https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EINsmLR-4k
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Monday, March 20, 2023
Brin
"Brin" is a stray dog that is lobbying for a home.
To not make him too dependent on my food, I've been giving him less than a cup per day. This morning, he was making a big show of eating acorns.
His most significant problem is that he resists leashes.
5/11/2023
Brin started living with a neighbor, about 200 yards down the road, several months ago. The neighbor fed him better than I was willing to do. He happily followed that neighbor around for several weeks but again moved on to presumably greener pastures.
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Spring
Spring has sprung!
Last year, for the first time, I noticed a wild plum near my house. They are readily identified in the early Spring due to profuse blooming and being earlier than many fruits. Later, I detected not a single fruit. Which is not unusual for wild plums. This year, the bloom went unnoticed; the specimen is now fully leafed out and without detected fruit.
https://wmckemie.blogspot.com/2022/03/wild-plums.html
Right now, pears are in full bloom. They are spectacular. One might think we had a light snow due to white pedals on the ground. I don't have many examples left, but peaches should be next.
I'm rather pleased to be "retired'. For decades, the work load has been the same. By now, the peaches should be pruned. That is weeks worth of work. I recall I had the process fairly streamlined. I used bottles of compressed CO2 supplied by a welding supply business to power hand held pneumatic pole pruners supplied by air hoses. I would carry rented bottles of CO2 out in the orchard on my Isuzu pickup truck, converted to a flatbed, and range a hundred feet or so from the parking spot. I would prune maybe 50-100 trees, then move the truck. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Then, all the prunings would have to be removed. I experimented chipping those prunings in the orchard but finally decided it was easier to drag the brush to some nearby safe burning spots. Then, wait for the weather to offer a burn opportunity. For prunings less that 1-1.5", I could windrow them between peach rows and eventually shred them in place with a tractor powered shredder/mower.
I had a few customers that thought that fruit and nut wood made good smoker wood for smoking meat. 2" to 4" prunings would normally be cut into firewood size pieces and either stocked for firewood or given to customers wanting smoker wood. Apple, peach, pecan.
Then, on to the thinning project which was a project about as big, or bigger, than pruning. Every spare minute was spent thinning for several weeks. Until the fruit reached "pit hardening", about the size of a pecan, fruit and blooms spaced less than several inches on branches were removed. I always tried to get a head start on thinning, by starting when only blooms were present. The goal is to increase the size of picked fruit at harvest time. Bloom thinning is far more effective than small fruit thinning. The risk with bloom thinning is that a freeze could come along and leave too few fruit which would make harvested fruit very large but would reduce the size of the total harvest. I've seen a number of years where I did a lot of bloom thinning only to have a freeze leave me with a small or no crop. It can be fun it one develops the proper attitude.
Sunday, February 26, 2023
DeLaughter's Grocery in Maud
I noticed this as an episode on Texas County Reporter but could not find a link to their video of the episode.
This is of interest to me for two reasons:
My grandparents (by way of my father) lived next door (or very near) the site that became the grocery store.
I had some genealogy discussion with a Delaughter many years ago.
http://www.delaughters.com/
Next time i am through there, I will drop by there and partake of their very attractive food. As well as to see what Kyle (DeLaughter) might know of Moores and McKemie.
In the same TCR program was a Trammel's Trace story and the Trammel which is the namesake. Trammel was from Tennessee and the Trace is in Arkansas. Almost certainly, some of my Moores ancestors traveled the Trammel Trace in their travels to Texas and later trips between Tennessee and the Bowie County area. Those trips included stop overs near Fayetteville Tennessee. Those ancestors first came to Texas in 1839. Davey Crockett and party came down that road in 1835 or, more likely, early in 1936. Washington Arkansas was a stop over (on the Trace) just north of the Red River.
Looks like it is about time to do an Independence Day post!
Friday, February 3, 2023
Boxabl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrahQlLAz44&t=1599s
I've been watching these guys for a while. Factory in Las Vegas. In the above, I find the two story VERY attractive. No price, though they hope to sell smaller ones for ~$50k. I fear the two story will be more like $200k. Still, pretty attractive. These could end up in the community The Boring Company is putting in Bastrop County for employees. And, maybe in Travis county for GigaFactory employees. One of the first ones, small, went to Boca Chica for SpaceX employees.
3/16/23
Boxabl has plans to build a plant in the Austin area. To supplement the Las Vegas factory. Plans also call for a 3rd plant, enormous compared to the very large first two, for LV.
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Average PV power: 3kw.
Rain overnight, very cloudy all day.
After noon, I decided the PowerWall batteries were not going to get recharged by the end of the day. The charge level declined to ~65% after a dawn level of about 80%. The problem is that the PW isn't configured with CT "clamps" on all sources of PV power and was allowing some of my PV power to make it to the grid. My PW will charge the battery with only about half my PV power. Peak sunny PV power in this season has been about 20kw though it goes above 25kw during the peak season.
So, around 1pm, I told the PW to disconnect from the grid.
With three 5kw batteries, my PW can charge at about 15kw. Though I have not seen more than 7kw in the past.
At about 3pm, the charge level is about 85%. And I hope it will be about 90% when the sun fails me. That should be 4-5 pm. With more clouds than sun, PV powers have been less than 10kw except for a few seconds when it went to about 18kw. I'm heating the house with a 18 kbtu mini split which is using about 2-3 minutes near 2kw about every nine minutes. So, most of my day time use is less than 1kwh each hour. At that rate, the total capacity of a fully charged battery is 40-45 hours. Over night, I typically keep the bedroom only warm for about 1/2 kwh/hour. So, during "hard times" I can likely hunker down in the bedroom for ~90 hours if I can not charge while the sun is out. "Hard times" means grid down for a long period with a long period of cloudy days.
With grid up and nice clear weather, it typically goes like this:
1) I start each evening with a fully charged battery. 6-8 pm depending on the season.
2) If I need modest heating or cooling overnight (in bedroom only), I get up in the morning with a charge level of around 80-85%.
3) With good sun, the battery is usually fully charged around 11 am - noon.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
Salton Sea
Small "take aways": Slab City is an abandoned WWII military base. Salton Sea was formed in 1905 due to flooding of Colorado River water. Were it not for the Colorado River delta, Salton Sea would be the northern end of the Gulf of Califonia (Sea of Cortez). Current lake level is about 230 feet below sea level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8vwXFwlIys&list=WL&index=19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2TGqGSvS8s
He mentions by-passing a "factory" which he apparently considered ugly. In fact, he shows one of eleven geothermal plants that are in the area:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Buttes
This from Bombay Beach, not far from Slab City.
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