Happenings of Life on The Farm
Faithful followers will probably notice there is a post or two missing now. I had a complete erase and reset of my entire domain due to, well, I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think it was my fault!!
I wasn’t too upset, because I had actually backed up before Christmas.. however, I did lose those couple of posts… if your memory is good.. maybe you can type them out word for word, and I’ll repost them!!
Ah, the joys of technology!!
Before we had the rain for one week straight, they had the last of the panels installed! It looks so shiny and glittery when the sunlight catches it just right.. Have to try and capture that in a picture if I can! Until then, here it is with all the panels in place..
They had the center connections covered up nicely and the gap up the center filled with some aluminum siding, but the inspector made them open up all the junction boxes and take pictures to prove they’d done it right! They were a little disgruntled with him to say the least!
We definitely should be hooked up in time to take advantage all the sunlight on the shortest day of the year!
Monday was an absolutely beautiful day. We were down to short sleeves by mid afternoon! Hard to believe it’s near the end of October.
While we continued to spread more manure, they had a good run at getting quite a few of the panels up.
I’m sure they will be happy that we finished working with manure directly under them! (at least for now)
They need one more day to finish up installing, and then we just need final inspection, and a meter from Hydro One!
A little better close up shot of the panels, they are almost done the one half, (right above the liquid manure pump- so maybe they’re hoping they’ll be safe from the smell on the other side now..)
If you were wondering how the got the panels up onto the roof (safely, without dropping them!) They built a neat little chute for hoisting them up.
Here’s a pic from the roof looking down. The wooden trolly pulls up one at a time…
In between periodic rain showers, they are getting panels installed!
The first 5 went up to get the spacing right,
Then the top row went up to get the spacing right horizontally..
The guys had to put up with a bit of smell, since I started pumping out liquid manure , while dad was moving solid manure!
Apparently, they were pretty happy about the stiff breeze blowing fresh air up on the roof! They didn’t really complain at all.. Which is good, because I’m not done yet either!
The panels finally arrived Monday! They were shipped from Toronto via Peterborough…(that is NOT a direct route, but ‘ours is not to reason why’!) I think it was something to do with having a truck to unload them, but I ended up lifting the pallets off with our loader tractor anyway.
So.. this is what 170 solar panels look like stacked up!
They got one on before the day was out, just to make sure everything was what it was supposed to be…
Can you see it?!
Apparently the supplier of the cord that attaches all the micro-inverters together can’t count, and they are a row and a half short! I’m sure it won’t take long to ship them out, but it slows the process a little more. They have installed the ones they have cord for, so it looks a little different, but we still have a little bit to go yet before we are running power! Like having actual panels.. they seem to be the very last thing to go in!
You’d think that was all that’s going on around here, but it does seem to be the focus for us lately!
We did our Pioneer soybean plots Tues. They went from 59-65 bpa, and managed to dry down to 13-14% moisture since Friday! Not sure how they got that much dryer when it rained several times, but we’ll take it!
Monday and Tuesday also saw the arrival of the heavy electrical cable that goes in the trench from the solar panels to the transformer pole. We had to back fill the trench a little while they installed it, and then help pull the cable the last several feet because they’re 1000lb winch wouldn’t pull it any further. That cable is heavy!
They also have the rest of the rails up on the roof, but they aren’t all finished leveling yet. Not sure when the panels themselves are due for delivery..
This week saw the start of getting the rails installed on the roof to hold the solar panels. A fair bit of measuring work is needed to get the first rail installed, making sure the wood under the roof lines up with where the fasteners are put.
The next rails get progressively faster as they know where they’re going!
Friday afternoon also cleared away nicely, so we finally got a chance to try harvesting a few soybeans. Got the headland off the field with the test plots, so we can harvest those whenever Pioneer wants to. We then thought we’d get the headland off the next field too.. a couple hours later, we just finished the field! Got along great. The beans were dryer than expected (15-16%) and the yield seemed to be around 50-60 bu.
We are very fortunate to have a great crop, when so many this year don’t! Definitely counting our blessings!
Started filling cousin Bob’s silo with corn silage yesterday, and will continue all week. It’s a little earlier than usual, but that’s exactly what we were doing on a Sept. 11th back in 2001. I remember quite clearly hearing it live on the radio in the tractor, and reporting to Bob, who didn’t have a radio, the updates. Never forget his face when I told him the tower had collapsed… We were reassuring ourselves how bad a target for terrorists a couple of guys in the middle of a field are! Never forget..