Drying Persimmons

We've now made bug screen tubes for the persimmons, and I suddenly came up with the idea to put hooks on the rafters on the front of the house.  It's funny how ideas seem to come out of nowhere, and seem so obvious once you have them.

War of the Rodents

So, here's some of the weird damage some sort of rodent is doing in our garden.  These are tomatoes that have been eaten while still on the vine, leaving just the skin still attached. 

Weird, right?  Here you can see one that's not quite ripe yet, so it hasn't been a victim, like the one behind it: 

what else is weird is these aren't down by the ground, they're about 5 or 6 feet up.  

This motivates me to continue my assault on all things rodent. I'm happy to report that I got my 4th mole today, which is in addition to my twenty one (21!) gophers in 2016.   Here's a product endorsement: http://cinchtraps.com/

charged up about the new system

The solar trailer is no more!  Finally, the batteries, that we've had for 10 solid years, had had enough. So I got around to building a new way to hold all that extra power generation stuff.  A little box behind the house:

it was a nice little puzzle to work out how to get the inverter, charge controller, fuses and connections into a tight spot without causing other problems (like overheating):

Just 4 6 volts all in one series to make a 24 volt system that works with the old inverter.  Powering the chest freezer now!