Harnessing untapped sources of energy

Tabitha has been employing Tristan to do the glasses for a few weeks. He does a great job and gets to earn a privilege.

He cleans them better than the dishwasher does and makes stacked dish art.


Tristan earned two privileges today. The first one was because he picked up a wheel barrow load of cow patties from the upper paddock. We compost all of our cows manure and it is a huge help for him to clean up the paddock like that. Furthermore, the cow won't eat the grass in about a one foot radius form one of her old cow patties for many months. If we left all of them in the field there wouldn't a blade of grass left to eat within a few months.

Sure the fields don't get all that fertilizer from the cow but that is why we raise chickens in tractors. There are no diseases that transmit easily between species (from the chickens to the cow). It is a perfect symbiosis. The cow doesn't mind eating after the chickens move through a field.

We received our latest order of broiler chicks. The post office had a little debacle and left them in a hot warehouse. We have already lost a few. I hope they thrive.

I made a brooder out of stacked bales of straw. It seems to be working really well. Now I just need to build three more chicken tractors. It was too hot today for me to work outside on them so I worked on my portable solar fan system. We use them to circulate air in the chicken tractors when they must be in the direct sun.

My system will utilize one large solar panel and two recycled attic fans. I attached wheels to the solar panel to make it easy to move.

Then I attached the D.C. leads to a regular house outlet.

This way I can use standard extension cords to run power from the panel to the separate tractor fans. Sure there is the potential for confusion with regular A.C. stuff but this will be nowhere near A.C. stuff.

Plus I know better. One tip if you plan something similar. Cover the panel with complete shade(I flip mine over) when plugging and unplugging. A direct current spark will ruin standard outlets and plugs.

This just wheels around like a wheel barrow--easy.


On other news the kitten factory is in peak production. In true Ozarks fashion the matriarch grandmother is raising her grand children and her own children at the same time.

Two of her grandchildren haven't survived but this is the best we can hope for.