John Weiland

John F Dean wrote:.....I learned a great deal.  Key to everything is that my wife was on board with each step.  At times we were pretty poor. And, there were many frustrations.

I have to admit we rather lucked into our situation, athough with the temps now again hovering around zero for a third straight week, this may be relative to your tastes and thresholds.

We parked a 20-ft caravan/camper trailer at a local KOA campground (are those still in existence?) while I started my career job in the early 90s....my wife watched over rabbits, poultry and a pot-bellied pig and perused the real estate ads.  Her background was fine with older run-down farm-houses while I was more interested something rural, but turnkey and more modern.  Fortunately, her find won the day...the property was closer to work, had the largest amount of acreage (~20 acres) with a river running through it, had great soil and a working water well and electrical, but an old farmhouse that even the real-estate agent said was not worth more than $20K.  So in 1992 we bought the whole property for $60K.

Although we've pieced together outbuildings and re-inforced the house, the property was the focus of efforts.....fencing for wife's animals, garden establishment, native prairie resoration in what was big-ag corn and soybeans, tree/windbreak planting, etc.  In retrospect as I pondered having to build from scratch, I realized how much a good large garage/pole building can give shelter to people, pets, and valuable items while establishing the living situation.....and were I to do it again, would erect a large-ish pole building first and build or add an attached home onto that building.   As others have noted, whether or not a property comes with a home already in place, you can always start small and build outward or upward as your needs and desires suit you.

Also as others have noted, it helps to develop a sort of calm in 'rolling with the punches'---perhaps easier with age.  As I type this, I'm getting ready to finally retrieve my car that I stuck in a snowbank about a mile away....it's been there now a few days.  Previously, I would have had my knickers in a twist, needing to get it out ASAP and home before night's end.  But wife needed the truck for a previous appointment the next day and I didn't really want to have to make the "call of shame" to the local towing service to pull it out.  Both wife and I would have been wringing our hands over the incident in earlier times until it was resolved....now, just more calm and patience--the journey as much as the destination.  Besides, today we will be able to do the task while basking in the glow of 4 degree F sunshine! :-)

Robert Ray wrote:I have a French press but don't use it for coffee. It is relegated to making tea.

We use ours for coffee on rare occasions, but most often use it instead of a milk bag to filter nut milk (almond or cashew).

It's deep winter now here in northern Minnesota and I've been able to take a few cross-country ski trips on the frozen river near our house.  Like the Red River that flows north to Winnipeg, Manitoba, nearly all of the rivers in this flat valley meander in a pronounced snake-like pattern, leaving densely wooded oxbows very impracticle for plowing and planting.  We've come to call one of these oxbows the 'Oak Grove' after the few massive burr oak trees that have remained uncut and unfelled by the high winds.  One can't help but revere their size and longevity in a region where most trees are done in a few decades.  This year I noticed several large limbs broken on one of them and felt a similar sadness....  They were like the elders of the grove, assisting oak and non-oak alike on getting their start in the tree community in that oxbow.  This one sentinel may finally be on its way out...and it feels appropriate to mourn that passing.

Thanks again for responses.  Finally settled on a Red Tiger ViewClear 70 dashcam that seems to be working pretty well.  Bought a separate 5VDC/3A converter for plugging into 120VAC wall outlet....all working well.  Very pleased with the option to use wireless approach for data storage and transfer, or the internal micro-SD card (comes with 128Gb standard card and I added a 512Gb card to the purchase).  For our needs, it works very well just to remove the SD card and use a USB adapter to dump the desired files from the card onto the home laptop.  Added bonus is the long-cabled extra camera provided for the rear window of the vehicle.  This allows us to have the main camera on the inside of the barn and the 'rear' camera inside of an animal stall where the main camera can't see.  File storage can be adjusted to save in 1 minute, 3 minute or 5 minute increments and camera resolution can be changed to save on storage space.  Very pleased and thinking of adding a few more for other locations on the property.  Thanks!

John F Dean wrote:There are many variables here.   What is right for one person and situation may not be right for another.  

Although I have a 10 year old Nissan Murano, I would stay away from CVTs.  They tend to brea(k) down sooner than conventional transmissions.

Agreed.  Firstly, none of our vehicles were purchased new.  My Toyota RAV4 has been pretty good, even for a salvage car.  My wife's Nissan Xterra gets pretty bad mileage for its size, but has been amazingly reliable and she likes the clearance and true 4X4.  It gets used once or twice per week.  She's also a die-hard manual transmission user, so likes the stick.  The Toyota Tundra 4X4 is the hauler and towing rig and actually gets fair highway mileage with the smaller V8.  Like others, and not to ignore our dear neighbors in Canada to the north, circumstances (rural and cold) would make using an EV 'worrisome'.  Which leads to a question for you John....

I'm aware as well of the issues with the Murano CVT, but also have observed that most hybrids (standard and plug-in) use CVTs.  I've been told by one mechanic that at lease Toyota has been refining the hybrid drivetrain (with CVT) for some time now and is pretty robust.  Also learned that some of the recent Subarus now are using the Toyota drivetrain in their hybrids and am keeping that in mind if one of our current vehicles is ready for trade or scrap.  So do you think CVTs in general suffer from early decline or perhaps the one used in the Murano and perhaps others was just not up to snuff?

Finally, although mileage isn't great I'm also leaning towards Nissan Frontier or Honda Ridgeline (used) if our truck is kaput.  We don't use these larger vehicles much, whick keeps cost and fuel usage down, but they are indispensible when needed.  If wife wants to stick with used Nissan, I would probably look at Pathfinder which holds reliability while having rather high cost depretiation.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:

John Weiland wrote:

In an inverted corollary to this observation, I find that the best way to find a lost item on the property is to go buy a new one....the old one will magically appear just as soon as you've used the new one past the point of being able to return it!  ...  ;-)

Yup!  Me too!  The people at the hardware store, wherever I live know this about me and are kind

Second corollary--for winter climate application:  If you've lost something in the snow, search for it with your snowblower.  Like a metal detector, only more efficient, it will suck up and "notify" you of lost item being present.  No annoying beeps either....it will kill your engine pronto! :-)

John F Dean wrote:....Now I am trying to figure out the reason I didn’t unroll them in place … if there is a reason.

In an inverted corollary to this observation, I find that the best way to find a lost item on the property is to go buy a new one....the old one will magically appear just as soon as you've used the new one past the point of being able to return it!  ...  ;-)

Nikolaj Vinicoff wrote:

a)   (Also my brain) "What a stupid idea... .?"

b)    ....YOU SUDDENLY HAVE A VISION and you can't afford to wait 30 minutes until the rain stops.

c)    ....perhaps it has something to do with finding a balance between analysis and action,

d)  ....it is a personal story of mine which has led to a pretty epic small scale system of a rice, swales planted to multiple fruit and support trees, ground covers, neighboured by a future veggie garden (beds made but not fully planted) and a banana/papaya/coconut circle topped up with palm mulch.

Permit me to wax psychological on a cold, snowy, northern Minnesota Sunday afternoon..... ?   ;-)

In (a) you reveal the presence the "inner critical voice" that many of us share and which so often is assumed to have its origins in our own independent experiences.  But more typically that voice came from another....a parent/caregiver....in efforts to 'shame' you away from certain behaviors.  That now carries forward into your adult life where you will find many opportunities to shame yourself again over efforts to simply try something new.

Not content with fate providing the right situation to prove you correct in that shame, you take the worst time (b) to attempt to plant the rice, nudging your efforts towards failure so that you can actually feel justified in the self-depricating state.

As you begin to realize how the interplay between (a) and (b) can lead to overthinking and subsequent inertia (Analysis Paralysis), you begin to embrace the better, more realistic and fruitful idea that a balance between careful planning and diving in with the shovel (c) is an appropriate and time-tested response to problem solving.  Ultimately, your efforts lead to ....
(d)  the epic garden and forest that you have nurtured and soon will nurture you!

You join countless many on this road to permie realization and self-actualization.....  Glasses raised to all of us on that path! ('clink')

Are plums or other stone fruits found in your area?  May be worth checking for viruses since loquat is a close enough relative to other stone fruits and is known to become infected by plum pox virus, a virus transmitted by aphids and well known in southern Europe..  If you have knowledge of either a university or agricultural assistance office in your area, they may be helpful with a diagnosis of the disease in addition to, or beyond, the damage cause by the aphids alone.

Just a possibility depending on how much PV surface area we are talking about here and I realize this does not solve your problem of accessibility.  I have a single panel for charging an electric utility vehicle for the farmstead.  For the most part that vehicle in winter is charged in the garage using a standard plug-in charger.  But I've aldready determined that a good sunny day will drive pretty decent power through that panel in midwinter for recharging the vehicle.....**IF** it is clear of snow.  Just now not doing that since there is a few inches of crusted snow/ice covering ~40% of the panel.  This would melt off relatively quickly if we had some sun and the temps stayed above 10F for a long enough stretch, but the time of year is working against us.  Nevertheless, if I really needed that panel cleared, I probably would use a tarp draped over the panel and a space heater running underneath the tarp so the heat rose upward across and underneath the panel.  I've found that this usually loosens ice and snow to the point where you can remove it in chunks manually or teasing the pieces off with a long 2X4....the wood being more gentle on the PV surface.  Hoping this may offer some ideas.