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A couple of days ago one of our new neighbors
dropped by and gave us 2 huge bags full of fresh vegetables from
the local farms here. We didn't have a use for all of the
tomatoes and beans, so we decided to make a huge batch of salsa
and pickle the beans for later.
It was a little cramped in the kitchen, but we still managed
to jar up a 11 quart sized jars with beans and salsa while only
breaking 1 jar in the process. Best of all, we have a ton
of food that doesn't need to be refrigerated now and will not
spoil. |
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Becky and I re-wired the wind generator yesterday
and effectively upped the wire to around 4 gauge. The
difference is dramatic. We are now fully charged and
actually unable to consume as much power as we are producing
during the day now without really trying. The wind came up
this afternoon and between the solar panels and the wind
generator we hit over 70 Amps for a couple of hours.
We actually went out and bought a couple of new appliances -
a vacuum cleaner (65 Amps @12V) and a hand held blender (10 Amps
@12V). Becky vacuumed the entire bus and I puréed some of
the fresh salsa that we made last night. With both
appliances running along with 2 fans and several rechargeable
appliances charging, we were not able to actually take any power
from the batteries. |
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I have the solar panels tilted the opposite
direction as I originally planned, so the TV antenna casts a bit
of a shadow on one of them during the day. I checked and
the difference between the panel with and without the shadow is
so minimal that I don't bother to do anything about it. |
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In case anyone is curious what it looks like in
side the bus these days, here's how it looked this
afternoon. It is still a bit of a mess, but Becky and I
are making plans to add some storage space in the near
future. Finding wood (or any other building supplies for
that matter) here in Elfrida or nearby Douglas has turned out to
be a real challenge. |
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There is still a lot to do as you can plainly
see. We need more cabinets and a home for our
bedding. At the moment our pillows and blankets live in a
hammock above the driver's seat. I'm too embarrassed to
show a picture of the makeshift hammock here... |
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The bathroom is the one place where we seem to
have plenty of storage. In fact, a lot of things are
stored in the bathroom that really don't belong there, but since
there is plenty of room, that's the way it has worked out. |
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The kids room is always a huge mess. Becky
has tried to clean it up at least 3 times in the past couple of
days. It gets trashed almost immediately. They need
more storage than Becky and I do, but coming up with something
rugged enough for them is proving to be a bigger challenge than
I thought. |
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We have a new friend. We brought our bird
feeders with us and now have a regular visitor to our humming
bird feeder. The tinted windows make it possible to sit
right next to the window and watch without being noticed at
all. It has turned out to be one of the girls favorite
activities. Everyone comes running when the humming bird
comes to visit. |
