Cloudy brush cutting

The sun decided to start its winter hibernation a bit early. We've had a rather cloudy October. Solar production will be over 100 kw/hrs less than last October. We got a few breaks of sun today. Regardless of our level of sunlight, the brush cutter can do its job. This photo shows a typical spot for some good work. There are a lot of young hardwoods and conifers in this photo. Much of this will have to go for the good of the desirable trees. All of the green here, which is balsam fir, will get wacked. Even some of the hardwoods, including a few paper birch, will go. Mother Nature allows way more trees to grow in cleared areas than can survive while also not creating too much competition among saplings. With fewer youngsters in a given area, the survivors will grow faster. Note the paper birch on the right side of the photo. It has already transitioned to the mature shiny white peeling bark. Most others in the picture are still have the brownish hue of their first few years.

Yellow birch takes on so many interesting shapes. This tree decided to create four trunks from the stout single trunk attached to the ground. A great many yellow birch are present in this area of the property.

Demand destruction

Sorry for the ominous title to this post. Actually "demand destruction" is a good thing. In the energy conservation world, the concept means the elimination of need for electricity from power companies. We've taken another step in that direction with the installation of our new heat pump hot water heater, pictured below. Thanks to our solar energy, we've only used about 3.8 kw/hrs of electricity per day from the grid for the last 17 months. The new water heater should save us close to our average daily grid usage by taking heat from the surrounding air to decrease the need for electricity. The room stays warm during heating season especially since our wood stove stack lets off lots of heat only 1 foot from the water heater.

Friday morning walk

Wow. The first week of October always ends up lovely for us. This collage of pics celebrates fall foliage between the lines of Frost's "In Hardwood Groves." The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above

To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade,

They must go down past things coming up. They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.

However it is in some other world I know that this is way in ours.

Future oak groves

The really big red oak southwest of the house had a banner year for acorn production. This group of acorns was picked in about 15 minutes today. With acorns picked earlier in September, we plan on May mass plantings for future oak groves in several spots. These acorns will soon go in the fridge for a few months for stratification purposes, required of red oak acorns.

First fire

We started a fire less than 30 minutes ago. This gets the burning season going three days earlier than last year. All that hard work over the spring and summah is worth it just feeling the heat from this first fire. A frost advisory starts at 1 a.m. tomorrow, but WHO CARES?

8 megawatt hours

We've had a sunny start to September! Our panels surpassed 8 megawatt hours of total production yesterday. Clouds and storms today, but three more consecutive days of good production seem likely starting tomorrow. Overall, the panels continue to produce more than 80% of our electricity (about 82.1% to be more exact). Cooler temps tomorrow, as well as the return of the sun. A fair amount of yellow is evident on birch leaves. Lots of trees haven't turned at all yet, but the biggest sign of autumn continues to show itself.

Two forms of Red Maple

Some of our red maples are starting to turn. Autumn isn't far!

Here's red maple in a different form: 49 pieces of the big blow down that were moved closer to the splitting pile since Sunday.