The last fresh vegetables

I'm sorry to say that we are the last of our fresh vegetables from the garden this week -- brussel sprouts. I tried to fix some more tonight but they were just too damaged by the recent freeze to be edible. There are still plants in the garden. Perhaps they will revive when it gets a little warmer. Our goal is to have something fresh to eat year round. Fortunately, we still have lots in the freezer, and lots of canned tomato juice, pickled cucumbers and beans and lots of canned apple sauce. The apples we bought in October are just about gone and the asian pears are going fast. I eagerly anticipate spring. Got our first seed catalog this week.

Solar Roof

We've had our solar panels in full operation for about 6 weeks now and I am very pleased with their performance. Our best day was in November when we captured 22 Kilowatt-hours that day. On our worst days when it rained hard al day we still captured nearly 2 Kilowatt-hours. Each of our 24 panels has its own inverter and the inverters all report their performance every 5 minutes to a monitor inside the house. That monitor is connected to the manufacturer's web site which presents us with a minute-by-minute performance analysis of the system. We get a lot of detail from this report. You can also see most of this detail by clicking here. You can also see the performance of similar systems all over North America by clicking here.

The bottom line on our experience with PV solar in Everett, Washington is tat IT WORKS. We are producing about 60 percent of the power that we are using -- somedays a lot more, somedays less. I expect that the initial investment will be recouped in about 10 years at present energy prices.

Apple Sauce

I generally prefer to freeze vegetables and can fruit. (Tomato juice is a fruit). Yesterday and today I canned the last (I hope) of the apple sauce for this year. This brings me up to 26 quarts of apple sauce. Yesterday I did some Ida Red apples we bought over north of Spokane and today I did some Granny Smiths that Jennie bought for cheap at the fruit stand. The later are from New Zealand and were starting to go bad -- probably last spring's harvest. I use a Squeezo food strainer for making apple sauce. I did 9 quarts today in about 2 hours. I bought my squeezo about 35 years ago and it has never failed me. I still have all the original parts. I could use a new o-ring but the old one probably has a few good years left. I use Bell jars and lids and process the jars at 10 pounds pressure for 10 minutes in a Presto canner that I have also had for 35 years. As you might guess, this is a very satisfying activity for me. I hope -- but don't really expect -- that everyone will rave about the apple sauce at our Thanksgiving meal. This year I am expanding my repertoire and also making two pumpkin pies and an Asian pear pie.

Next year's garden

We signed up for another year at Starbird Farm. I got most of the garden tilled before the rains started in ernest. That got most of the canary grass under some kind of control. I plan to put down black plastic, cardboard or old carpet on the worst of it to make life easier next season. We will also reverse the planting next year to we don't concentrate pests. I will spread lime again this year since I don't think we got a very uniform spread last spring.

I'm concerned longer term about the availability of Starbird Farm to community gardening as well as the whole global warming thing. A rise in sea level of only one meter would just about wipe out Ebey Island as a farming community. I need to seek higher ground, so to speak.

The trouble with large scale gardening/small scale farming is that most land around here is priced for development. That price is way too high if all we want to do is garden. If the price is lower, then there must be something wrong with the land. Either it's in the flood plain, or it won't perk which means it is probably also not good for gardening. I keep looking. I'd rather rent than buy, but I'd also be willing to buy a quarter acre. I'd want tolerably good soil, good drainage, access by small truck year round, the possibility to build s shed or small barn, water (could be a driven well), good sunlight and not more than 15 miles from where I live -- Everett.

Solar Roof

Yesterday Dave from Puget Sound Solar cam back and replaced a faulty switch way up on the top of the roof (why put a switch there?). Anyway, that fed AC power to the East side of our solar array so now we are 'cookin' with all 24 panels. Today we made 16 Kwh of power. On an average day our house uses 10 Kwh. That means that for quite a while today our electric meter actually ran backwards and we credited our account. In addition, the State of Washington pays us 15¢ per Kwh for everything we produce.

You can view the performance of our system here.

Winter...

...is here in the Northwest. Rain, cold. I probably won't be able to drive in to my garden until June. I went there yesterday and rototilled for about 1 1/2 hours. I had bought a used Troybilt Horse tiller and wanted to try it. It was able to till the corn rows, with frequent stops to clear the tines. The 8 Hp engine is very stong and does not die on uneven ground or tough going. I'm very happy with it. I got all but one corn row tilled under.

The soil is getting very wet though and this was the last of the tilling for this year. I'll clean up the tiller, change oil and store it away. I'll remove the starting battery and keep it in my closet until spring.

A Green Thing To Do

Last month we installed 24 solar photo-voltaic panels on the roof of our house. Each panel is rated at 210 watts, so we should be able to produce 5 kilowatts of power. Integrated over a typical sunny day, that would be about 6-7 kilowatt-hours of energy/day. Our house uses an average of 10 kilowatt-hours/day. It will be interesting to see how this actually works out. In fact, since it was connected to the grid and everything started working 2 days ago, we have been generating about 2.5 kilowatt-hours/day. These have been very cloudy days.

I am anxiously awaiting a nice sunny day to see how well the system will do but the forecast doesn't look good. We seem to definitely be into a winter weather pattern in the Maritime Northwest. But every month we do get a few cold bright days. On those days the system should, well, shine.

I figure that with all the incentives for installing solar power, the payback will be about 10 years -- at today's power rates.