-negotiable, but it does pretty well drawing water for nine people from 700 feet down!) and the dryer. But we set up a couple of clotheslines and that saves a pretty penny.

There’s a lot of information online about how to cut your energy use. We’d do it even if it weren’t the fad right now, because it’s hard to beat a monthly power bill that costs less than some people’s dinner.