At least, I hope they're pretty! Some of them have been double posted over at my photography blog for Rain's Thursday Art Date and my online photography course. Here they are, in random order, just for fun.
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| First red raspberries |
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| Muscadines on pergola |
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| Does and kids |
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| California poppy in the garden swale berm |
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| Snowpeas and strawberries |
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| Asparagus flowers |
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| Sky |
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| Onion and turnip flowers |
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| Sam |
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| Peedee |
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| Frog and water lily |
Our six golf cart batteries are 235 amp hours each, with a total of
705 amp hours for the battery bank. These floor scrubber batteries are 330
amp hours each, so we can increase our electricity storage quite a bit. Of
course, more amp hours meant they are more expensive, and it took some
discussion to decide on how many. Pairs are required for solar wiring, and
six would give us approximately 990 amp hours. But eight would give us 1320
amp hours!
For technophiles, here's how that works:
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| Diagram from Solar Pantry Project: Batteries |
Anyway, even though the money had been earmarked for this purpose, it's still difficult to make expensive purchases because we do it so rarely. Finally, Dan asked what would give me the most peace of mind, so we got eight!
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| Purple sweet potato sprouts for slips |
I got the purple sweet potatoes from Misfits Market. They were excellent keepers and very tasty, so I saved one to sprout for slips. It's been slow, I reckon because it's been a fairly cool spring. Eventually I'll get them in the ground to grow my own.
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| Snowpeas |
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| Asparagus |
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| Garlic |
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| Lettuce |
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| Strawberries |
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| Red raspberry leaves to dry for tea |
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| Mizuna |
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| Peppermint for tea |
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| Oregano for seasoning |
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| Potatoes |
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| Wheat |
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| Multiplier onions |
And of course, we're waiting on everything else! The challenge, now, is getting enough rain. We had a very rainy spring but no rain since our last frost, except for an occasional drizzle. Without moisture, things don't germinate or grow, so I'm doing a lot of watering of transplants and baby plants. We're really enjoying the lettuce and snow peas, and I'm hoping with plenty of watering they'll continue to produce. But I hesitate to water newly planted seeds, wondering if it isn't better to wait until it rains for nature to take it's course.
I finally think I've figured something out! Apparently, the sign-in problem for embedded comments occurs only with Google's own browser Chrome. So, some Chrome or chrome based browsers (such as Chromium or Brave) are the problem. Other browsers work, however, and was actually able to sign in when I clicked "Sign in with Google."
I had success with Firefox and Vivaldi. Firefox is Mozilla, and while Vivaldi is chromium based, the developers apparently got something right.
What I find ironic about this is that several years ago there were numerous problems with Google products, and they would only function properly with Chrome. Of course, it seemed like a typical big business monopolizing move, but I like Chrome and have been happy to use it for all things Google. Looks like I'm going to have to change that now.
I'm guessing they may be phasing Chrome out at some point anyway, since the question I found in their help community didn't have an answer and the thread had been locked. I suspect that means no fix is forthcoming.
Anyway, I hope this helps those of you out there that are still having problems leaving comments on some of your favorite blogs.
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| About 30 minutes old. |
River kidded on Monday morning - a single baby boy! So that winds up spring kidding with four bucks. I've never had all bucks! I've been fortunate that I usually have mostly girls, but there's no guarantees, so that's that.
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| 3 hours old |
He's certainly flashy, with his white and grey spots. Kids' spots often change color as they get older, so I suspect he'll become quite colorful.
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| A day and a half. |
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| 2 days old |
For their first day or two, newborns take lots of naps. At about day two, they start to become more active and more fun!
River is a very good mother and won't let the bigger kids pick on him. I suspect he'll be tearing around with the rest of them in no time.
A couple of years ago we got our freezer and secondary fridge on solar. At the time, we only used three of the five solar panels we bought off Craigslist. That's left two panels that we've wanted to put to use. One of our miscellaneous spring projects was to make a start on getting those up and running. While the project isn't completed, we've made progress!
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| Solar panels on the roof and concrete pad for the battery bank on the ground. |
Digging swales is our big infrastructure project for 2022.
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| Proposed plan for approximate swale placement. |
The first swale was for the kitchen and canning garden. We dug this one by hand. It was a lot of work, but not too bad with the two of us working on it.
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| Blog posts with more pictures here and here. |
It still needs a bit of leveling, but it works well and captures a lot of rainwater.
Next, Dan hand dug a second small swale for the little production patch next to the driveway. No roots and soft soil, so it went pretty quickly.
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After we get a good rain to see how level it is, we'll fill with wood chips. |
This spot is where we plant a plot of something, like corn or wheat, rather than a bed. But because it's located on a high point of our property, it dries out quickly once we hit our summer dry spell. Whatever rainwater we can catch here will hydrate the soil more deeply than just rain.
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| We used an inexpensive transit to find a level line for a swale. |
Being level is key to a swale's effectiveness, because it ensures the water will be distributed evenly across the length of the swale.
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| Flags mark a level path for a future swale. |
The how-to has been the big question. People often use large equipment such as a backhoe to make swales. But a lot of folk have been creative with what they have and have used turn plows or scraper blades.
Dan decided to see what the scraper could do and made a start.
Then he ripped it and scraped it again.
Then the tractor called it quits and stopped running. At least we've made a start.
A friendly neighborhood public service announcement here.
This isn't a new problem, but it's a recurring one that's back once again. It's this: some of us are having problems commenting on blogs that use embedded comments.
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| Click to biggify |
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| Click to biggify |
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| Click for larger view |
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| Click for a better look-see |
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| Click to biggify |
