11/17/12

Today has been an eventful, and productive, day. In hindsight, however, I should have headed outside  earlier, so I could accomplish more before it started to cool off.

My first project for the day was replacing a fuse in the RTV. The last time I tried using the 12v plug I found that it wouldn't work. My guess was that a fuse had blown, as the cap that covers the plug had been chewed off by Luke months ago, allowing some debris and moisture to collect in the plug. I was able to verify that the fuse was blown, so today I replaced it with a good one. I need to remember to pick up a pack of spare fuses sometime, since I've used one of the spares from the RTV and at least one of the spares in the car.

Once the 12v plug was working again I hooked up the air compressor and aired up the tires of the wood chipper. I then covered the 12v plug with electrical tape, to keep debris and water out. I would have preferred using duct tape, but I didn't have any. I know, that is probably in violation of Lesson 1 of Homesteading 101, and I plan to remedy that.

After airing up the tires of the chipper I moved it into place and fired it up. It had been sitting for several months, so did require a squirt of starting fluid, but ran fine after that. I was able to work through the brush I had piled up, and generated quite a bit of woodchips in the process. I plan to use those chips to mulch around the edges of the garlic bed, and to create a walkway between the garlic and the rest of the garden. Tomorrow I think I'll work on cutting the briars that have overtaken the large brush pile I made before we moved the trailer here, and start sorting through it. I know there are some large branches that will end up either being burned or used in our hugelbed, but there should also be plenty to chip.

While I was chipping Andrea painted the door facing of the front door. When we installed the door several months ago we never got around to painting the facing. It was starting to deteriorate from the weather, so we knew it needed to get painted before winter. She painted it white, so it doesn't look much different, but I'm hoping the paint will server to protect it from the weather.

This evening I ran across an article that talked about a free online renewable energy course. After looking into the course I decided to sign up. I haven't started the first lesson yet, but will likely do so tomorrow. The course is being offered by Solar Energy International, which offers several other renewable energy courses. The course I am taking is RE100: Introduction to Renewable Energy. I plan to do a post about the course once I finish.