Cleaning up everything to get ready for 2024’s sugaring season, which seems to be a bit later than the mid-february start we’ve gotten used to.
Flue scrub
Tank scrub
Scored Some Woodchips
It’s not unusual in Vermont to find a crew removing trees getting in the way of one thing or another. Often times they are contracted out do clean up whole roads and will be working for several days. Often times too, they need to drive a while to get rid of the resulting chips, which to us are gold. We can use them as green matter in compost, to keep weeds from growing while giving nutrients to the soil, or at worst as fill. We never have enough and so whenever we see these crews working, we ask if we can get some chips. Sometimes it saves them time so they’re happy to, and we slip them a twenty whenever we see them. We’ve gotten 3 big loads so far this year, right in time for Spring planting. It’s a really awesome win win.
The Cat’s Meow
We bought another woodstove to replace the Alpiner. We keep hearing about how we could burn so much less wood with a more efficient stove, and it’s hard to understand, a log burnt is a log burnt. Why would it make more heat in another stove? Well apparently it does, and I’m not yet convinced of it, but this new stove is riddled with soapstone so at least it’s better at spreading out the release of heat over time. In the very few mornings we’ve had with it, it’s true that it was really easy to get the fire going again with just a few embers. Everything else is… well, like any other stove, we need to get acquainted with it.
The first fire, which sounds great except it’s off gassing so it stinks up the house. It does seem to be a well thought out, modern stove.
It is the first time we have a stove with a window. That aspect is really super nice, there’s nothing like the glow of a fire warming up a room.
Now I can barely move the Alpiner by myself, and the new stove (it doesn’t have a name yet), well it weights 2 to 3 times more… We had it installed thanks to tax incentives, and boy am I glad I didn’t have to move it. I don’t think I fully fathomed just how heavy it is.
It was nice to geek out with a couple of stove guys, and to make sure I wasn’t doing anything stupid since I never had someone official review my stoves and flue builds.
The Alpiner is waiting on the porch for next Spring to be moved to storage with the tractor. It’ll be useful in a cabin or other down the road. I gave it a thick coat of olive oil to prevent rust. It’ll burn off next time we fire it.
Tree Stump Art
I always leave a little something in the stumps of the trees I take. It can’t be too complicated, and curves are reeeeeally hard. They’re all over the place and the kids love finding them, I hope the grand kids will too.
7 Gallons Fermented and Bottled up
All routine now :). Looks like only every other year is a (wild) apple year so this will have to last a while. Esther’s been extremely helpful.
For All its Imperfections
The house is still very unfinished 8½ years in, but it’s also gotten to be incredibly cozy during the cold months. It’s only ever gotten better over the years, while we slowly forgot what a regular house is like. I know we crave wood heat when we go somewhere it’s not used. We just bought a new stove, a real fancy clean burning one and I’m very much looking forward to using it although it’ll be likely at the end of Winter that we finally get it. To get a clean air tax incentive we were asked for a propane bill or electric bill, they’ll have to do without, things are too perfect where they are. It is putting it mildly to say that we were shaped by our living arrangements, in many ways I feel like the transformation we sought years ago is complete.
Twice Borne
At some point every July we say goodbye to raspberries until next year. It’s a little sad because they hit first and they’re the best, but we’ve got other berries to keep us happy.
This year some of the plants decided to bear twice! We seem to recall some had this in their description, and I guess the season’s been long enough this year that they went for it. It’s a bit surreal to be brought back to the joys of early Summer at the very end of the season when everything is done and being put the bed for Winter. They taste just as good too.
Keeping Up with the Harvesting
There’s so much harvesting to do in the Fall. Nicole dug up a ton of potatoes while I was making cider.
Then I walked past the orchard and saw a whole bunch of hazelnuts ready to be picked, crap, I don’t even know what to do with them.
I’ll just grab a basket and figure it out later.
Grrrrrr
It’s the second time we have a bear rip open the chicken coop and decimate the flock.
Absurd Amount of Berries
It’s that time of the year we go raid the orchard every day for desert. We could sell some, especially since the price of berries in stores is insane, but that’d be work so we’d rather gift them to friends. It gives them excuses to come over :).
I had never eaten berries until I just couldn’t, it’s so nice to enjoy them without restraint. They also taste much better fresh off the plant. As with maple syrup, producing large quantities of something drastically changes the way you get to enjoy it. I’m not worried about there not being enough for others, or thinking about the expense of it. You can just chug down as many as is enjoyable without afterthought. I’m more worried about making sure the excess doesn’t go to waste.
The chickens clean up the berries that fell on the ground. Sometimes they pick direct from the plants, but not enough to make a dent.
Integrated with the Flock
We integrated mama chicken and her chicks with the rest of the flock. It went extremely well, I’m not sure what’s different from last time.
The Stove Fairy
Every year, one rainy Summer day the flues and the stoves undergo a deep cleaning. A rainy day is perfect because I can’t do much else and the soot is kept down when I work on the pipes outside. This year Esther was interested, and even though it’s VERY messy work I involved her. She did great and we had a discussion about how she’d be able to maintain her stove in her cabin. Music to my ears. I like that this is a default for her, she might not even have the concept of a house without a stove.
I remove the stove pipe, to clean up the inside all the way out the roof. It’s messy even with great efforts to catch it all.
The pipes hooked to the stove are taken outside to be cleaned. Ben’s pro tip: mark the pipes with chalk where you’re separating them, it makes it easier to line them back up.
We go through all the insides of the stove and clean up accumulated ash. The first firing of the year is usually very hot because no ash is there to provide insulation.
We move very slowly to keep flying ash particles to a minimum.
Everything gets scrubbed six ways to Sunday, first with soap, then with baking soda, followed by much rinsing. We cook on the stove for most of the year, it needs it. When it’s all clean we protect the iron with stove paste, I’m not sure what it does to protect it but you can definitely feel some patches soak up more paste than other. I’d do it just because it makes the stove beautiful.
Esther has lots of very good practical question these days, she understands how a stove works now. Apparently I’ll still be the one sweeping her cabin’s chimney.
We still love burning wood with no end in sight. This stove is the most important thing in the house and I take pleasure in giving it its ritualistic pampering.
Bracing for the Berrypocalypse
It’s about to hit
The hazelnuts too are getting ready
Oopsie
The oak went exactly where I wanted, but I misestimated its height. I should be able to patch the shed back up.
Slow Boiled Again
Solar battery degradation always happens slowly enough that I don’t realize how bad things have become. And as soon as I talk about replacing batteries, they know and completely give up on me.
For my first battery bank, I got AGM batteries which were nice but didn’t last as long as I thought they would. I liked that they were sealed and didn’t require maintenance, it was a good beginner choice.
When they died, I replaced them with more standard Flooded Lead Acid. They seem to be much most common around off griders in the area. In talking with them, they related many years of service for theirs. I figured I knew enough then, and I’d maintain them to prolong their lifetime. So I got Flooded Lead Acid for my next generation.
Well, I kept them only about 2.5 years and now they are very much toast. A friend of mine just got Lithium batteries, and since I was due for a replacement, I delved into it to see if it would be a good idea. Last I checked they were way more expensive per Ah (Amp hour), and I was a little suspicious of lithium having experienced its instability in small electronics batteries.
Turns out, while the price per Ah is indeed much more for Lithium, the price per Ah per cycle is about 5 times less. And in our case, we very much cycle our batteries. We don’t have a turbine to keep them charged 24/7. They have so many advantages I feel stupid I didn’t switch earlier. It’s always difficult to question established wisdom, especially from a place of ignorance. As far as I can tell Lithium batteries have the following advantages:
- 5 time cheaper when accounting for cycles
- 200 to 500 cycles for lead acid batteries, 4000 to 15000 for cycles which makes them cheaper and require less maintenance swapping and rewiring
- they are much, much lighter to carry
- no need to keep filling them with water (another point for less maintenance)
- no splashing acid
- no need to play reviving games with epsom salt (maintenance again…)
- no hydrogen gas release which a spark can blow up if allowed to accumulate
- more stable voltage provided
- actually provide their rated Ah (lead acid ratings are followed by recommendations to stay within a fraction of rating)
Some of these I can attest to already, the longevity ones remain to be seen.
So I replaced 5 lead acid batteries with 3 lithium ones, and the difference is night and day. But given how far gone they were, it would be true with anything.
I am definitely a bit more worried about the result of a failure. However, years ago I put all the electrical stuff in a shed detached from the house. I had no idea what I was doing with anything electrical and figured if I must set something on fire, it might as well not be the house. Today I’m still happy with the decision. Last Summer a house burnt down and people died in a neighboring village from a power tool battery charger which kept charging a Lithium battery. These are usually around 4Ah, you can imagine 3*100Ah would definitely set stuff on fire. I’ve been worried about all the small electronics we have in the house with their own Lithium batteries and probably a single sensor deciding if they should keep getting charged or not. Sensors fail. In any case, I’m happy to have these new batteries which promise to make my life easier, and to have them away from the house :).
My charge controller was rated for Lithium batteries, but it turns out that wasn’t true out of the box. Lithium technology is still new enough that not everything comes ready for it. Switching it over was, like too many things in life these days, a computer nightmare. Serial communication, bad software, bad translation, and no documentation. Even though I understand things better these days, I’m still baffled by how disparate information is about anything solar.
On the money front, these guys set me back $784. It’s pricey but nothing compared to years of electric bills. Our solar system has paid for itself a couple of time over, and only the batteries come with a recurring cost every few years.
Lastly I’m happy and eager to keep learning about all this, I’ve come a long way since the beginning. This understanding ties into electronics projects. Nicole got an electric lawnmower recently, and the ultimate goal is of course an electric car. I’m still working on scaling up, and improving processes and automation to get there. I can’t wait for the day where this solar array is my gas station.