Greenhouse pics!

It's been a busy and productive week!  I've been hammering away at the garden, I built the framework for, and put together my new greenhouse, and I've started training for my part time job counting people.

The frame sections.  2x4x10', cut to an angle at the top, and joined with a triangle of plywood.  Braced with a 2x6, the bottom of the "legs" are cut flat.

The end cap being braced.  I ended up bracing with rope, as you can see in the bottom photo.  It works excellent! 

Just needs plastic, some end plywood, and a door.  I will be putting some padding at the top of each frame section to avoid cutting the plastic on the screws holding the rope on.  I will paint the whole thing white to protect the plastic and reflect light.  

I've already sectioned off the garden with old tires (I'm not using them for planting this year), I've got about 1/3 acre or so this year, including the greenhouse.  Over the next few days I need to build a table, get some planting trays, make some soil cubes, and start some peas in the ground.  The greenhouse plastic will have to wait until I can get some assistance in May.  I will make a temporary shelter for the soil cubes, which are pretty small.  I have a frost blanket too, in case it gets really cold, but it's been pretty decent, no freezing overnite for the last 1.5 weeks.
Well, it's off to work again!

Screw it, I'm starting anyway!

We're past the middle of April...by now I should have been industriously digging, putting down compost and manure, and perhaps planting peas, brocolli, cabbage or spinach.  Instead, there is still 2 inches of snow on the ground, and this early in the morning, the ground is still frozen from last night.  And I am quickly running out of days off to do all of the things I had planned!
So, I'm starting a bunch of stuff anyway.  I'm going to layout the boards for my hoophouse, and maybe build the end pieces from OSB and plywood.  I might try and find some cross bars to start the framework.  The greenhouse plastic is waiting for me in Calgary, I'll be picking that up tomorrow.  I still need a new axle for my trailer, which will cost $188 (not too bad, considering the trailer is $1000), and I will pay for and pick up my garden tractor.  I also have the back of my truck filled with gravel, which I've been using to fill in my driveway, and I'll be making some garden pathways with gravel and some extra soil.


GARDEN
I keep changing my mind, but after doing some research that I have actually done before (I'm a little dense, ok?) I've decided NOT to rototill anything!  Instead, I'm going to lay a couple sheets of newspaper directly on the ground, and pile hay, straw and manure in rows, leaving a tiny gap to plant into down the centre.  I will buy several bags of peat, mix it with manure, and that will be my "soil" for planting.  I might shove a digging fork into the planting row, and wiggle it to try and loosen the clay down below.  I've also got about 200 strawberry plants, and 30 asperagus crowns to dig in, but that can wait for some better weather.

ENERGY
I finally got almost all of my solar panels mounted on some homemade racks, and collecting sunlight.  I had 12 panels total, for some reason one of them doesn't work.  I don't know how I can fix it, and sending it back for a warranty repair would cost as much as the panel is worth...I guess I'll be running with 11 panels then.  I also took down my wind turbine to see if I could fix it.  It looks like I'm going to have to tear it right apart, it might be the bearings that are shot...but the sun should fill in quite nicely for power!
I was surprised at two things over the last two weeks;  the solar panels don't produce as much power as I thought they would, and number two, we don't use nearly as much power as I thought we did!  We're using an average of 3-4 kwhrs per day, which is about half what I expected.  I found this out because the solar charge controller tells me how much power the panels made over that day, and we haven't run the generator for a while, so we're using less than we're making.  In fact, yesterday, the batteries were full at 2 pm, and for the rest of the day were equalizing!  It's too bad our batteries are crap, or we would have several days worth of power.  They barely last overnight now...

MISC
I have a part time job!  I may have mentioned this, but I've got all the details now, and it is a sweet, sweet gig.  I have to deliver census forms to a certain area, which just happens to be on my way to work.  I also get paid mileage for driving there, and also a per/hour rate, only $15, but it's better than minimum wage.  So, essentially, I can drive to my zone a couple hours before I start work, work a few hours, go to work, drive back, and be paid for it!  Well, at least the part from my house to my zone.  The mileage rate is decent too, it more than covers gas in my very efficient Corolla.  The one little difficulty:  The job starts right at the beginning of May, which would be prime gardening time.  Hence, I'm trying to get everything done now...

BUSINESS
I need a website, but I don't have a lot of time right now to set one up.  Watch for it though, at www.sunset-meadows.com in the coming months.  It will be, of course, a work in progress, and the first posts will be my podcast, which will be a once/week thing, eventually going to 2-3 per week.  Eventually, this blog will appear there, and not here.  In time, we will have an online store, zillions of pictures, and articles about all sorts of nutty and cool stuff.
Bookmark it now!  www.sunset-meadows.com

Mud, and "There is nothing new under the sun"

Happy April!  I think some of you lucky blighters are starting your gardens...I must confess jealousy, but on the other hand, I do have a lot of non-gardenish work that is also exciting.  My truck is stuck in the mud, again (yearly tradition) but I have an elaborate plan involving large chunks of wood and jacks that should free it tomorrow.

FAMILY

I must begin with the best...my son turns 1 in a few days!  He's become even more adorable, and is still not walking or crawling (not that I'm complaining) but seems to always find some wood chips to eat off the floor that the broom missed.  He already doesn't like brocolli, but he'll eat wood chips and puzzle pieces...

My daughter is continuing her homeschooling, and I have to admit, it's difficult to stay on track and actually get down to it, but once we get the books out, and start working, it's fun, most of the time.  You MUST have the patience of a rock with a child, but still not let them get away with goofing around too much.  I have learned one thing: 

Learning must be enjoyed, and when it stops being enjoyed, it stops being learned!

So, at various points during our lessons, I let my kid just write some silly word, or draw a picture of a fork, because she enjoys it.  Then, I gently bring her back on focus.

ELECTRICITY
This could be a blog post of it's own, and it's the big non-gardenish project that I am undertaking.
*drum roll*
My solar panels are not just in my possession, they are also (mostly) installed, and producing power!!!
I purchased 12 in total, and I have managed to get 7 up and running.  They are freakin enormous, not to put too fine a point on that, but I can manage them myself if I'm careful. 

Not a moment too soon for the solar panels either.  I'm running out of generators to destroy!  We've got our Honda-engined one that sometimes produces power, and sometimes doesn't.  Mostly doesn't.  The dumbarses who run the parts dept at Champion power equipment Canada, sent me two wrong parts, and not enough of the proper parts to fix my almost new generator that has less than 350 hrs on it.  To say I was angry would not fully account for what happened then...

In better news, I pulled out an older generator that I had tried to start, and failed...and got that running!  I need a different plug socket for that one.  I also discovered that the stripped spark plug socket on my propane generator is repairable with a kit that I purchased off Ebay just now.

So, hopefully in a few weeks I will have 4 functioning generators that I don't need, rather than needing one that I don't have!

Oh yes, my wind turbine is still not producing power, I think there is a major shortout somewhere inside the turbine itself, which will require a takedown and overhaul...booooooo.  It was windy today too, and not very sunny.  It always irritates me when energy gets wasted because of some technical problem.

Stay tuned for pics of the solar installation as it comes along!

One last observation about electricity.  I found out that our fridge was on the "auto-defrost" setting since we moved in...whoops.  It was also set too high, so it was turning on what seemed like every 10 minutes.  I think that fridge has literally wasted 1000 kwhrs because of those two things, because the batteries can last quite a bit longer these last few days.  We just need 1 more laptop and we should be in happy-fun-times-awesomeness-town.

GARDEN/BUSINESS

Well, there's mud and lots of it!  A record snowfall is now melting and there is standing water everywhere!  It should dry up a bit this week, and then it's go go go time!  Deploy rototiller!
I have a couple of experiments I'd like to try.  I'm going to try a few different methods and see what works the best.  I will rototill a section of my garden, incorporating a ton of manure and compost, leaves and wood chips, and maybe some cattle bedding from my neighbor.  That will be the first and only rototilling done there.
On a different section, I will flame off the grass, and pile the mulch directly on the dirt, and plant into that.
Then, I'd like to shred a bunch of wood from the dump, and make some hugelkultur beds (wood covered in dirt) along with some hay for a bit of nitrogen, and plant into that.  I will keep the winners and shoot the losers.
I've also been very seriously examining the idea of raising about 200 chickens in a paddock type arrangement with electronet fencing.  I would sell a bunch, and keep the rest to eat.  If this works, I could increase next year to 400 or so, and use whatever profits to buy calves to raise. If I can, I will do more than 200 this year, but that's my minimum.
There's also my idea to grow buckwheat, hull it and feed it to chickens, then use the hulls to make pillows which I could sell online.
Then, there's all of the neat ideas my wife has been coming up with, namely, making soaps, perfumes, and lotions from herbs and flowers.
We just need to make some solid plans, and follow them through!
It's time to crash, I was up at 3 am to work overtime...it never ends.

Sun power!

This year will not be like the last: I filed my taxes electronically, and I got my refund already! So, what does a homesteader do with his tax return? Solar panels!!

http://www.sunelec.com/ has some of the best prices on solar that I've seen yet, the panels that I ordered were $1.19/watt USD. Never in history have solar panels been that cheap! In Canada, the cheapest panels I've seen are about $3/watt, although there wouldn't be any shipping.

Even with shipping at $700, I'm still getting 1280 watts of solar lovin', along with a top quality charge controller (Outback, of course) and a combiner box. The charge controller will take the very high voltage from the panels, topping at 71 volts, and step it down to 24. I can still add another 400-500 watts to the system in the future without adding more charge controllers.

I've decided to put the panels on the ground level, on a movable, tiltable platform since I may need to move them in the future. Not to mention, the ground is still frozen solid, so digging posts isn't an option...

Which brings me to my next question;

Where the H-E double hockey sticks is spring?? We're still getting temps overnight around -25C, and daytime is running about -10C or less! I guess no spring for us this year. We should be getting above freezing temps in the daytime by this point. It's supposed to warm up in a few days. We'll see if that actually happens. As I recall, by this time last year, we had no snow, and I could already feel the soil warming up. I haven't actually seen soil yet, so we're a bit behind...

Which is why I need a greenhouse!! Lucky for me, I already dug the pit last fall, so I just need a bit of plastic, some framing, and a couple of warm weeks so I can shape the soil a bit. I've started window shopping for garden goodies, and I might have a bead on a garden tractor for $300! Propane powered, not that I care. It could be powered by unicorn feathers, and I would find a way to run it.

I haven't had a lot of pics, because of the difficulty of uploading from the iPhone (might want to work on that a bit, APPLE!) but here's a few.

This is one of the many bizzare snowdrifts that we've accumulated this year. Definitely a smaller one, some of the big ones are 5 feet tall, and unfortunately, just outside the door!

This was once a wind turbine rectifier, now a smoking melted heap of Chinese crapola. I'm making a new one from better parts. I might salvage the heating coils from this, I do need a diversion load. The wind was 80 kph, I honestly thought the turbine was going to explode, but I shorted the wires, as you can see at the bottom, and she stopped.

I guess it's bed time, I'll have another post when the solar panels arrive!

Electricity on the farm

It's almost March! For some people in North America, spring has already begun, and they are hard at work preparing garden beds. It's -25 C here, and there is no garden work to be done.
I am instead working on keeping our pipes unfrozen, and our electricity on.
A few days ago, my awesome Wacker-Neuson generator had some major problems, making it necessary to buy a second generator, just a cheap Champion 3500 watt used one. My Wacker (what a name...) genny is actually running now, and I suspect that the cold weather is keeping it going. Some electrical part kept cutting out when it was warm last week, so I will certainly need to find that and fix it. Now, the new generator was running poorly last night, and I found the problem...a giant chunk of ice in the intake. There is still a bunch of ice in the air intake, so I will need some cleaning on that one.
For those of you who may be considering an off-grid system, and maybe like me you rely on a generator until you can afford solar panels, here is some advice. Two working generators at all times. Having your only generator cut out is NOT acceptable, a backup is a MUST! Even a cheap one bought used is fine, as long as you don't store it with gas in the tank, and run it for an hour every two months.
I had some other electricity related thoughts: I found something on the internet at this site
www.greensteamengine.com and I was astounded at the potential. These boys have invented a steam engine that can run off a pressure canner, is about the same size as a regular generator, probably 1/3 the weight, and produces no exhaust gas (the steam can be recondensed and used again). It can operate off of pressures up to 50 psi, or as low as 10. You can attach a small generator directly to the driveshaft, and tie it into your batteries.
For me, I picture using this in the winter, putting the pressure boiler directly on top of my wood stove! Even if it only produces 2000 watts, on dark cloudy days, it would easily produce all our electricity with ease in just a few hours. It would not be needed in summer, when the days are much longer, and the solar panels could take up the slack.
I tried to contact the website about prices, still haven't got a reply.
I will post any replies I get, in case anyone else finds this kind of interesting.
Adios for now!

Blizzard!!!

Every year, we get a couple of slammin' blizzards, usually lasting a couple of days or more. Last year, it was December, this year, it's right now! Blowing snow, drifting, getting stuck, and snow, snow, snow everywhere.
Since we now have three vehicles, I figured at least one would start. I knew that there would be snow packed into the engine block by the wind, which there was, but I managed to get my truck started, and put the belt back one after it slipped off (happened last year too). Then, I made the driveway run. And, I got stuck. So, about 20 minutes of shoveling later, I'm out! It's obvious though, that there won't be any car getting out of that. The snow is still falling, and blowing. Any tracks I make today will be filled in tomorrow.
We haven't had to run the generator for a day and a half, which is good because it was buried under 4 feet of packed snow. The wind has been driving the wind turbine hard, and we have more than ample power.
I took a couple "snowcation" days, but I'm back to work tomorrow. Bye!

Deep winter report

It's almost hard to believe, it's already January 7th! All the fun bits of winter are over, and now the waiting for spring sets in. Worse yet, we've had snow on the ground for 2 months, and I haven't been skiing once!

HOUSE
My wife and I have been spending a lot of time looking at houseplans, and discussing what we want to build. I've been investigating using a kit, which means that the house wouldn't be a strawbale building, but a kit would be much faster, has a set price, and comes with all the relevant documents. All of that would allow us to get a home up faster than we would otherwise, which is kind of important. If I hire out the basement pouring, and use a kit, we could have a house up in a few short months, rather than a year or longer. It will cost more to hire it out, but we will also save money by not having to rent in another town!
Am I compromising my dream of having a super insulated house? No, because I have a few tricks that I intend to employ when building that will help. Reflective foil on the inner, and outer walls should add some heat retention. The basement will also be heavily insulated. Having an ultra-insulated house isn't really that huge of a benefit, when you don't pay for heat already...

AGRICULTURE
It seems every time I post, my garden plan has changed. Well, this is no exception, but it's only one small (large) change. I still plan to have a large garden with a few main crops that I will sell, but I've added one thing. A greenhouse. I can buy the 6mil greenhouse poly for about $250, which gives me 2000 square feet of plastic. That would be enough to build 2 50 foot hoophouses, for a total growing area of 1000 sq ft! I'll need a pile of either rebar, or electrical conduit, whichever is cheaper. Bend those in an arc, stick into the ground, add a straight piece on the top, tie together, and done! Well, almost. The poly will have to be attached, which probably takes about 4 people to do well.
Hopefully this will give me a 4 week headstart on growing, and I can totally control all moisture, exclude pests, and work in the garden even when the weather is poor.

I have also decide to tone down my cattle plans, mainly because of lack of money. To really get some cattle going would take a lot of money, which would be tied up for 18 months while the cattle grow. We need that money available to do other things, like put up solar panels!

DARK TIMES AHEAD

I've been reading, listening to podcasts, and trying to look into the murky future. It doesn't look good, at least for America. I would not be surprised to see a major bond default by the US within the next 24 months, maybe longer. American is living on borrowed time (as are we all), and she can't continue to run 1.2 trillion dollar deficits without breaking the bank. Literally.
I am expecting the following to occur here:

1. Oil prices hit the stratosphere - Solution - As much solar, wind, and gasoline storage as I can manage. I'd like to have 6-8 months of gas in 200 gal tanks. That will give me time to come up with some kind of alternative transportation, probably something with woodgas. I'd also like to have 2 years worth of firewood put aside.

2. Food prices follow oil - This will benefit us, and might be the catalyst for my eventual departure from working for the Man.

3. Interest rates rise...a lot - 15 %? 21%? It's happened before! I know that I need to lock in at my lower rate for 5 years, and get rid of any unsecured debt with variable rate. Then, when rates rise, we need to have a plan to be out of debt by the end of the term.

4. Pay rate freezes, or even salary rollbacks - I don't expect to lose my job, but I do expect a reduction in pay. We already live beneath our means, and by the time this hits, I'm hoping to be at a monthly surplus of $1000 - $1200.

5. War? - You have to admit, there is a lot of chest puffing, and bluster from around the world, particularly from some shorty Asian dictators, and bearded Muslim guys. Historically, major economic crisis is usually followed by a war or three. This one ought to be a jim-dandy, what with everyone possessing nukes and all.

Should we all worry? I can't change anything by worrying. We'll try to be as ready as possible when stuff happens. I have to trust in God, because my neighbors certainly aren't ready!