Comparing Solar

With both our solar arrays connected, it was only a matter of time before we started to compare the two. Over the last few weeks, we’ve had some beautiful sunny days (in amongst the throwback to winter *sigh*), so we’ve started noting down what each array was doing.

We have 1kw array of flat panels on our roof.

And a 1kw solar tracker.

Our block is oriented east to west (not the best), so our flat panels receive most of their sun in the afternoon from the west. Our solar tracker obviously tracks the sun from whenever the sun first hits the panels (8.45am) until sundown.

On our best day last week, our flat panels generated 4.69 kwh. BUT our solar tracker generated 8kwh. I was very chuffed to say the least. First of all, because we generated nearly 13kwh that day and we only use 6kwh on our worst days. I’m not that much into feeding back into the grid (though Mr B is). In my mind, as long as we make more than we use, I’m happy :-)

But secondly, because the solar tracker was so much more effective than the flat panels. And now this is where I must divulge that Mr B has been working in solar & sustainability measures for the last 8 years. He was so enamoured by different solar farms that he saw in Germany and Spain about 4 years ago, that he came to Australia with the dream of building solar trackers.

And so it began, working in our garage and in our study. He has mainly worked rurally in Victoria getting his dream up off the ground. Working with farmers, vineyards and small city councils. The biggest solar tracker he built has been for Wangaratta City Council.

So we have always wanted one in our own yard but with all our housing issues over the last few years, it just hasn’t been possible. But now we have one in all its glory (yes I’m biased LOL) and I am so proud of my dear hubby that it lives up to all its promise.

Innate Curiosity - Silver Fox Style

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~ The cure for boredom is curiosity ~ there is no cure for curiosity ~

   Dorothy Parker

I celebrated my birthday over the weekend. My beautiful family treated me to lots of cakes, love and pressies (yay for my new Fiskars secateurs). Not an important number but I love to reflect nonetheless.

I decided on my last birthday to stop colouring my hair with henna. Instead I’ve been growing the colour out. I now have a beautiful skunk stripe grey streak at the front down to bob length. And the rest of my hair is speckled with silver strands (which strangely enough I quite like). Unfortunately I don’t like my hair that short, so there is an obvious colour difference between the top of my hair and bottom. I'll post pics when I'm all grey.

And on my birthday I discovered a new young grey role model – a young silver fox - Sarah Harris. She is a writer for Vogue who has completely grey / silver hair and boy does she rock it!! :-) Inspiration enough for me to keep going with my hair.

As for my Dorothy Parker quote, I think as I get older I just get more curious. I’m not interested in the status quo or what’s cool or trendy. I’m not interested in the “shoulds” or the “ought to’s”. I still want to change the world. And I'm innately curious about what everyone has to say about the state of our world and how we will change it.

Looking back over the last 5-10 years I’ve changed so much in my beliefs, my views of the world, how we chose to live our lives but I realised yesterday that I’m content. I love my garden, I love my life, hey I’m even loving those grey hairs…we have so much further that we want to go on our sustainable path but as we make our way there, I’m happy!!

Slow Living Diary September 2012

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Once again, I am joining in with Christine from Slow Living Essentials for a monthly reflection of slow living…

NOURISH: I’ve got back into the habit of making more of our own dips (hummus, spicy pumpkin) to have as snacks.

PREPARE: I’ve started buying all our nuts loose and in bulk. I was surprised to find out how much more cost effective it is. I’ve also found 4 and 5kg paper or cloth bags of oats that I can buy from a local store.

REDUCE: I’ve been making head way with my personal plastic challenge. I’ve really been rethinking what I buy and am finding that I’m making a dent in what we buy in plastic. It helps to have the visual aid of keeping all our plastic for 1 week at a time. Shows me where it comes from directly, rather than in some sort of abstract manner.

GREEN: Our beautiful solar tracker was finally connected and she works so much better than our flat panels. It also means that we now have time of use on our meter. So I’ve been working extremely hard to make sure that we use as little electricity during the day as we can. I’ve also been using the timer on our washing machine to ensure that we only wash during off peak hours (5am).

The hardest bit has been being super organized about the washing – no more 3 loads in one morning. But there is something nice about the washing being all ready to hang out when one wakes up.

We’ve also finally started a compost bin for our cat litter after reading helpful posts like this. Little B and I spent a day decorating the bin so that no one could make any mistakes with the compost it generates.

GROW: I’ve planted out 4 kinds of tomatoes (Amish Paste, San Marzano, Cherry Roma and one that's good for drying) - 9 plants in all and my squash, pumpkin and zucchini seedlings have just about grown enough to go into the ground. Crazy though - we planted our tomato seedlings one week earlier than we normally would swayed by the warmer weather..two nights later we had a frost. My garden bed was the one with every bucket available tipped over each tomato plant. Good news...no damage done :-)

CREATE:  This month I had great fun making our Super Hero teepee. It was so successful that I’m in the process of sourcing secondhand material to make an outside one too (turns out queen size sheets are the go :-).

DISCOVER:  My favourite info books this month have been A Story of Seven Summers by Hilary Burden and How can I be prepared with self-sufficiency and survival foods by Isabell Shipard.

My favourite fun reads have been The Boy Who Fell to Earth by Kathy Lette and Runemark and Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure both by Joanna Harris. (I do have to say though that I preferred her last book about Vienne, The Lollipop Shoes).

ENHANCE: I helped update the website for a local community group.

ENJOY: Helping out on the zoo excursion for kindy – 23 kids, 8 adults from The Dandenongs to central Melbourne on the worst weather day imaginable (it hailed numerous times). But oh we had so much fun despite this!! The kids were so excited, a butterfly landed on a mum's face in the butterfly house, and Little B was sooo excited to have patted a frog!! :-)

Kiteflying with Little B – it’s so cute the way he gets such a buzz from it. And on really windy days it can be quite exhilarating (even for us big kids).

Lets Go Fly a Kite

Mr B went to the Henty Machinery Field Day with his solar trackers last week for work. While there he saw a man flying these amazing kites and had to bring one home for Little B (who adores kites).

Little B has been practising with his kite ever since at every given opportunity in the backyard.

On Friday it was the perfect windy blustery afternoon, so we all headed down to the local oval to let it loose…..

 Lets go fly a kite

 Up to the highest height!

 Lets go fly a kite and send it soaring

Up through the atmosphere

Up where the air is clear

Oh, let's go fly a kite :-)

Jenny's Garden

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Granny B works with a lovely lady called Jenny. We buy all our eggs from Jenny because she uses soy free layer and we know that her chooks are raised happily at home. Well today we were lucky enough to get an invite to visit Jenny, her chooks and her vegie garden. We are intent on getting our own chooks now we are settled at the new house and what better introduction than meeting the chookies who give us our eggs now :-)

Jenny and her husband let Little B feed the chooks by hand and look for eggs. Talk about love at first sight – he was very disappointed to hear that we wouldn’t be taking said chickens home today, but after assuring him we would get our own, he bumbled of into the garden to dust bathe with them LOL.

They also showed me around their vegie garden and fruit trees. 14 years young, the garden has 24 productive fruit trees (and that’s not including the 5 kinds of berries they also have). They have a very successful avocado tree and in a climate similar to hours I was overjoyed to hear they didn’t need another to cross pollinate nor has it grown to immense proportions (two bits of advice that discouraged me putting in a avocado this year).

Photo courtesy of Diggers

They were also keen to show me their propagating shed and how they raise their seedlings. I quite liked this little gadget from Diggers – a Bottle Top Waterer. Obviously we wouldn’t use a plastic water bottle, but it would go great on an old oil pourer we have.

It was also great to see polypipe covering a vegie garden in real life. I’ve always wondered how sturdy they would be in the wind we get, but Jenny & co have a similar problem and they hold up beautifully in the wild windy weather.

And who could resist the view. Sitting in the sunshine, drinking coffee and eating home-made cake and muffins, it was simply beautiful.

And we didn’t come home empty handed – a dozen eggs, 6 strawberry plants and a baby peach tree one of many they have self seed. They tell me that they found these peach trees to grow lashings of fruit.

It was a fabulous morning – I really do love meeting like minded people and learning from people who have been gardening for many more years than me.

Superheroes and Teepees

Yesterday was quite an interesting day…apparently superheroes live teepees. Really? Who knew?

So my job as the mum of a superhero was to provide said tepee. There are some gorgeous ones you can buy these days but they are mainly plastic poles and made in china. So instead I perused patterns – our teepee is an amalgamation of Spotlight, The Crafty Minx and A Beautiful Mess. Though My Poppet has a great explanation about tying the poles together.

I mainly adapted these to make sure the teepee would fit into Little B's bedroom because I found the patterns were mostly too small (more for toddlers) or way too big (better for outside).

It was surprisingly easy to make – and it took about 3 hours from start to finish. All up it cost me $65 with the most expensive part being the wooden poles. I used plain cotton drill for the teepee itself rather than patterned fabric as it lends itself to changing interests. Though I’m hoping to get some of these robot fabric decals from Love Mae as Little B adores robots as much as superheroes. In fact we have seen a few superhero robots around here.

Hey superheroes eat breakfast too :-)

Weekending

:: Canoeing, canoeing, canoeing – I opted out this time because of my hip but the boys were in and out of the water for 3 hours (there was lots of adventuring to be had on the shores)

:: I sat watching the boys, listening to the water, chatting with other canoers/kayakers and enjoying the Spring Edition of Peppermint Magazine. Worth buying just for the beautiful cover if you ask me :-)

:: Making Blueberry Cream Cheese Icecream. It’s delicious…the recipe says to mix the blueberries through the icecream at the last stage but we decided to add frozen ones when serving.