New Toys

When Mike Gray from Beehive came out in December to finish up some solar stuff, he brought a cool little portable battery kit with him. He said he brought it to work sites in case he needed auxiliary power. He had designed it for an emergency preparedness seminar that he had given, but felt like he would like to build another one with a larger inverter. The kit consists of two 55 amp/hour AGM batteries, a charge controller, an inverter, and a trickle charger (in case the sun doesn't shine). All wired and fused in a heavy duty rolling case.

I had been thinking about a second solar system to run the heat lamp in the pump house during the winter, and to run a fan, or light, or battery chargers in the man shed during the summer, so I offered to buy it from him. He had only brought one panel with him, but promised to deliver the second panel as soon as possible. Last Wednesday he dropped off the second panel. In the mean time, I had built a rolling rack for the panels, with angle adjustment for the different seasons.

Now that it is all hooked up, I am quite pleased with how it is working.

During our last monthly trip to Gallup, I picked up a large drop-side wagon. It has a 1200 pound capacity, and should be better than our little lawn cart or the wheel barrow for hauling firewood, rocks, and gardening stuff.

On a rare (for  me) impulse buy, I bought a Black and Decker cordless drill. It is a 20v unit with a lithium battery. It probably isn't as robust as a Makita or Ryobi, but it cost about half as much. I used it to install the carrying handles on Jill's tray and it seemed to work very well. I am psyched about not having to drag out the 100 foot extension cord quite as often :)

Garden fence

In preparation for the spring planting, I put up a fence to hopefully keep the deer, elk, and cattle out of our garden.

16 T posts, and 100 feet of 5 foot high hog wire.

I picked a level spot below the pump house, so it wasn't too bad of a chore. Fortunately Dad had given me a fence driver before we moved out, it has really come in handy.

The old truck tire is a gift from our neighbor Laurel up the road. After I have cut out the side walls, it will be used as a raised bed planter.