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@prologic @markwylde what a strange video, making fun, to make a point. Remember the bali bombing, hundreds of dead and wounded, suddenly not enough hospital beds to go around, how is this the public's fault. Governments have reduced hospital beds intentionally world wide. Hence we cannot cope with any medical emergency.
I think we planted them here, what it looked like before 
All weekend my wife and I planted 27 new fruit trees. What a weekend !
Planted 10 more fruit trees today
\nGardening at it's best, nice on the eyes, soothes the soul.
Has goryon got running as an app yet?
just watched Alone, a surviving show where 9 men try to live on vancover island, before winter sets in. Cold, bears, wolves and cougars all prowl about.\nTook 3 hours off my sleeping time, dreaming about survival.
The lithium batteries alone cost 250 AUD to replace, they charge up in 10 minutes and run for 90 minutes before running flat, allowing you 2 hours of work between charging's. (You rarely switch on machines to maximum current draw we have to be aware of noise factor when working in our 560 guest motel for mining workers some who are sleeping during the day.\n2020-09-20T19:20:52Z\t@https://twtxt.net/user/vgn/twtxt.txt> @prologic (#2tjspma) You're lucky in the USA, you have bigger download speeds, in Australia we barely get anything like this, even on a good day.
\nThe three tools I carry for hedging, a 18V blower, a 18volt hedger and my rake, that is a rake tool, fluff tool and shovel tool all in one application.
\nYou can also use the rake as a shovel to guide piles of leaves and cuttings under your hedges.
\nThose who want to watch the best Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design:\nFrom dozens of sources put together by Muslims (only mentioned at the end), this evidence brings the best of scientific minds and current research on the Great Uncaused Cause. \n\n https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEnkhI_kCI
I sweep the top of the hedge from side to side.
\nIt helps with what I call fluffing, removing cut hedge cuttings, and fluffing up the new (now freshly cut) hedge so it looks pretty.
\nI invented a few modifications to my gardening rake.
@vgn Welcome, my name is Rob, a gardener nowadays.
@prologic @lukem Yeah James plays table tennis very well for a guy how can't see the ball. He's good at archery too. We had a competition one day at my remote home and I just spoke a Oclock setting, where the last arrow went, and He changed the target spot. This is very similar to lawn bowls where a bowler cannot see the jack, so a spotter tells him more details he cannot see. Sometimes being blind is an advantage, it gives you greater consistency.
Morning***this day*,font=blue I wonder what my day brings font=black\n 
My Pecan Nut Tree has no new leaves yet, takes a while to feel spring in the air.****
My Son is one day especially older today, boy times flies. I can't remember that long ago. But this TWTXT is great birthday present, and GoryOn is launching soon. Yeh
\nA closer view, roof removed, wall repaired, fence going in.
\nA distant view now after change
\nThe barn is getting a make over, ready for chook shed\nThe silt on the ground is 6 inches thick, nice fertilizer soil here.
The half yearly rates for this place is AUD 157,000. The Cost of the concrete foot paths alone would be hundreds of thousands. The 2 metre wide paths are nice. Golf buggy laundry 48 volt electric vehicles move along them. Some say the gardens reminds them of botanic gardens. It's nice during spring. God does all the hard work of growing them, I am just a gardener giving the plants a hair cut.
My job as a gardener has wonderful things for the eyes, and harder things for the muscles.
\nToday on cutting this citrus hedge, I see that after a while plants are conditioned to remain is the shape you want them to be? I wonder if you can do that with humans too? Conditional programming using Ipads?
@prologic @kt84 @lukem \n\nMy understanding is Apple and Windows are OP that feed themselves differently to Binary, as File management systems. If you run both systems for a while and intentionally switch off the mains power supply, the Apple OP responds better to the outage, than does the Windows system. In this regard, you could say Apple OP is more bomb proof than say Windows OP. On another angle, the Windows OP is easier to learn, as it was educationally taught more across schools to young children. Hand out free OP systems or cheaper OP systems and guess what?
Today wasn't much better, cleaning up old tree branches
Work too hard yesterday. Cut down tree branches off the boss's house. Interesting day that was.
Got some way to getting it done. Its 10m by 6m about 3.5 metres high.
I am off today to build my first insect proof building over my peach tree.
To all fathers out there, have a great mention.
7:30 PM server time in Brisbane, and it's 5:30 AM also QLD here as I post??
A garden problem
That big bottle tree got hit by lightning after this pic, and so I need a lot of chain sawing to do as well ...
This old 100 year barn, horse/cattle stables was used by the Coy Family many years ago. I thinking of making part of it a chook pen, but I have to stabilize the leaning over first.
My new trailer goes for inspection today.
Two comments already on my memory lane blog post. How nice. James forgot the Melissa Virus thing, Oh well. I probably forget many things too, over the years. When it comes to living with your career of skills Albert Einstein once said "Keep things simple, but not simpler".
Part of Off Grid Living, is dealing with birds that flog your fruit. Like grapes. I love grapes, and do not want birds stealing them. Alas my make shift bird netting is a poor ugly structure, but it works.
There are 6 round tanks (600 high and 2m diameter) with fruit trees growing in them. The parrots steal your fruit too unless it's under wire.
The only way to grow veggies for Off Grid Living, is under wire to keep birds and rabbits out. I need to make this one bigger.
@felixp7 "And that’s why you should consider learning how to make your own e-books—whether with Sigil or some other app of your choice. Maybe you won’t need it right away. Maybe you’re not going to do anything fancy with this skill. It will, however, expand your horizons, and that’s always the first step towards better things."
Do you use Sigil to make your own e-books?
In our new country house, we have a 70 year old pecan nut tree, and after burning a few dry sticks near the tree, the canopy got heat stressed, triggering a few flower buds just before autumn winds set in, removing the new flowers and leaves. Tribulation sure does make fruits start.
You have to use
(can't show it "br" ) to get a carriage return?
in your text box?
Shalom
One thing worries me about this storage is a mouse gnawing through the plastic liner, how common is this idea? Or termites, or tree roots? There is a weed mat covering under the plastic liner, but all that water is vulnerable to massive loss. The biggest consumer of water is the water controllers feeding the trees and gardens at a rate of 1200 litres per week.
One more thing Off-Grid -Living needs is a good water source. In a dry place like Australia, if you can't afford a river, and your bore is poor, storing rain water is good. Here is the cheapest idea for tanks, one large tank, 10m in diameter, a storage capacity of 160,000 litres.
The arch leads to the fruit tree room from the veggie room.
The reo mesh is for the trestles over edge garden beds, for plants to climb onto. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, etc. No more ties, faster, easier, just weave the tomatoes over and over the wire mesh.
A view of the roof details and metal beams.
A different view of the garden shed, this time showing a feature arch of bricks, the shed is divided into different rooms.
This is a picture of a dwarf avocado tree growing in the garden shed. The roof is fibreglass, the walls are metal and shade cloth, and the entire building is near insect proof. The garden shed is 12m by 12m in size, and cost me over $5000 to build.
A view of the grassy mulched floor, I was going to use tiles, but natural dried grass is nice to walk on, decays to soil and allows root food to eat as well. The grass comes from our lawns, so the garden shed concentrates the nutrients from the whole land plot we have.
The bath tub is for composting the toilet waste that comes out of the compost toilet, also connected to this garden shed, via a fly proof glass door entry. The bath tub has other organic waste too, all kept there for another 12 months before ending up in garden beds as soil.
Another view of the same garden beds, showing compost bins and the natural grass mulched floor.
Notice the posts are tucked underneath the garden beds by 200mm so your toes do not hit the garden posts if your standing close to the edges of the garden. It also allows you to see water dripping through, to prevent wastage. The garden plants sucked the soil medium dry nearly every time, so hardly any drips every happened. A great, but expensive idea. The ultimate garden bed experience.
Another thing I did was make two garden beds on concrete suspended off the floor. No more aching backs digging soil. The beds are 4m by 2m
Wow, seems like for small images, I get a small size. Great.
Here I grow garlic , garlic chives and mint. What makes garlic difficult to grow, is getting a plant corm that I alive and healthy. Otherwise garlic seems to grow normally like other herbs.
Some plant cuttings growing in foam boxes. I am round about 80% successful with most cuttings, except Privet, Lilly Pilly and Moray plants, seems the air too dry inside my foam box, covered plastic top.
It's hard finding people on Internet discussing Off Grid Living solutions.
A friend reckons If I also ran a wind generator, the charging at night should reduce the wear and tear on the chemistry of each bank. I have not tried this idea. Does anybody know if you keep your bank near 98% fully charged every day and night, if it would make AGM last longer than warranty date?
Off grid living for us, does not use air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, an such things. We have always used on a 240 V supply about 3 units of power daily. A fridge uses roughly 1.5 units daily. So getting off grid is not so hard but you do have to change your lifestyle a little. The total cost of us getting off grid was AUD 4,500. That includes a expensive fridge, 24 VDC, Danfoss compressor, costing AUD 2,500. Solar panels and controllers AUD 1,800.
The 240 volt was used to run washing machine, toaster, and garden pump. These items are difficult to run on DC, all of them require 700 watts to 1500 watts of power.
That means the total cost of running this power system per year is AUD 440. There is no need to carefully look after your batteries like we did. If I increased the storage to 400Amp hours, so they cycled to 95% fully charged each day, the chemistry only lasted the warranty. So it doesn't matter. The cost of maintenance is too high. If we throw in our 240Volt power bills too for a year. Our power bills were just AUD 1000 roughly per year
In our third year, every week we had problems with the fridge battery bank. I now know the AGM batteries are no good. The chemistry is gone, even though they were never discharged below 85% on any one day. I remember one rainy day the fridge bank went down to 65%, and this happened only once. We didn't get much sunshine for over 4 days.
On the first year everything went smoothly, both banks dropped to around to 85% of full charge, most days it was 90%, and the banks were fully 100% charged within 20 minutes of solar. So were not using the AGM batteries much, and trying to look after them.
Personally I don't like bolt connections, I reckon the old fashioned post terminal would be better, or maybe the alloys used caused the problem? Mixing stainless steel bolt with solder allow terminals might be bad, the surface area of the connection is too small for me?
A similar problem at the positive post also, but this only ever happened for the 24 volt DC fridge bank. The fridge draws only 1.6 amps to 2.0 amps when running, but for some reason the post terminals, while touching and tight, the controller said the terminals were bad. This second bank of storage only ran one appliance, the fridge.
My weekly problem was what I called dry socket connections at the post, they were touching, but the controlled said it wasn't touching. Rubbing with steel wool, of graphite powder helped the controller reading go from error to 100% in a few seconds of cleaning this one connection.
The negative the same. I think the bolt is stainless steel? I never had any problem with the connections here.
On the general household bank, all the power wires are connected by a brass bolt, rather than spend $300 on a brass terminal. It works OK, but look messy.
The batteries are wired in series, giving 24 volts, they are 220 Amp Hour each, giving the total storage of 220 Amp/hr. That doesn't sound much does it? The cost of each AGM battery made in china was $330 each.
Here are the controllers, for each bank. The bank allows redundancy, so having two batteries of storage allows you peace of mind should one storage fail, until you fix it.
Notice the house also is on grid receiving 240 volts. I had trouble with supplies who argued you do not wire up panels in parallel. These guys know little, and assume all panels these days supply a grid. Mine does not.
Let's talk a little about solar power. Here are two banks of panels, 4 each of 220 watts, giving each bank a total of about 800 watts, or for 5 hours of sunshine, about 4 units of power generation. Each panel has wire connectors cut off, saves money, and soldered into parallel, making the input 30Volts and 20 Amps maximum.
Hope the image looks ok on I pads, on my desktop it looks bad, the image size is way too large, and from my camera they are already 15KB images.
The tentpeg is a special Hebrew symbol from Ancient Hebrew, and here is a useful demonstration of its ability to secure things. I use the fork of the peg to secure a hose from slipping off. Saves me time going looking for plastic clip. Works a treat :)
Yesterday I was working on the guttering on my roof. It was a cheaper, simpler system. I got the 0.55mm galvanized steel folded by Adnought, for just 8 AUS per metre, normally costs 26 AUS per metre for fancy box gutter in zinc, NOT zinc with aluminium. Why did I avoid aluminium alloy? Cancer and toxic metal reasons. (Text area cannot show dollars symbol, ie AUS)
Stay tuned, will discuss more of this topic later. But the camera feature is working, so this saves time explaining things.
The geese put their poop in a cement featured garden pond, with drain, pump and filter, you recycle the water through gravel, with plant garden vegies growing in it. All natural, not quite aquaculture, but an OFF grid animal process to growing your vegies, using water and gravel and geese poo as your medium. Again 100% natural and the complex system gets better with time, the gravel medium takes on a community that helps roots in gravel grow better.
Another approach is take some geese, who eat grass lawns mostly.
Well this may look different to your industrial food, but its 100% naturally processed, fresh using all the ingredients from your own garden.
Here is a typical sample of leafy greens eaten daily used to remove cancer cells from your system and keep your immune system strong. A small hand full every day, is all you need, eaten raw, straight from your garden. Notice my chopping board is plain timber, and old 200 yr old rosewood tree to be exact.
Notice a paw paw leaf in the garden menu. You should learn to eat garden greens, these remove daily the cancer cells growing in your body. Dealing with cancer is as simple as eating organic green leaves, of all kinds. Get used to it, its a food group people have never heard of before.
More examples of organic food harvest.
These are all OFF Grid FOODS, grow using the permaculture system from our gardens.