Creating a garden

We hired a neighbor to build several raised beds for us, with hardware cloth fastened to the bottom to exclude the pocket gophers, and to fill them with organic horse manure compost mixed with our native soil.

We've been experimenting with which vegetables and herbs grow best at our altitude, and so far we have had great results with short-season varieties of

• Potatoes

• Carrots (Yaya)

• Summer squash (pattypan, zephyr, and zucchini)

• Cool-climate herbs like parsley, tarragon, winter savory, dill, and borage

• French beans and snap peas

• Beets

• Greens, including leaf cabbage, chard, arugula, kale, and a variety of lettuces

We grow some shorter-season tomatoes (Stupice and cherry tomatoes) and basil in our greenhouse. We also have access to an organic farm only half an hour away (at much lower elevation) that grows amazing sweet peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes, so we pick those at the end of the summer and don't bother to grow them in the mountains. And we supplement our produce all summer with additional varieties from the nearby farmer's market.

We've planted some berry bushes, rhubarb, and asparagus as well, but since it takes a few years for them to establish well enough for harvesting, we haven't gotten to try them yet!

4WD electric SUV

We live where it is a matter of safety to have a 4WD vehicle, not just a preference, and we like to free camp. We are determined that our current vehicles will be our last gasoline vehicles. We have been looking forward to the advent of 4WD electric trucks for the past two years and have had reservations for two different models to consider. And our turn finally came!

In preparation, we bought an inexpensive old 4wd truck to serve as backup on the rare occasions when we need two vehicles and to haul manure or large items. We sold our two city commute cars for the downpayment on the EV (they aren't well suited for mountain roads anyway, although they've done their best). With the federal and state incentives for the EV and the fact that charging with renewable electricity will be free, we have gotten the cost of ownership of our two 4wd vehicles down to near what we had before with two sensible commuter ICE cars.

We are looking forward to having two cars that can make it up the snowy, icy mountain roads and our steep driveway so that we can drive all the way to our house in the winter rather than having to walk a distance in bad weather.

We've found that hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles we've owned in the past were peppier than gasoline-only vehicles, so we're looking forward to our BEV giving better performance than the cars we have been driving. And its high clearance will be a huge benefit with the amount of off-roading we do. We expect to have a learning curve negotiating DC fast chargers on road trips, but we are already comfortable with charging our plug-in hybrid while shopping, working, staying overnight, or eating at a restaurant.

I'll update this article as we gain experience with our new EV!

Charge the car while shopping

Driving a plug-in car with a short electric-only range and avoiding using gasoline is becoming more and more convenient. Not only can we charge our car at home (and at work, on the rare occasions when we go to the office), but public charging stations are everywhere -- at shopping centers, public offices, in parking garages, and at parks -- and many of them are free. Charging our car is generally more convenient, much cheaper, and more pleasant than stopping for gasoline would be.

Since our PHEV doesn't have quite the range to get us to town and back again on EV only, we've taken to parking at the car charger while shopping.

Each of the grocery stores we prefer has a car charger a block away. One of us stays with the cart while the other walks to the car and brings it back, if we've bought more than it's comfortable to carry.

When we are downtown eating out, we park at the charging station in the parking garage and get a full battery for much less than the waiter's tip.

We also charge our car while we are at the farmer's market. We think of the electric car charging station as our own VIP parking space. Often, parking at the car charger is closer than the nearest non-charger parking for the farmer's market, and the charge is free.