Anchor Struck

It’s definitely not summer but not quite autumn here on the farm. We mark that after a significant rain event, typically 100 or more millimeters (@ four inches) in three days or less. That flushes out our micro-hydro pipes and puts us back on a 24/7 supply of the wet stuff until the next drought. When we installed our off-grid power system nearly 20 years ago, we didn’t get a big enough battery bank to get us through the lean times. Our solar panels supply enough energy through the day and well into the evening right now, but we need a battery boost via diesel generator before daylight.

We are replacing everything in our system except the water wheel. We’re getting much more efficient panels and an upgraded inverter/charge controller. But our big leap is with the batteries. Right now we have lead/acid batts, which require maintenance and ventilation for off-gassing. We were leery of lithium ion batts because of fire hazard. However, the next generation of batts — lithium ferrous phosphate — are nowhere near as dangerous and don’t need maintenance or ventilation. They are also so much smaller we can put them in the house, where they would experience much less temperature extremes.

Hopefully we will have all this resolved by the end of this month. As we wait, I have a wealth of distractions. October, with baseball waning, basketball waxing and football in full sway, is a sports fan’s dream. My other spectator sport, politics, is also rife with, well, spectacle. The inevitable dethroning of Kevin McCarthy was messy enough on its own, but the GOP put a cherry on the top of it when it ham-handedly ordered Nancy Pelosi immediately out of her office in the Capitol building even as she is in California due to the death of Dianne Feinstein.

Aging Orange, of course, can’t stay out of the headlines. Despite several warnings about comments he has made on social media, he seems determined to be jailed or sanctioned because of them. That might help him with fundraising, but I’m not sure if it gains him any new converts. I’m cheered that military leaders like John Kelly and Mark Milley are calling Trump out for calling veterans “losers” and “suckers”. It’s been several years since he first did, but look for ads built around that scorn next year.