The Poop In The Coop and Other News

I have kept this undercover as the outcome was uncertain. In the beginning there were three eggs. Then apparently Mama Hen went for a food and water break and someone deposited two more eggs. Fool that I was I never marked the original three so I now had to keep them all. Mama Buff Orpington obliged me so we were off to the races. The original plan was if there were three they would be named Snap, Crackle and Pop since they were laid during the Carr fire. In the end there was only one that hatched she is cute , red , takes after Mom and her name is Flame. Flame 

was hatched out on August 20th. It is such fun to have a baby in the barn!

This is the proud Papa the Divine Mr. Paul Newman

Some people host progressive suppers. I have found myself writing a progressive blog post. I am now almost a week after this began. Besides the addition of Flame the wonder chick we have come to the conclusion of the solar up grade. 

Recap about six weeks ago we began having issues when running the generator. We have 12 panels mounted on a stand alone but they each produce 75 amps each. The woman who built our home in 2001 did a great job for what she did when she did it but now here we are 17 years later. We had planned on upgrading but cancer got in the way. So now we realized that it was beyond a desire but a get 'er done item or regret it. So we pulled up our big girl and boy undies and bit the bullet. We added these six panels on the easterly facing side of the solar/pump house. They are 150 310 amp producing each panel . Taking us from 900 amps total to 1800   2,760 amps. If I have my amp production correct . May need to check that with the head solar engineer when he finishes his nap. At any rate we have at least doubled it if not more.  If I find I am wrong and I think I may be since I think it is closer to 2400 amp but not sure why. I will post a correction in the comment section when I know. 

you can see the stand alone in this photo and it is facing almost completely straight up for maximum exposure at that time of the year. Wish I had a better one but it seems I spend my life cut it out of blog photos from that angle. But you get the idea.

I don't have any photos of the original batteries. I spend most of yesterday trying to stay out of Ryan and Jack's way as they swapped out the 15 smaller batteries that needed replacing and inserted the two ginormous batteries you see below.

 These are both separate batteries with multiple cells.  

The photo below shows their home all closed up.

The next photo is all the fun stuff. The fellows and some of the ladies will get a big "charge" out of this one. lol

And the ultimate work horse when the winter weather creeps in and we need a bit of help. It is a propane generator. 

And sharing the room with the batteries and the invertors etc is our pump unit.

Ultimately what we have done is doubled or more than doubled our production and put ourselves in a position that we should not have to run our generator until winter sets in. Of course this not being a perfect world we may find ourselves in a fix of some sort or the other that requires it. But in theory we have enough back up to go several days without running it on days that we get a minimal amount of sun.

And to answer your question that is dancing in your heads yes it was an investment. But our money with lots of 0's in it bought us two batteries with a shelf life of 7 - 10   years for not a lot more than the smaller ones with a replacement life of 5 years. Plus the six new panels and a few technical items on the smaller side like the fan that cools the battery storage area and all the labor to get this done. It will increase the equity in our property for interested parties . No we aren't planning on moving but anything that increases your equity is a good thing.

So we have a new chicklet and a new system. We lived through 6 weeks during a lot of 100 degree plus temps with inversion layers from the Carr fire without a cooler or having "regular" lights at night because we were limping along with the system. We both spent over a week sleeping outside me on the deck Geoffrey on a chase lounge in the front porch area. It was too warm to sleep inside on the bed as without the swamp cooler to blow out the warm air left,even with shutting all the windows before the temperature began it's climb at 8 AM , a warm icky house so why bother? Just camp out. And we survived the stress, strain and worry over and about the fires around us and the potential of becoming part of the equation.

So what else? I posted a bit back about the onset of shingles in Geoffrey's  left optic nerve. We are now 6 weeks out and three appointments once a week with the ophthalmologist. On his last appointment the Dr. was very concerned over the fact that the nerve damage at this point prevents him from blinking . Therefore his eye is very dry and even more excruciatingly painful. So with that said if he still has no blink when he goes in for visit number four this coming week he is intending to schedule an appointment for him to have the lid's of his left eye sutured together for a month to see if that will help resolve the situation. I cannot say enough about how horribly painful this condition is and how many issues from it can become permanent.  I will never negate how painful and potentially complicated any case of shingles can be. However this has to be the mother of all . I am very concerned for his well being and what may become a permanent part of our lives.

I don't like to express my concerns too much publicly as many of you know but please if you should ever have symptoms of a continually on going headache behind one eye that don't match up in the stroke category please get yourself seen asap. Anything with the eyes moves quickly and has the potential to steal your vision. It is nothing to put off or delay . Better to go in and be seen to find nothing serious then to delay. Geoffrey was seen a week after his first symptoms he tends to be prudent and forgive my gender discrimination he is a man and men in general tend to think of all the simple explanations to my knowledge. A delay of a few days can put you behind the eight ball with the optic shingles.

A bit of cheer to end with . Since I am getting a nice amount of milk from Little Trouble I made Feta!

It is currently ready to be put into a brine and left to age to perfection! I am very excited to be back in the home dairy arena .  Tonight I am making a batch of yogurt . I have forgotten how much fun this is and how nice it is to once again have some home made goodness!   

Thanks for taking your time to check in on us at Walnetto Farm and have a wonderful pre Fall weekend!