Aside to the usual political climate that we all have to endure on a daily bases, we did manage to get a few major projects seen to their final completion. Sharon is finally out from under the constant and expensive stress of the farm property she shared ownership with her two younger brothers. I guess each and every family has its differences. Sad to see families torn apart over money and lawyers.
I completed my projects of house painting, new gutter installation and window screen replacement. Sharon and I are really happy with our color selection. It really blends in with the surrounding wheat land scenery. The new gutters work wornderful! I used to have an issue with our North deck. Water run-off would splatter onto the deck and the side of house. In winter, this was a major problem when huge icecycles would form. The new gutters cured that problem. Now, during rain storms, I can capture rain water easily for our house plants. *smile* I've yet to install new gutters on West half of house. There are no decks there to be concerned with so decided to wait until next year to get those completed. I would like to setup a rain barrel to capture rain water for house plants and garden. How to accomplish this has been rattling around in my head ever since completing the first gutters.
The other major project has been wanting to replace the shingles on our roof. They haven't been replaced since our home was manufactured in 1999, they were showing severe signs of cracking. We've been wanting to get this done for the last few years. Originally, I was going to do the work myself. However, I strained my left shoulder last Spring while raking driveway gravel off the grass which happens when I plow snow off the driveway. I found a roofing company that was available and willing to start right away. Past years, all roofing companies were booked through to Winter months. No way would I replace roofing during Winter months. All said and done, we now have our old roofing replaced.
Sharon and I have discussed many times that we need to get a whole-house backup power generator installed due to the times our power has been out for 24 hours. Rural power lines are not the best maintained power lines and ours are no exception. Then there are the farmers and their equipment that tear lines down and that is exactly what happened to us this year. Farm equipment going down the highway snagged our power line that crosses the highway and tore the line and power box completely off our power pole.
That incident should have pushed us off the fence to install a gen-set, but it didn't. However, recent news reports about morons shooting up power sub-stations in the Northwest, did. I ordered a 24kw propane powered Generac gen-set from Northern Tool Co. It is scheduled to arrive Tuesday, December 27th. We will be installing a 250 or 300 gallon propane tank dedicated to the new generator. This has been long in the planning and will finally remove most of the concern regarding power failures.
Last year, I researched going solar power. I discovered manufactured homes do not have the necessary support for installing solar panels. Our solar panels would have to be ground mounted which increased the cost factor. Ground mounting would have been my prefered mounting method anyway. However, Sharon and I finally decided that with the few years left of our lives, solar would not be a practical move to make financially. $70,000 buys a lot of electricity. *smile*
That's pretty much what went on this year. Our health has been the usual acks and pains. Sharon's Parkinsons has caused more memory issues, but not as severe as it could be. It still upsets her not being able to get the words out like she used to, however; that's fewer tongue lashing I receive now. *chuckling*
The last thing to share is wind turbines! If you go back to my entry back in 2009, I mentioned wind mills or turbine farm was being install North of us back then. Well, all those are now ALL being removed and replaced with all brand new and much larger wind turbines. Our highway has been a constant stream of cars, pickups as well as trucks carrying tower sections, generator housings along with 165ft long turbine blades for the last two months. I have security cameras all over the property and each time a vehicle passes on the highway, it trips at least two cameras, and sometimes four.
Sharon and I decided to count vehicles one morning. We counted over 60 worker rigs going up the road starting at 4am and streaming until 6am. There were about a third or less going back down during lunch hour, then 60 return in the evening passing the next shift going up. This occurs daily! This does not include trucks carrying freight, fuel, turbine housings, tower sections, turbine blades, cement trucks, garbage trucks as well as trucks carrying away all the old turbine pieces and parts during daylight hours. The old turbine blades and towers were cut up into four pieces to fit on standard 40ft flat bed trailers. I suspect it will be YEARS, if ever before the county completely resurfaces our highway from the massive impact of all this traffic. You can be sure the Planning Commission has secured the funds before approving the project!
What was most irritating about all this wind turbine replacement activity, Umatilla County failed to notify us with information that we should expect a great amount of increased traffic on our county highway. This failure to NOTIFY, resulted in us losing our beautiful Black Maine Coon cat as it unfortunately got hit by the HUGH increase in traffic on Gerking Flat road before we realized what was going on. Notification would have given us a heads up to keep closer eye on our cat's activity.
I often wonder if there is any accounting taking place by these "Go Green" implementors and supporters as to the amount of fossil energy going into the engineering, creation, manufacturing, transporting, site construction, assembly, maintenence and ultimate disposal of these wind turbines. The old wind turbine farm has only been operational from 2009 to 2022, a short 13 years. The huge amount of "gross fossil energy", then and now, necessary to bring these wind turbines into existance, I can hardly believe wind turbine energy creation will EVER be a net gain over eliminating the use of fossil energy. I suspect "making money" throughout the wind turbine process is the real goal here as EVERYONE throughout the full cycle, gets a cut. *smile*
So with that, Sharon and I wish you and yours a safe and very Merry Christmas and 2023 New Year.
With that, I'll bid you a wonderful 2022... here we go! ( smile )