Now we're cooking.......

 8:03 am - Wednesday - December 17th - TWW - 35° F, humidity 24%, wind 3 mph out of the south by southeast.....a few clouds early, then sunny all day with a forecast high of 67° F.  On this date in 2024 TLE and I set up the two new 325 watt (650 total) solar panels to recharge our Bluetti AC200MAX battery bank.....

....we bought them off Facebook Marketplace.  The seller, who lived in Ash Fork, AZ met us in Seligman to exchange dinero for the panels.  This was a temporary setup.  We later, permanently installed them on 4 x 4's, and they now provide charging power to our single Bluetti AC200P battery which powers the trailer....

.....we were on a very steep learning curve one year ago, but we kept learning, and moving forward every single day.  At the beginning we used to run our generator 5-6 hours a day, and now, today, we run it about 1 hour per day, sometimes not at all.

After several days of working our collective butts off we took a day off, and just worked on easy stuff.  There is a hinged cover for our Magic Chef stove/oven that, when closed, provides TLE more counter space.  On the bottom side the cover has two stainless steel plates to protect the wooden cover from the heat of the oven.  Every few years we have to remove it, pry off the stainless steel plates, clean both surfaces, and reglue them in place.  Tuesday was the 3rd, or 4th time we've done his.....

.....as is often the case, the time it takes to prepare for a project such as this far exceeds the time it takes to reinstall the stainless steel plates.  I used a single edged razor blade to remove all of the old glue, and otherwise clean the wood surface before wiping it all down with Acetone, then spraying on the high temp adhesive, and finally reinstalling the stainless steel plates.  I used every single clamp I own to apply pressure to make sure this installation lasts as long as possible.  It wasn't hard work, but very time consuming.

After finishing that small project TLE and I hooked up our 175' of fresh water hose to refill our fresh water tank (needed 120 gallons), refill the IBC tote for emergencies only, and dump our black tank.  Once that was done TLE went into the house to do a load of wash.  During that time I used that same single edge razor blade to clean the paint overspray from last winter, plus the residual masking tape off the two dual glazed greenhouse windows, and with that another TWW day came to an end.

On the greenhouse front, we had to run the diesel heater from 10 pm Monday to 6 am Tuesday to keep the temp above freezing.  Running the heater for 8 hours only used about 1/2 gallon of diesel.  Typically we have it set to come on at 3 am and run to 6 am, and that is enough, but Monday night the temp dropped to near freezing before 10 pm, so we had to run it longer.  Tuesday night we ran it from 3 am to 7 am, which is just before sunrise, and it kept the greenhouse at 42° F, well above freezing.  Now that we can keep the temp above freezing all of TLE's plants are now in the greenhouse 100% of the time.

After changing clothes I removed the large gauze bandage from my big left toe, cleaned the toe a little better, applied some Neosporen, and then applied a much smaller bandage....

.....much, much better!

Thanks for stopping by!