Anchor Struck

Meteorological summer started Sunday, and it finally/hopefully started a stretch of warm temperatures and friendly breezes perfect for outdoor chores on the farm. We don’t hit astronomical summer until the solstice on June 20th, but we are well into solar summer, the three month stretch when the Northern Hemisphere get the most sunlight.

Got all that? Good. There’ll be a test at the end of the period.

Solar summer is most salient here. As the spring rains taper off, we get less water for our micro-hydro system. The increase in sunlight gives us gallons of rays through the day, but we have to draw off our battery bank at night and on cloudy days. Typically, we have to start closing off the water pipes in July until we can re-open them when the autumn rains return.

If you click on “Tours” at the top of this page, then “alternative energy system”, you’ll get a visualization of this process. Right now, we’re not getting much in the barrel.

We have a diesel generator for back-up, but it’s not functioning well. We hope to get a knowledgeable neighbour in soon to check it out. Until then, we’ll hope for fair weather and a break from the massive clouds of smoke that sometimes roll in from the wildfires elsewhere in the province. They get worse every year.

So here’s the test: what is the funniest movie ever?