Life goes on - Winter 2024

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#542

Unfortunately my pv went down a while ago and I have not had time to get it back online properly, those 6v batteries I scored from the dumpster? They did NOT like the cold snap back in November when i accidentally over discharged the bank and I damaged the batteries they won’t take a charge above 80%. I need to bank my deep cycles back up which is on my to do list this weekend and individually assess the 6v batteries and see what I did, but in the mean time they have still run my shop lights and power tools for building the quail hutch and other small projects, minimal demand stuff. But the panels continue to pull in power every day, even coated in ice or with big cloud cover. No way I could fill the demand of my household without massively scaling up the array, charge controller, inverter, wires ect, but it can power the little shed and some extras here and there, supplement my power needs, even had to temporarily run the quail brooder heater and lights when the power was out for a few hours

Little pieces all add up. The budget pv I have does help.

One day it will get scaled up with decent components. Might be after a societal collapse for all I know but I’ll get around to it.

Just not super high on the priority list at this moment

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#543

Over here to the East, it’s been similar. The two weeks of sunny days have spoiled me. The driveway was clear, and almost dry. Chores have been fairly easy, if a little cold. I should have done them when I first got up this morning. I was slow, so I got to do them in the snow. We’re up to around 4 inches, 10 cm, not enough to run the snowblower, but enough that I might be sorry tomorrow that I didn’t if it rains tonight, which is possible. Where we used to live, it never snowed. Where we used to live, is now gone, up in smoke literally :slightly_frowning_face: . The snow is a small price to pay, and brings benefits also.

I was thinking about this the last couple days. Thursday I made a little more charcoal, and ground and sifted a bunch. The gentle wind shifted from perfect to in-your-face more or less continuously. Soap and water is good. Anyway, 2/3 of a 55 gallon barrel yielded two full feed sacks of engine-grade, but not without some effort. I think Chuck said he got about 8 kwh from that much charcoal. There’s a sense of satisfaction, but solar is quiet, clean, and free (mostly) once set up. You get the satisfaction in winter, and take a break when the sun shines.

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#544

If only the state I reside it wouldn’t crucify me for using natural energy ie water, I could be decently set on power, the water/hydro would charge 24 hours, while solar could bolster during peak demand times

Sigh. The over reach has its fingernails dug into everything I love

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#545

Finally got our road down to an inch or two of hard packed snow but then we got a 45F day yesterday and it melted the surface. Down to 14f last night so all ice today. I haven’t been sifting the char out of my wood stove ash so far this winter and just storing it so I had to cover my hills with it the way it is. Really grippy though. Probably used about 50 gallons but we may be getting some freezing rain Sunday so those chunks of char will still be sticking out of the ice if we get the rain. A small price to pay. Plus I haven’t run my gasifier/generator since November so I have a lot of char stored.

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#546

We had rain today, then huge snowflakes. my grandma used to call them something but I forgot what.

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#547

Is that an outright ban or do you have to jump through insane regulatory hoops? Where I live using water from a stream to power hydro and then returning it back to the stream is viewed much differently then consuming the water, say for agriculture. I just installed a small turbine of only 500 watts, but at 24/7 it will displace all my grid usage during the winter, except for low use large motors. Luckily, there are no snail darters or delta smelt where I live.

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#548

Here in Washington State it is both an outright ban and layered with insanely expensive regulatory and legal hoops.
With folks now mature who from the age of children were taught anyone who would greedy hog the water are bad, bad, bad.

Some of this goes back to the mostly dry, dry far western United States with first-come, first-claimed water-use rights.
Then later enviromental concerns.
And now since the late 80’s, early 90’s with the collapse of the far reaching Soviet systems those here of that type of mind frame; culture creeping in their religious zeal Ideals of top-down ed-u-ma-cated, knows-best, culture-guides-best, contols-best. And their core myth they spin is equity of use by all. With of course the Pigs living in the house needing just a little bit more for all of their hard, hard skull sweating work . . . need their in-ground swimming pools and always green manicured lawns.

For individual agricultural uses we are limited to only using, retaining, impounding 10,000 gallons of water a day. That includes falling on your property rain water.
Seems a lot until you would dry season fields crops for market sale. Go into cow dairy’ing. for sale of products. Plant a few acres of orchards for fruits and nuts sales. Kill a persons income . . . Kill thier ability to grow and raise their own foods . . .
by water control then you can force that person into consensus, compliances. “No. No. You cannot. It is the law”. Now that is the Fascism guised up as for-the-good-of-all socialism. And socialism itself eats up an individual producing and providing for themselves. Socialism says the State will provide. Trust us. “We are from the Government”.

So the best work-a-round is base off of native naturally growing trees and brush. Types that can live on just what falls from the sky. And then you adapt your needs to what they can give you. Bill Schiller’s now birch sap collecting and the products making.
To fight the changing culture streams is life-years exhausting. Ha! I’d like a few decades back expended away on those fights, if you please. Oh, but to be 50 again with the energy and stamina.

Steve Unruh

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#549

I think you DOWers from Washington state should move here to Wisconsin. Heck, we don’t even have to have our vehicles safety inspected, let alone worry about paying for water usage. However, the DNR does get their panties in a knot if you mess with their wetlands.

GC

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#550

Michigan you need a permit for water removal from surface water, and a permit for any type of damn. I do not know if they have a hissy about a water wheel without a damn.

west of the mississippi, the lawyer bar exam’s all have a section on water rights as one of the major portions of the exam. They have been fighting over water for 100+ years.

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#551

My dad used to have this little saying: "I went to the dam to get some dam water, but the man at the dam said I couldn’t have any dam water so I told that damn man to keep his damn water. :grinning:

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#552

Said it better then I could Steve

The fight I have had is with my wildlife control operator work that familiarizes me with water rules and regulations

Beaver colony moves in, builds a damn and your land retains water

State rules/law mandate beaver cannot be relocated

Well few want lethal removal, they push it off as a later problem

2-3 years sometimes less down the road, tax assessor comes by and while flying a drone over or driving by notices the water held back by the damn

Next they designate your land as a “wetland area” and a slew of regulations are placed on it.

No structures within 15 feet of the wetland boundary

No waterlines crossing it

No fences crossing it

No bridges without permits

No septic within 100 feet

So I get called to remove the beavers again and do so while informing them they cannot legally remove the dam without a 10,000$ hydraulic permit to lower the water.

If they apply for the permit it has to be assessed and 99/100 are rejected as it will cause a disturbance to natural water flow and the “wetland area”

Property owner loses rights to the land they payed for and it cannot be recovered once declared wetlands

If landowner takes things in his own hands and removes the dam he is legally responsible for any down stream damage the water causes, and will be issued a 35,000$ fine for illegal water flow change without permit

At which point they will reassess the wetland area and the high water mark is put on record and the boundary pushed back even further.

This often leads to condemn structures and drain fields, which are hefty to replace, 30,000$ permit alone not including plans, perk testing ect

If the now less room cannot support the flow of the septic the permit will be rejected and any structure attached condemn as non liveable by the state, requiring a sewer hook up. Another 25,000$ permit

Washington doesn’t want you anywhere near their water and they will penalize you into an early grave if you touch it

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#553

The good news and the bad news.

Look at the following chart.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/261690/monthly-performance-of-djia-index/

This is the Dow Jones industrial average between 2018 and now, 2019 was the last year that you could say there was a slightly untainted economy. The Covid. Lock downs, floods of dollars to non-productive sectors of society; drug companies and the so-called health care industry. Massive hand outs. All done with fiat dollars. Prices went nutz. Grifters pocketed billions. So how did the price index double? What goods were actually produced? No big boom in automotive sales. No boom in agricultural equipment. A time of re-conning was always part of the plan. A crash is inevitable. Didn’'t matter who was in office. There are limits to how high you can build a house of cards.

I guess that was the bad news. The good news is when the dollars finally goes down the toilet, and when it does European currencies go with it, there will be funding for only essentials. Won’t be inspectors checking beaver dams and wet lands. Won’t be money to pay the paper shufflers in your county offices. Be lucky to find the funding for Police and fire departments. No one will be coming to tell you that you can’t have a garden in your yard or you can’t have a unlicensed vehicle in plain sight. Hopefully you understand about self sufficiency because the Nazi, nanny state’s days are numbered.

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#554

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Hey JO, how do you call this?

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#555

I’d call it a birch church :smile:

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#556

Don’t get me started on the USA DNR’s definition of what “navigable waters” means.

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#557

I heard from one guy who jokingly said “If you can float a tennis ball down it after it rains, then they say it’s navigable”.

GC

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#558

Yep had that argument too when trapping.

In other news, winter finally showed its face (the precipitous kind, not just the cold kind)

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Keeping the stove stoked today

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#559

Yeah. I hear you PeteS.
Doing anything on the wife’s family previous 62 acres had became since the 1990’s having to pay to submit for Army Corp of Engineers sign-off on our improved in 1943 valley saving drainage ditch, that it was NOT “Navigable Waters”.

Then the fighting with the County via State Fish and Wildlife it actually did puddle drain into a south valley neighbors large cows pasture. Never connecting to the South Fork of the fish bearing Lewis River. SO our drainage ditch COULD NEVER be a “Fish Bearing Stream”.
Decades and thousands $'s spent and we could never win that one.
Then along came set-back rules for our drainage ditch they declared a natural creek of first 75 feet, then 150 feet to upcoming will need 250 feet to protect the “riparian areas” A COW PASTURE. Human activities especially cow contact not allowed ion riparian areas.

And us caught in a vise and being hammered decade after decade from any longer dairy farming. Then from for-beef farming to not able to do nothing AG except have to dump $$$'s, then $,$$$ as dictated by a different County department to abate declared noxious weeds.
Catch-22. Became Catch-222. Evoling to be Catch-2222. The real Number of the Beast.

So not just Eco-Freeks, freeking. It is some brainiac world/culture Improvers meddling. All levels of Gov’mint workers working towards thier guaranteed retirements.
But the real hidden hands tightening the vise handle and wielding the knock you down hammers were real-estate developers and house building companies.

62 acres that once proved it could support one family and feed hundreds of others . . . now 32 mini-estate households. Tax revenue sources for the County and the State.

We did step by step, over the course of 10 years cashed out to different black-sheep young builders guys. Then $'s able, sold off the existing two family houses needing repairs and upgrades for 30% under the driven up inflated market to two young couples to raise their many children in.

Then we bought far out away from easy services out in the middle of Weyerhaeuser private timber forest land. Never seen but one County or State guy in the 3 1/2 years here.
And NO drones.
Steve Unruh

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#560

I feel for you Steve. Here we divide it into south of 7 and north of seven. Highway 7 is the TransCanada through central Ontario. Everything you described is present south of 7 but most of it just fades away as you head north.

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#561

Pretty close to the truth. I read that, if a DNR guy can pole a small flat-bottomed skiff down the waterway on its worst day of flooding, then it qualifies as a “navigable waterway”.
Seems that this definition goes back to the days in early America when waterways were the favored method of transporting logs out of the forest.
I wanted to put a simple bridge across a 3 foot wide creek that is dry for about half the year. In addition the getting DNR approval, I had to get our state’s DOT highway dept to approve the plans. They wanted a bridge design that would cost about $100,000!
So, of course, no bridge.

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