The impending global crisis of diminishing oil supply (The Long Emergency), noted in previous articles, will eventually be felt inside our front doors. As society struggles to adapt there will be a long transition in which changes will have to be made. Alternative energy sources will slowly be factored in. Some societal changes will be implemented. Nevertheless the home front will bear much of the inevitable hardships in terms of heating / cooling and transportation.

There are some who are showing the way in terms of 'damage control'. My friend Constance Scrafield-Danby, a regular contributor to the Citizen, interviewed a most resourceful family in the Hockley Valley, Anthony Ketchum's home is built into a side hill with three walls below ground. A small wind turbine and solar panels feed electricity into batteries, precluding any need for tapping into the provincial grid. Other local families have made use of straw bale construction to maximize insulation for the home.

Friends on Manitoulin Island added a greenhouse on the south side of their farmhouse. Solar panels provided below floor water heating, ensuring year-round growing conditions. Kitchen windows opened into the moderated environment. On sunny winter days the greenhouse provided heat for the whole house. Vegetable crops were available through-out the winter.

When the folk retired, they built an environmentally self sufficient log home on a steep slope. The lower floor abutted a rock outcrop. Shelving was built along the rock face providing cool storage for garden preserves. Even on the hottest days the basement is decidedly chilly. Cold air is circulated by fans through-out the house in the heat of the summer.

An innovative feature of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie is a glassed-in porch providing a corridor from the parking lot to the appropriate office doors. I have often thought what a benefit glass corridors would be around my own home. In addition to protection from wintry blasts, we could have 'outdoor' dining on sunny, mid-winter days . Such protected space would also provide 'cold frame' type growing space for starting flower and vegetable plants early in the spring. Roof-top gardens also have a great deal of potential for local production of food crops and added insulation for buildings. Our fireplace and four bush cords of firewood significantly reduce our dependence of electrical heating.

Next to heating / cooling for a northern climate, an essential element of life is water. Those of us deriving our water needs from wells are fortunate not being dependant on municipal supplies pumped from the Great Lakes. Home owners in more urban settings might be well advised to harness natural water supplies, i.e. rainfall. Our grandparents made excellent use of eave-troughs and rain barrels. Use of roof-top water would be a great boon to gardeners and those who prize well watered front lawns.

When we lived in Thailand, roof-top rainfall was stored in tanks during the rainy season, used for drinking and cooking year round. On a project in a rural Phillipine village, plans were drawn up to store roof-water from a large, hill-top church. A sizeable cistern down slope was proposed to store enough water to meet the off season needs of the village, delivered by gravity

Modern technology has spoiled us with cheap electrical energy in the home. I have vivid recollections of the ice box in our grandparents' kitchen. Ice, cut in mid winter, was stored in sawdust in the ice-house. A daily chore was digging out a block of ice and carrying it to the house. Living in town we had a cold room below grade under the front porch, accessed from the basement, to store a winter's supply of potatoes, apples, carrots, parsnips and squash just above the freezing point.

Foundation planting helps prevent heat loss around the house. An added feature we used was stacking bags of leaves, moderating climate immediately adjacent to the building. There is much we can do to prepare for the shortage of energy of the 'long emergency'. The key is to take such initiatives now to shelter ourselves from the coming inevitable hardships.