On Tuesday morning I was up at 5:15AM and got my post up. When 7:30AM rolled around, I wasn’t feeling up to going to the Small garden. One project I had never finished a long time back was updating the medical emergency cards I keep in both cars and on the fridge.
I had also received my placard for handicap parking but they hadn’t laminated it this time. Sigh… I have a laminator so I got busy. It took a long time to update the cards and my handout for doctors. There was a lot of room left on the sheet for the placard, so I found my business card stock and printed out more business cards.
Years ago when I had the farm stand, I started laminating the cards because the dew ruined them. Now when I have room on a sheet, I make more.
It took nearly until the time my helper friend would arrive to finish it.
When he arrived, I got ready and we headed out to clean out the garden shed. We took out all the stuff that would hamper getting the covers into the very back. Once they were stacked back there, we put things back in neatly.
Next I went out with the big basket and filled it with tomatoes and peppers to ripen inside. He had picked all the squash that was ready and picked up all the apple drops.
We took all the ripe tomatoes and peppers off the windowsill and started putting the ones to ripen on. We quickly ran out of room, so I moved plants off the windowsill extensions and put the extras there.
Then we washed up and cored the tomatoes to freeze, and he cut the peppers in half and seeded them. They went down in the cubby in the meat freezer.
Then he took the apples down to the root cellar.
He had chores to do and errands to run, including taking squash to the Survival center. When he had gone I made more kefir cheese.
I made garlic, Parmesan, and lemon juice for flavor this time.
Once that was done, I got some lunch and sat down to rest a while. When he got back he ran the vacuum round and then I had to get a shower and I headed out to the dentist.
I was back late afternoon and in the mail I got the electric bill. It was the one with the first of the heat pump usages on it. I’ve currently only acquired an $80 credit.
So over the years, I’ve kept a running comparison of generation vs usage vs credits. I spent a good amount of time on Tuesday night looking into this.
It’s pretty obvious that the production pre-inverters failure in 2022 is far higher than it has been since. The first inverter failed in January of 2023 and was finally back online by February 2024. The second inverter failed in July 2025 and it took until the end of November 2025 to be replaced.
Since then, I’ve been paying electric bills as I had no credit saved from 2025. And as I now have 2 new inverters, one would think I’d be generating the type of credit I was in 2022.
But instead of the $630 credit I had by August 2022, I only have $80.91. That’s not going to go very far with Christmas lights and plant lights next spring.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this. If they come out, I know they are going to say they are running fine, or the weather, etc.
There’s also the issue of the smart meter that was installed mid February this year.
The usage always spikes in November (Christmas lights) into January and then again in March (plant lights) until the end of May. But nothing else has changed, same people live here and do the same things. No new computers, etc.
They say you should change what you do and when you do it. But I’m not charging an electric car, and I’ve done laundry on Mondays for decades. There’s not much else that draws a lot.
I don’t even have 5 freezers running like I did in 2022. So this is pretty worrisome. I’m going to have to do some research on what people have been successful in doing about this.
I spoke with Tom about the prepping for the cider pressing and he noted that the forecast is for rain on Sunday. So an idea is to bring the press inside to the kitchen, on the stone entryway, and do it there. Or put up a canopy outside. Either way, there’s going to be a mess… We’ll work on finessing this plan as the week moves on.
He beat me to it…
I finally got to bed around 9PM. It was to be another cool night so the house was shut up.
On Wednesday my #2 intern is coming and we are going to pick up 2 boxes of apple drops to use for the cider pressing on Sunday. They need to be washed and stored in the cellar, protected from mice. I’ll have to figure out that part.
I haven’t anything else planned besides working on the electric stats, so I can know what I am talking about.
