As some of you already know I suffered a serious hand injury at the end of October. I was sharpening a shovel using far too much pressure on the file, lost control, and gashed my wrist open. I was wearing gloves for protection, but the shovel caught me just above them and severed 4 tendons and one of the 2 main nerves, narrowly missing one of the 2 main arteries.
John and Jesse were nearby and we got to the hospital right away. Luckily, I have health insurance and so won’t be gashed too badly financially on top of it. We were in the process of winding down construction for the year anyway so the timing, if it had to happen at all, isn’t terrible.
My doctor and hand therapist both tell me I’m recovering remarkably well. I’ve gotten a considerable amount of feeling back and my range of motion and strength is starting to return. I should be good to go when Spring rolls around.
Apart from that minor tragedy, John has moved into the new mini-cabin. He’s sealed it up better, but it looks like we should have dug deeper for the insulation barrier in the floor. We’ll fix that in our future cabins. Jesse was staying in the common house, but just departed for a month and half trip to Denver, Portland, and Seattle. I’m staying mostly with Jessica in Columbia, although I’m hoping to start transitioning back out to MC over the next several weeks.
It’s been an incredibly mild and sunny winter and the new solar array has been pumping out the power. Our peak power output last I checked was 847 watts from panels rated at only 800 watts. Normally you never even produce the rated watts for panels, but thanks to the reflected roof sunlight we’re probably making an extra ~25%.
We’ve started really planning and prioritizing for this coming year and have created a project breakdown to keep track of it. The big projects will be putting in a cistern for collecting rainwater, building a mini-duplex similar to the mini-cabin we built last year, building a shed with a root cellar in it, finishing the outside of the mini-cabin, and doing a lot of interior work on the common house. That ought to keep us busy.
All the while we’ll be maintaining the garden. I’ve done some planning and have put together a page of garden notes. It has on it all of the seeds we’ve ordered with pictures and descriptions. We’ll probably add a few more plants before it’s all said and done. On the same page I’ll record all the pertinent information on when and how much we plant, when and how much we harvest, and everything else noteworthy. I’m also going to record the rainfall and high and low temps in the garden.
We lost all of corn to raccoons last year, but this year we’re moving the tipi up into the garden and I’m going to spend the summer in it along with the dog. That along with the solar-powered radio playing predator noises during the day ought to minimize our pest problems as far as mammals and birds go.
Playing conservative talk radio seemed like the best bet, because it has the most yelling and angry sounding voices… and it’s just scary in general. However, I had the idea of making a long MP3 recording of the sounds of common predators in the area and having it loop. I’ll probably throw in some weird tiger roars and other foreign animal sounds too just to keep ‘em freaked out.
