2013 SOLSTICE

      As we approach the solstice each year the morning and afternoon sun comes in our North windows a lot.  If I'm home and in the house I try to keep up on closing the windows and drapes to keep the house cool.  For the most part I manage to keep it cooler in the house than outside until the afternoon breeze comes up around 3:00.  At that time I open the windows except on the west where the setting sun is starting to creep under the wide eaves of our house.  In this way we are well satisfied with living without insulation or air conditioning.  In fact, adding more solar panels to the south facing roof has helped block some of the sun's heat from our house so management has gotten easier.  Also I reframed and reroofed the front porch in a way that increased coverage a little, also helping shade windows.
    Last entry I mentioned my "fruit and root" salad and today a friend sent a weight loss product ad that reminded me of it.  Here is my response:

So you think I need to lose weight?

Yes, I did need to lose weight 9 months ago.  About mid September our Pomelo ripened its first fruit and yesterday I picked the last of the season's pomelo.  We've always noticed that we lose some weight while we are eating pomelo but this season we have coupled them with another weight control food, Yacon root, which contains a non-digestible form of sugar.  Throughout the last 9 months I've nearly always had a "fruit and root" salad in the refrigerator consisting of about equal parts of pomelo, banana, papaya and yacon root.  I find it very refreshing and I don't have any trouble keeping within my healthy weight range when it is available.

The photo to the right is of fruits of the day, clockwise from the bowl; sweet 100 tomatoes, papaya, one banana, more sweet 100, one Celebrity tomato, one avocado, half of a yacon, and half of a pomelo.

     The above reminds me again of how much I love the long seasons of our fruit in the yard.  Here I never need to rush to get ready for the next planting season or the harvest or the preservation because the seasons are so long and there is always fresh fruit and vegetables in the garden.  Of course we still buy our favorites sometimes when they are not in our garden but it is nice to know we could get by without them.  We tend to have more surplus bananas this year and I continue to dehydrate them for shipping to friends and family but as the USPS has raised prices again, I may do less of that.  Let me know if they are really appreciated.
By the way, it looks better and better for our coming avocado crop to be our best ever even though one tree has none.  I just picked the first one and it was early March when I picked the last of our winter variety.

At this stage the sweet 100s (four plants) are 11' tall.

Vanilla orchid with flower above the cluster and young beans hanging below.
 I hand pollinate the flowers of the day whenever I think of it so I am getting about 60% bean set. 

Our house as seen from the highway 

From the front, sweet potato, pineapple, taro, papaya. sweet 100 tomatoes 

Our little weekly flash market, which is only open from 4-5:30 each  Tuesday has
grown to about 140 people and offers a wider variety of produce, dairy products and
 prepared food than it started with.

   Our new addition to the PV array on the roof and the original units are now being tracked online via an "Envoy" device that tells me the daily, weekly and to date totals of production for both the whole array and for each individual panel.  This will allow us to know if at any time in the future a specific panel or, more likely, Emphase mini inverter goes bad.  This morning it is 8:45a.m., we've generated almost one kilowatt on this very cloudy day, and the individual panels range from 59-70 watts output out of their peak of 240 watts. We get peak output around 6 hours if it is clear skies.
Here all our lights are compact fluorescent or LED, our hot water is solar, we need no heating or AC so how we cook our food is a more significant part of our energy bill than for most people so I was interested to read recently about magnetic induction cooking.  Complete ranges are available but VERY expensive however some of the countertop induction cookers start about $59 on Amazon.  They do not themselves get hot but work by fluxing a magnetic field in ferrous cookware.  We decided to try the NESCO 1800 watt unit.  Our main frying pan is cast iron and when I checked our stainless steel pots and pans with a magnet I discovered over half are the magnetic variety.  This cooking method is supposed to use about 1/4 the electricity.  I'll report in the future how we like it.

I forgot to mention in the last entry that we put down a new floor and painted the ceilings in the guest house.  Those of you who have stayed there know it needed it.  Our next scheduled guest isn't till the last two weeks of November so I hope to see a couple of you before then!

Aloha!