Solar power - the rude awakening...

It's been a week or so since we've moved into our new office on the farm & already we've run out of electricity (and all the days have been sunny!). Kevin has quickly realised that his machines use quite a bit more electricity than anticipated & so he's been running the generator to download his emails.... until he ran out of petrol!

Otherwise all is well - we are contemplating how we will be able to move onto the farm without a house. It seems that wendy houses and shade netting structures may be the order of the day - a permanent camping-type of situation. We've even thought of buying the neighbour's caravan which is on offer for R500!

More news soon...

I begin by reporting that we are being eaten alive.... by sand fleas! Poor Luke has been bitten worse of all. We almost cancelled his birthday party as we initially thought he had chickenpox (and in the time it took me to write this paragraph I’ve had to stop and catch 3 fleas in my bed!) We did the eco-aware citronella-spray thing for about 3 weeks (while more and more of our beloved friends and family also got munched) and finally succumbed to calling in the fumigators (horror upon horror!). Excuse me while I catch another one…

Anyway, the evening after the pest control guys were here, we managed to catch about 20 live ones. Now the owner of the company is coming to check it out…in the meantime I’m have a bottle of DYFLEA next to my bed! Oh my, how easily this “greeny” has succumbed…

Luckily all of this infestation only happened after the episode with the septic tank which left us without a flushing toilet from Christmas till new year! And of course we are still praying for rain.

Of course, our “season” was not all drought, insects and sanitation woes. We spent some beautiful quality time with a magnitude of wonderful friends and family. One of the greatest benefits of living in the Garden Route is that we get to see our loved ones while on holiday from their lives, which affords us the chance to relax as well.

I can proudly report that we now have solar power on Farm 119, thanks to our trusty neighbour and alternative energy specialist, Mr R (not his real name). He’s been developing his own fairly self-sufficient off-the-grid farm for the past 2 decades & has lots of interesting ideas on how to survive the “end of days”. He was amused by the fact that we buy bananas since one of the trees in his orchard (growing in a specially dug trench fed by his septic effluent) produced 700 bananas in one season.

Our container-office-complex is coming along nicely (on schedule for a Friday 13 Feb completion). I’ve spent days restoring the reclaimed Oregon front door of the office. The floors are in and the timber frame panels of the outer walls have been built and clad - I look forward to experiencing the space once the walls are up. We’ve invited some of our strong friends to a “wall-raising” party on Sunday at which time the walls will be raised and attached to one another. (A kind of Amish alternative to cheap labour!)

I don’t really go for new year’s resolutions, but this year I thought it would be great to start mastering the fine are of telepathy. I remember hearing years ago that this is the next evolutionary step for human kind and it’s a lot more convenient than email. With no knowledge of the subject, I’m hoping to find the ability stored somewhere in a dormant DNA strand. If you have any advice or experience to share, please send it along (in whichever way you wish).

This aerial view of our farm was taken by Kevin while dangling from a microlight....his guardian angels were active in full force as the engine seized while in midair. Luckily they were close to the landing site & were able to glide down to a smooth landing.

I’ll sign off with this quote from the DailyOM which resonated with me today:

“Personal growth always results when you let yourself expand beyond the farthest borders of what your life has been so far.”

Refrigeration

After a chickenpox false alarm, Luke's birthday ended up being a very enjoyable day. Rain finally came last night (almost 20mm), so we can happily flush the toilet and wash the beach sand out of our hair.

The gas fridge stopped working a few days ago, so we hooked it up to the solar electricity, which worked for a few hours before wiping out the electricity in our batteries. This means that we are now praying for sunlight to charge our batteries - we need 3 full days before we can use lights again...

Catering for all our Christmas visitor without refrigeration promises to be an interesting adventure. We are eating mostly sprouts from the window sill & storing our cheese at the office. I attempted to feed myself lunch from the garden but could only produce a few sprigs of celery, some basil leaves and a couple of nasturtium flowers!

I am happy to report that my worms are doing very well however, and Mila's horseriding teacher is teaching us all we need to know about keeping chickens...

Building begins!

I’m happy to report that we finally have a structure that is being erected on our little piece of paradise….a carport/shed/maid’s room combo which will house our solar panels & batteries (and Kevin’s brother and 2 friends who are arriving on Sunday). We do not yet have any plumbing, so they will be discovering the merits of the “sh*t-in–a-bucket” system…

We discovered a few days before the construction started that we would have to transgress the 30 m building line rule in which case we urgently needed to seek approval from the neighbours. There had been some building approval horror stories circulating the neighbourhood which caused me to have a few sleepless nights, but thankfully no-one had any objection and we met some fine fellows, like Wessie Westraadt: our friendly neighbour who is pursuing a career in the correctional services.

After much deliberation and a steep learning curve, we have decided to go for 8 x 80w solar panels, 12 x 2V deep cycle 730W batteries, a 3kva inverter & regulator…thankfully we made friends with a neighbour who has vast experience with alternative energy (he has 58 solar panels, 3 wind turbines and an impressive array of batteries). My brain feels a bit cooked, trying to grasp the difference between volts, amps, standby wattage and such things, which he has tried patiently to explain.

Here are some images taken when we were marking out the house with the architect:

Our container should be arriving tomorrow…