Tag: off grid

In the morning quiet

March 13, 2018

The silence is broken as the alarm sounds of in the darkness that is our bedroom.

It is 5:45 one of my days off as I have this week booked off from work. I have slept in till this point as normally I am already at work.

I let Amanda stay in bed this morning as she normally gets up to milk the rest of the week (even on days that I am home she typically gets up to milk and let’s me sleep in a little longer or just so we can hang out while we milk).

Our youngest got up to help me with milking (he enjoys the homestead life).

Once again the silence of the night is broken as the snow crunches beneath our feet as we walk towards the barn with milking bucket in hand.

As I enter the barn I am met with quiet darkness which is broken with a bleat from Millie and some answering bleats from her kids (who are in a separate pen over night).

I lead Millie over to the milking stand. She steps right up as she has become accustomed to our new morning routine. The sound of her hooves upon the wood disturbs the silence even further.

Our youngest is sure someone is at the barn door but it is just Blaze in the next stall over scratching his head on the partition wall.

Spray down Millie’s teats and udder to make sure she is clean the sound of the spray is loud in the stillness.

Pat her dry and place the milk bucket under her and gently milk her into a strip cup to check that everything looks good and she is healthy. The youngest takes a turn stripping out some milk from Millie into the bucket. We switch who is milking as his attention wains. The sound of the fresh milk against the side of the stainless steel bucket has a satisfactory ring to it and is almost relaxing as I get into a rhythm.

Millie relaxes as the swelling in her udder receds. She starts to munch away on her grain chewing loud enough that you know what she is doing even though her head is out of the circle of light produced from the flashlight.

Milk collected the youngest and I reunite Millie with her kids. Headed back to the house the snow crunches under our feet once again.

The house is quiet as everyone else is still sound asleep. The clock ticks on the wall. We get out the filters and the funnel. Put a filter into the funnel/strainer and pour the fresh milk through it sounds almost like coffee dripping in a brew cycle.

Put the milk into the fridge and wash everything up.

The youngest decides to go back to bed. I sit down to drink a cup of coffee.

Finally some quiet in the morning.

Quest for power….. part 1

April 10, 2017

I am going to apoligize now if this post gets a little long, so far we have learned lots, and had quite the adventure in the process.

We looked at this off grid paradise in December, covered in snow we went home that evening knowing 2 things.

1) We had to have it, it was the perfect mix of highlands rocks, flat fields and an abundance of water. The cozy house would accomadate our family of 5, and it was already off grid so we didn’t need to try and convert it.

2) We knew the 3500 watt generator wouldn’t meet the things we knew we needed for ourselves and we would need to upgrade to constant power and still maintain our desire of being self sufficient and thus produce our own.

This story our dear friends is the start of our journey for point 2.

We researched some and then some more and then lots more. We talked to people who are  living off grid, we talked to people with solar micro fit attached to the grid. We talked to Haliburton Solar and Wind(HSW) the solar guy himself.

HSW sent us a plethora of information the most important being how on earth to complete the dreaded load analysis. ( I will warn all you wanna be and future off griders this is at least a solid 2 week task) 

Step one you make a list of everything you own that uses power and I really mean everything even the things you don’t use often or forget you have ( your sons remote control recharging truck that you had safely packed away until spring). Then you make a list of all the things you may possibly want in the future ( because let’s face it spending thousands of dollars on power to then find out it won’t run the fun new gadget you just picked up is going to suck)…don’t forget every light bulb you use!

Step 2 figure out how many hours per day you run each item ( like when was the last time you notice your fridge kicks on approx every 1.5 hours for 13.574 minutes?)

Step 3 figure out how many running watts each item uses which has about 3 different mathematical ways I will allow you to Google yourself ( math isn’t my thing)

4. Does it surge? If so how many watts does it surge at? And how long? ….more math.

We complete this project and luckily enough for us the wonderful team at HSW sent us a fancy little excel sheet that totalled all our running watt, surge watt, daily running watt hour math stuffs for us. I send the fancy sheet back and presto that part was easy.

HSW worked out a beautiful system for us and it came with a beautifully unattainable price tag….. Back to the drawing board. After cutting everything we could cut good bye lava lamps, hair dryer, 2 light bulbs in 1  room, and forgoing the actual solar panels for now, We have a system design that fit our budget and our needs.

It’s a simple little plug and play kind of system, 8 batteries holding 21 kilowatt hours of power a tiny 3500 watt inverter and the current generator we already own. 

Our plan early spring installation…….