New Moose, New Shed, New Year

New Moose

New roof for the shed

Something that was a big priority and needed to be done was a rebuild of the shed.  The metal panels that were used for the roof had just too many holes and places for water to seep in.  After trying numerous times to patch the leaks my son Jeff and I completely rebuilt the roof.  Not only did we replace the metal with plywood and shingles, we raised the roof a couple of feet to provide a better angle for the water to run off.

One of the benefits I didn't foresee was how much this would positively impact the storage space inside the shed.  Now the extra bee equipment and spare hives are easily accessible and in a nice dry place.  I also added windows for more natural lighting inside the shed.

New Shed for the Bee Farm

Finally during the long new year weekend Yvonne and I decided to bring our Moose (Bob) out to the Beefarm and let him watch over the vegetable gardens.   Bob was temporarily needing a new spot and the Beefarm was needing a moose so it worked out nicely.

Moose and new Window

We also had some cool looking lexan designer pieces that were leftover from a job site and we plucked from the trash.  They were perfect as a unique molding to surround the new window on the shed that my neighbor gave me.  And one last benefit of the shed rebuild is the better mounting and angle of the solar panel array.  We have more power than we'll probably ever need.

better angle and mounting of solar panel array

Garden is going strong and even though my hard lessons keep on coming, Yvonne and I actually shared (one) delicious strawberry this week.  We also had fresh green beans and eggplant which were also delicious.  Tomatoes should be turning red in the next week or so.

Garden

House is finally complete

When we purchased this property there was a small house in pretty sad shape.  Our goal was to completely redo it and transform it into a nice home that we could rent.  As in all projects this one turned out to be much more work and expense than we expected.  So most of my energy has been poured into this project leaving little time to develop the mini farm I envisioned. 

Just around Christmas we were approached by a neighbor who knew someone needing a place to rent.  And they wanted to be in by January 1st so we had to really work to finish up the million little projects that needed to be done.  New Years eve we finished up and now have a signed lease on the house.  Which means we can get back to developing our mini bee farm.

The bee farm has a solar powered shed that sits in the middle of the lot in an area that gets lots of sun.  The solar system consists of four 100 watt panels, a 5000/10000 inverter, MPPT controller and several AGM batteries that were fried last week when I tried running a plasma cutter on the solar system.  Earlier this week I noticed the solar wasn't working and found a puddle of something under one of the batteries.  Bad news for sure.  There were several factors that caused their demise so this turned into one of those learning experiences.

The good news is I found the most amazing deal on a top of the line bank of 4  almost brand new AGM batteries.  The catch was we had to drive to Orlando to pick them up but the price and quality was well worth the drive.  Plus we were able to try a new (excellent) vegetarian restaurant in Orlando called the Dandelion cafe.  The new battery bank boosts the battery power to 460 ah from our old batteries @ 220 ah.  What this means is we will have plenty of power to spare and can power almost anything (except a plasma cutter) we need.

Tomorrow I'll install the new batteries and will finally be able to focus all my time into building bee hives and working on gardening.