Off The Grid

Today we gave up on waiting to take the poly cover back off the greenhouse and flipping it over. You may recall we installed it upside down so the UV protective coating was on the underside. The wind has not stopped blowing for 3 weeks. We didn't trim the poly so that we'd have enough extra material for the reversal... and it has flapped so much in the wind that the poly plastic has fatigued and started to split on the loose edges. The center is holding fine... just those flappy edges. So today I trimmed the edges within 3-6 inches. Also, the greenhouse is located at the bottom of a long slow slope and the last time it rained water over flowed the concrete threshold. So today I put about 10 buckets of soil a few feet up the slope from the door to divert water to the left or right. And finally, today we continued to install wooden posts (ie old telephone poles) to make H braces and hinge/striker posts for the new fence line. I've got to run a cattle fence from the end of our drive way entrance -> 6' gate -> 300' -> h brace ->100' -> 12' gate -> 500' to the back line of this field. Once all these wooden posts are installed, I can begin in earnest driving T posts in with my pneumatic fence post driver. We've converted an old boat trailer to a fencing trailer with a rack to hold posts and the gas powered air compressor mounted. so not too much going on today.... if you wondered why I wasn't posting much lately.

I paid five dollars for this today. . dehydrate and you will have onions all year

Ways to save a lot of money?

I can't say this philosophy is wrong... there are the types of solar people who get 3 or 4 days of batteries and enough solar panels to fill the battery in one day of full sun. Then there are the people who have enough battery to get thru the night and so freaking many solar panels that they can't miss and make power even on the cloudiest day. Given that the solar panel is now the cheapest part of the whole system, I can't say these people are wrong.

When I talk to people about pasture raised pork, they don't understand the difference between confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where hundreds of pigs are raised inside and enclosed building and our outdoor free range pasture setting. Having pigs on concrete slabs instead of rooting for acorns and eating pasture, the animals live in such filth that they are given antibiotics and vaxxines like crazy. We did a video on some of the differences in how we raise our pigs and the difference is night and day. https://youtu.be/0zrtSZMz7qA

https://youtube.com/shorts/SmJl2nvjaG8?si=1oo4Bn35DHJbwy3f

https://youtube.com/shorts/3ZxjBi6z21s?si=9QwFyNH6dyayMEfS

A lot of paper mills have closed and there's a glut of pulpwood on the market now. I just can't see any company investing large capital into a mill in the foreseeable future here in the US. Each time we get a new president, the executive orders come out undoing a pipe line, reenabling a oil.... back and forth every 4 years. In this area we have two EV batteries factories that are half finished and abandoned in situ. I think one of them has $1B USD tied up that they are walking away from. Prior to this we had planted long leaf pine and it's a fickle species. It was over run by loblolly pines which we didn't want. So the NRCS paid to have it drum rolled and replanted. Now, on the 2nd planting, I've only got a "take" rate of about 30% of the long leaf pines. We still have some loblollies that are growing here and there. So in light of paper mills closing, we're trying to come up with what to do with this land. I can't till the soil because of the underlying root structures that haven't rotted away yet. Enter "silvopasture". It is a mix of sparsely planted trees to provide about 50% canopy coverage. Maybe one large tree every 50-80ft. The rest is no till grasses for grazing. Wife and I were looking at this last night and have a preliminary plan to take an 85 acre parcel and make it into twelve 7 acre (3ha) paddocks. That way we can rotate livestock between paddocks. We're looking at optimizing for fences that are multiples of 330' because the fence fabric comes in 100m 330ft rolls.