Summer Starting to End on the Farm

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It has been good spending time on the farm. I really had forgotten how quiet and dark it is here. It can actually be a bit unnerving. The leaf doodle bug was put to work in the forest. However, it looks like the car will be going back on the road. We can say it failed field trials,but that would only be partially true. The better utility value at this point is more suited to getting a teenager back and forth from high school. The mycological aspects of the farm did not disappoint. The pics of these shrooms are not photoshopped. The coal stove (very heavy) is loaded on the truck. It will be rebuilt in Georgia if I can save it. Coal stoves are increasingly out of production. When they are gone they are gone. The small wood stove is now in its place. The pic of the red sky in morning was indeed a warning of weather. We had strong storms and tornados in Upstate NY. Although I was travelling much that day in the area, I missed the worst of it.
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The solar system is coming together. I have all the major components. I still need to get some PEX pipe, insulation, pressure relief valve, expansion tank and some valves & fittings. I ended up getting an evacuated tube collector instead of my using my homebrew system. I hooked up with two Chinese PhDs and we are collaborating. You never really know how things turn sometimes, bizarre sometimes.

When I was taking the collector off the truck I took the cardboard off because it got wet in rain. It was out sitting exposed to the cloudy-rainy sky for about an hour before I could get it off the truck. Surprisingly, when I grabbed the water outlet it was hot. I don't mean warm. I mean hot. And it was raining out. This thing really works. Cool. Well, Hot. The complete system costs are not tallied yet. I will be doing that for sure, but it is easy to justify the system with it costing $800 to fill the oil tank. This has been one of the more satisfying projects this summer, err Fall.

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