Thunderstorms 1 - Open Sky Farm 0

In the very first thunderstorm of the year, within the first hour, lightning took out our wind turbine! I knew that's what happened as soon as I heard it hit but hoped that the turbine was still operational. I got distracted and forgot to confirm that it was still working. Fast forward to 2am this morning, when I realized the power was out. The wind was howling so I knew that the turbine was broke. I turned on the generator and investigated things in the battery shed, where all the electrical equipment and controls are. Everything was fine on the wind power center, which meant the problem was in the nacelle of the turbine and the turbine would have to come down. I've watched John Dixon, of Dixon Power Systems, take the tower down once but I'm not yet comfortable trying to do so on my own. Even if I was, it's still a two person job. It's too windy to tilt the tower down today so we'll have to wait until John is available and the weather is right. Until then, we will curse the wind and praise the sun.

It should be noted that we were out of gas so I headed into town a little after 3 this morning to fill the gas cans. I went to start pumping, only to realize that I left my wallet at home. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is (See "A case of the Mondays"). In fact, after it happened the first time, I told Jamie I was going to put a credit card in the truck. Guess what! I didn't... Guess what I did when I got back to the house and got my wallet! I put a credit card in the truck!

The good news is that things like this don't bother me like they used to. I didn't stress out, I didn't get angry, I just did what needed to be done. In fact, on my way back from the gas station (the second time) I saw a shooting star or meteorite or Starship or something, as I was about to pull back into our driveway. It was the brightest I had ever seen. I haven't decided what it means, if anything. I just know that it was worth it. Just like this farm.

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Sunshine

Behold the power of the sun! What an amazing thing the sun is. Until this year, I had never really thought about all the sun does. It impacts everything we do on the farm. I'm tempted to start explaining the many different roles that solar has on our farm but I could spend quite a while writing about that and I have to get to work. So it'll have to wait for another day. Until then, here are a few snippets.

757 kilowatt hours produced by our solar panels in the first 5 days. Yippee!

This is something I had been wanting to try and Jamie thought I was crazy. It's basically a mini-greenhouse on the south side of the house. It's purpose is to absorb heat with the black plastic and trap it with the clear plastic. In theory, that heat will warm that portion of the house or, at the very least, keep cold air from getting in. During the middle of the day, that thing really gets toasty. I need to get a thermometer in there to see how much warmer. I would guess 20+ degrees warmer than the outside, when the sun is shining bright.

Of course, three days after having the solar panels up and running the wind turbine quit working... Whether it's a coincidence or something I did when hooking up the solar has yet to be determined. 

It's always somethin'!

 

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that guy... married to that girl... on a farm...

Greetings All,
I am Jamie's husband, Jon. Since we do so in all other aspects of our lives, we've decided to work together on the blog as well. When Jamie doesn't have time to post a blog (usually due to the time needed to upload pictures with the internet we have), I will try to fill in the gaps with updates from the farm. I will leave the pretty pictures and smart commentary to "a Girl on a Farm", because she is VERY good at it. Instead, I will offer a slightly different perspective with more general updates on the farm progress and happenings.

While I'm at it, I might as well start now -
We've been working tirelessly for a while now and this week was no different. What was different was we were able to see more of the fruits of our labor.

• Our house is finally starting to get a bit more organized. Which is very important because it is hard to not be stressed if you come home to a house in disarray.
• We cleaned up the chicken coop and have started making notes of the things we would like to differently when we brood poultry the next time. (e.g., put the water for the ducklings over a wire floor to prevent constant messing of the bedding; use a hover brooder instead of just the lamps; don't use cardboard as liners/dividers for ducks)
• We have had tremendous support from our family and Easter weekend was no different. We were able to put up more interior fencing for the cows and we went ahead and separated the bulls from the cows and combined the heifers with the cows, in preparation of calving. Which should be any day.
• We finally found a great source for our organic pig and poultry feed. Mike Ostry out of Bruno does a great job and is very reasonable. I'd be happy to pass his contact info along to anyone who's interested.
• We swapped generators this week (used to charge the batteries when we are low on power). The other one we were using was very nice but we weren't able to take advantage of all it's power because a circuit breaker kept tripping. So we went to a smaller one that will use less fuel and actually produces a bit more power. We are still looking into ways to get all the power out of it that it's rated for.
  
• We have also asked Dixon Power Systems to give us a quote for adding solar. Mr. Dixon installed the wind turbine so he is very familiar with our situation and has been extremely helpful with us learning the system. We hope to have somewhere between .5 - 2 kW's of PV Solar installed in the next few months.

We look forward to seeing your questions and comments on our posts. Please don't be shy, we really enjoy the feedback. If you're not sure how to comment, send us an email and we can help you.

That's All Folks!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Farmer Jon (I had my name as "a Guy on a farm" but thought it might be too easy to get the two of us confused.)

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Things to do when the wind is blowing...

1.  Take a long hot shower.

2.  Leave the blow dryer on for just a little bit longer, enjoying the hot air.

3.  Wash clothes

4.  Dry clothes

5.  Run the microwave simultaneously with the toaster....just because you can.

6.  Play with your new Samsung Galaxy

7.  Curse the blasted internet for not working on your desktop... some people need to download some pictures.

8.  Enjoy the the beauty of excess wind, because the weather is always changing and tomorrow you could be in conservation mode.

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Commuting, wind energy humor and old iPods

It actually hasn't been that bad commuting.  I forgot how much I enjoy driving in a car listening to good music.  I found my iPod which survived the move.  I honestly don't know how this thing is still ticking.  It's an original 4G iPod.  Which means it's all black and white baby....  But it keeps working and it has a TON of songs on there.  I've had it for almost 8 years, is that a record for iPods?

Every time I head to Lincoln, I curse myself silently for forgetting my camera.  The view on the drive there is so awesome.  Just open sky and fields.  I pinch myself every day because I'm so lucky to be able to live where we do.  I will try and remember my camera so I can capture the view.

As you can tell, Internet is still slow going.  We have our new broadband key on its way on Monday, which should help the situation.  I'm dying to post more pictures, but our upload speed is so slow it will take me forever.

I shared a little bit of wind energy humor today on Twitter.  The wind has stopped blowing for a couple days and we were sucking battery power.  We were down to about 75% before I left for work on Wednesday.  And then the wind came!  I know people here in Nebraska always complain about the wind, but I have never been more grateful for that wind.  Our batteries went back to full and I actually got to use a few appliances that we hadn't been using.  Namely, a toaster.  I did a little happy dance yesterday morning while I was making my toast, because I was so excited.  And I used my blow dryer without feeling guilty.  It's great to have excess power!  My contribution for wind energy humor was changing the old saying of  "Make hay while the sun still shines" into "Make toast while the wind still blows". 

We are slowing getting into a routine around here, which is great.  Our lives have been a little chaotic since the move and we've been struggling to get back on track.  Cows are all great, no calves yet.  Chickens and turkeys will be coming next month.  Jon is trying to talk me into adding some more animals, but I'm not so sure.  Bear with me people and I promise more pictures of the farm will be coming next week!

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One week with the Kill a Watt

So, Jon and I decided that we should start tracking our energy usage to get an idea of how much energy we were using a month.  There are quite a few home monitoring systems out there.  We went with the Kill a Watt. 

It is a great little device that lets you plug in any device that you want to monitor.  It tracks power consumption, power quantity, voltage and current.  I don't know that much about voltage and current so I was only interested in the kWh.  If you remember from my energy post, at most the farmhouse will be getting 100-150 kWh per month.  And on average the typical American family consumes 750-800 kWh per month. 

The first thing we tracked was our tv.  And when I say tv, I mean also our Wii, DVR and blu ray player which is all plugged in to the same outlet.  I love our DVR, but man, that thing is on all the time!  So after 168 hours or one week exactly our tv setup used 9.98 kWh. 

So, in one month of typical tv usage we would be using approximately 40 kWh.  That's almost half of our electricity for one month on the farm!  We weren't planning on getting cable when we moved to the farm and this just reaffirms our decision.  Number one, I get addicted to reality tv shows very easily and number two, we won't have any time! 

Jon also bought four of Practecol remote control outlet strip.  One of the things that's recommended to help cut energy usage is to control phantom power.  Phantom power is the power that your appliances are sucking up without them being turned on.  With these power strips there is a remote control that lets you turn off the appliance when walking out of the room.  The next thing on our list to monitor is our computers.  We hardly ever turn off our computers, so this should be interesting!

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Let's talk energy...

Or lack thereof :)

The land that we are moving on to has not been connected to the grid for several years.  To be reconnected to the grid, would cost in the upwards of 10-12,000 dollars.  The owner of the land would prefer not to reconnect back to the grid, so let me talk about our energy situation.

This picture is about the same type of wind turbine that is already on the property.  It is a Bergey XL.1 wind turbine.  This particular model is a 1 kW wind turbine.  1 kW is 1000 watts of power.  On average, this particular model will provide 100-150 kWh per month.  Have I lost you yet?  A kWh is the amount of energy equal to 1000 watt hours.  When the energy company man comes around to read your meter, he's reading the kWh.

So, what does 100-150 kWh per month mean to our situation?  Well, take into consideration that the average American family consumes 750-850 kWh per month and you can see how little energy we will be working with on the farm.  Jon took a look back on our energy uses and it ranges from 450-2,000 kWh per month.  That's crazy considering there is only two of us!

We also do have 8 batteries in the battery shed that average 10 kWh when the wind is not blowing.  With wind energy, it's very important to have a hybrid system.  Our system on the farm is not really hybrid.  A hybrid system would combine a wind energy system with a solar and/or diesel generator to provide a reliable system of off-grid power.  We would both love to have some solar panels, but they are quite expensive.  A wind and solar system complement each other very well.  During the winter, when wind is the highest, the sun is not as bright.  Vice versa, during the summer when the wind is at its lowest, the sun is at its peak brightness. 

Hope that wasn't too technical for everyone!  It's really an eye opener to realize how much energy we take for granted.  There will definitely be a learning curve when we get to the farm!

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