Never give up.....

 7:43 am - Sunday - December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) - TWW - 28° F, humidity 40%, wind 3 mph out of the east by southeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 58° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were in Greensburg, Kentucky having lunch with good Amazon friends.....

.....at Longhunter's Coffee and Tea Company.....left to right: TLE, Jim, Sharon, Pat and Richard.

We're about 70 days into our sojourn here at The Wilson Wilderness, and things could not be going better.  In our first 70 days last year we were continually dealing with generating enough power to keep our three battery banks charged.  The Newell was parked in front of the house then, and the trees on her driver side blocked the sun from the roof top solar panels until late morning, and then again around 2 pm, so we were losing at least 4 hours of charging time per day.  We ran the little Honda EU2000i generator for hours each day, and were going thru gasoline like drunken sailors.  We were searching for ways to keep our water bay from freezing each night without using large amounts of power from our Bluetti battery bank.  At the time we were macerating our black tank effluent almost 100 feet to the nearest cleanout, which is not optimal.  There were so many things like that with which we had to deal each day that there were times we thought about giving up our dream of living off grid in Northern Arizona, and leaving for warmer climates (Borrego Springs).  Of course, anyone who knows me well knows I am very stubborn, and am always convinced there is some illusive solution to every problem.  As it turned out there were solutions, and we gradually solved all of those problems.

Today as I write we only run the Predator generator about 90 minutes a day now, and our EcoWorthy dual axis solar tracker does the rest.  Our three battery banks achieve full charge status before noon each day, and our water bay hasn't frozen.  We doubled the amount of solar panel wattage for each battery bank, installed those ceramic 'light bulb' heaters in the water bay.  We moved the Newell to its permanent site where we get more than enough sun all day long to charge our batteries, and now have a hard line to the sewer line.  The Predator solved our problem with run time, and its dual fuel capabilities enabled us to run it off the large 120 gallon propane tank, saving us over a dollar a gallon for its fuel.  I've learned over the years that if you have enough time you can figure things out and reduce the stress in your life associated with all of the aforementioned issues in paragraph one.  We're both so happy we didn't give us up last winter!

We began work on the west side of the greenhouse mid morning installing the needed 2 x 4's on the inside, and then the firring strips on the outside.  We decided to end our work day there around 1 pm while we still had plenty of energy....

.....now we have just the north and south sides of the greenhouse to secure the visqueen with firring strips, and we can probably do both sides in one day.  Once that is done we will begin to install the rain gutters to begin catching rain water, and snow melt.  We should have the new diesel heater sometime this week, and once we have that we can begin to plant seeds, and grow stuff.  That will be a major landmark!

Saturday was also NCAA football playoff time, and by next week we'll know which 12 teams made the playoffs.  The first two games of the day were one sided affairs with Texas Tech easily winning over BYU 34-7, Georgia thumping Alabama 28-7.  The night game between Ohio State and Indiana was a game for the ages.  Both teams came into the game with perfect 12-0 records, and Ohio ranked #1, and Indiana #2.  Indiana scored first with field goal, then Ohio scored 10 unanswered points with Indiana kicking another field goal to end the first half.  In the second half Indiana score one touchdown, and held Ohio State to ZERO points, winning in regulation 13-10.

Well, that was our Saturday, and thank you once again for stopping by!