So why no new posts since August?

Ok, ok, it has been a few months since I wrote a blog and there isn’t a really good reason except that we have been busy this fall. So what have we been up to? Let me catch everyone up on our projects.

The Garden
The garden is now done and all put up for the winter. It was a pretty good garden despite the fact that it was a very wet and not very hot summer. The tomatoes suffered because of the lack of heat, but we still managed to put up some stewed tomatoes and salsa for the winter. We had a wonderful crop of cucumbers most of which we ate fresh, but the last batch we made into our first batch of crock pickles; enough to last us until next year. We dug up the potatoes in October and ended up with around 50 pounds which was our best year yet. We stored those away in a box in the basement so they should keep until spring. The beets did ok, but next year we need to do a better job thinning them so they get a little bigger, but the carrots which we did thin did wonderful. We ended up with a half bushel of carrots which should definitely get us through the winter. Both the carrots and beets are now in the make-shift root cellar (aka a plastic bin filled with dirt) which did us well last season. We did supplement our own beets with some bought from a farmer’s market; this gave us enough to put up some pickled beets which my wife and I both love. The garlic we planted and dried produced much better than last year so much so that we shouldn’t have to buy any to eat all winter long and have already planted a more tightly grouped crop from our excess this year. The onions we planted grew, but didn’t get very big. We supplemented our onions with a ten pound bag purchased from a local farm. We ended up dehydrating almost all ten pounds for easier storage over the winter. The peppers produced quite a crop this year and for the first time we had a little success with bell peppers. We normally only get banana peppers to grow, but this year enough of the bells produced that we were able to have a couple meals of stuffed peppers out of them. The banana peppers did well enough that we were able to eat from them all summer, use them in the salsa and still have enough to freeze for the winter. The dry beans did very well and we ended up getting about 5 pints of harvested dry beans after all was said and done. Although we were extremely happy with the results of the dry beans, we may not plant them again because of the low output per space required, especially on a product that can be bought cheaply. The lettuce and leafy greens did well as always and is actually still producing despite a couple hard frosts. The late season peas did not produce before the frost got to it but we don’t expect much from our second season crops. We still have some beets in the ground that hopefully will overwinter and maybe grow a little in early spring. Our beach plum trees gave us a very good crop this year and we were able to produce quite a few jars of plum jam out of them. We did of course go to our local apple farm (Red Apple Farm), a picked an overflowing bushel of fresh apples. Most of these we dehydrated for snacks through the winter since this is an easy and cheap way to store a lot of apples. We bought a few pumpkins and squash at a local farm, but because of the wet summer we had, we had to cook them up and freeze them before the end of October since they were starting to get soft. We should have enough pumpkin and squash frozen though to keep us going until next fall. As I said, overall the garden did very well and we were quite pleased with the results this year.

The solar array
Last spring I put together a small solar array to simply charge a couple batteries (see Experiments in off-grid solar). Late in the summer I put this system to the test to see how long I could run our fridge off the grid on the two batteries I have and the small array. This test went relatively well in that I found out that I could run between 14 – 16 hours before my batteries were drained which isn’t too bad considering the size of the batteries and the fact that my test assumed that one of the batteries was running without the help of the array (assuming running at night). I think with a larger battery bank and this same array I could get the fridge being run off the grid constantly, but the cost to do this would be prohibitive especially considering the replacement cost of a battery bank after 7 years is not cheap.
The array is a ground mount system that doesn’t sit too far off the ground, so in early October I decided I needed to move it to a less ideal location (our deck), but a location that would allow the array to stay out of the snow. Also, by moving it to the deck I will be able to keep the panels clear of snow without having to trudge through the yard to do it. Moving them meant rewiring the panels, but this had its advantages too because the wires are now better sheltered from the winter snow and wind since the run from the panels to the batteries is much shorter. I am already seeing that I am not getting the amp hours on the deck that I was in the other location, but I figure getting anything is better than the 0 amp hours I would get if the panels were covered in snow. I will move the array back to the better location once the snow is gone in the spring.

The weather station
Living somewhat remotely as we do, the temperatures reported for our town and area always seemed a little off to us, so we finally invested in and installed a simple weather station in early October that allows us to record the high and low temperatures for the day. We have two outdoor temperature sensors along with an indoor sensor and thus far it is proving to be very interesting and showing that our temperatures are slightly lower than what was being reported for us. We have always been tracking our temperatures and weather so that we can compare this to our energy usage and help better plan the garden, but with our own temperatures we will hopefully be able to see more accurate trends.

The stray cats
Since my wife and I moved into our house, we have been feeding and trying to take care of a feral cat population that managed to figure out that we were ‘cat friendly’ people very early on. Most of what we do is simply leave food and water out for them but we also try to provide shelter. Every year in the fall we go to the farm, fill the back of our car with hale bales and stuff this hay under our porch to provide a dry shelter for the cats. Well, over the summer a litter of 4 kittens was born and we knew that the best thing we could do is capture the kittens and try to keep the population down. Well, we were successful in capture two of the four and have tamed them enough that they are more house cats then feral cats at this point. Our goal is to at least get them fixed and hopefully find a good home for them. Kittens are usually easily adopted so we don’t think we will have too hard of time finding them a home.

So, as you can see, although I have been very lax in blogging, we have at least been busy living our simple lives. We hope everyone has enjoyed the fall and is ready for winter. Hopefully now with the fall projects behind us, I can get back to blogging more often. Then again, this is just life according to Troy.