Happening

I am attacking the upper orchard and doing my best to eliminate the tall weeds. I have to admit that I don’t quite know what to call them as there seems to be many names we throw around. ‘Cane grass’, ‘Guinney grass’, ‘California grass’ and so on. It doesn’t really matter what it is called, it needs to be gone. After that I will cut the lower orchard and start the weed killer. That has to be done carefully so as not to damage any of the small trees.

One thing I want to do but have not yet ordered is street signs. I arranged the farm in rows and in specific areas. For example, there are a number of rows of oranges. There is a couple rows of tangerines and so on. Because many fruit trees look alike, I wanted to ensure that I know and can show their differences. For example, the Dandy tangerines might have a sign that says “Dancy Drive” and finger limes might have one that called the area “Tangerine Terrace”. Of course there will be “Orange Overlook”, “Lime Lane” and “Avocado Avenue”. The list goes on.

When laying out the coffee and fruit areas I used spreadsheet software for the rows and columns. It makes it efficient and easy to find certain trees and creates an easy map for workers or visitors to follow.

I picked some nice tangerines and donated them to the local church where I give ocassional tours. They have a small religious store/fruit stand (donations accepted) and visitors often will grab some fruit for their trip around the area. At various times there could be oranges, tangerines, star fruit, guava, rambutan, grapefruit, bananas or any other items.

On the solar front (or back depending which directio you are facing), I have positioned most of the frame in place and soon will have the eight panels permanently attached. Then I can figure out how to attach the actuators to raise and lower the panels. I’ll do that  as the panels need to be raised and lowered as the suns position changes throughout the seasons. In typical Mark fashion, I have looked at the altitude of the sun for each month and then decided how I think I can efficiently adjust the panel angle without overdoing things. There is a point where adjusting the panels makes sense, perhaps 4 times a year or so, while they could actually be adjusted almost weekly by a slight amount.

I have been going many days without running out of battery power to last me through the night. I have days where I am using the sun to charge the batteries and run the house and still have spare electricity which the system just throws away. When I attach the third battery I think I will even out that whole process. As I have mentioned before, it is an orchistration of conditions to even out the process. Your house uses a certain amount of power with a low, average and peak requirement. The number of panels and number of batteries come into play and if you have too much of one and are not close to balanced, you waste resources. I could have engineered the system to be completely off grid but the cost would outweigh the need.

Here is an image of my power usage. Note that it is pretty small because I use lots of LEDs and have no heat or cooling. Looking at the following you can see part of my draw on the powerI have available.on.

There are normally three levels of usage. The bottom values show house useage, rising to the middle (where the dotted line is) is when the refrigerator kicks in. The top of the jagged line is when the freezer also kicks in. That peak above 1500 is when I used the microwave oven.