Pretty mild winter. Got a little XC skiing in, some rest. Pruned apple trees, fixed broken machines. And then the snow disappeared. I feel like if we get another winter like this we'll lose our New Englander street cred.
The big technological upgrade this winter was to improve veggie storage efficiency! See those little black boxes on the side of the junction box? Those are SPDT relays, the hero of this little story.
The walk in cooler has two circuits, one for the compressor, one for the pair of fans on the evaporator. Now normally the fans inside on the evaporator run full tilt 24/7. So you walk into this cooler and are just being blasted by fans. That means the veggies are being blasted by fans too, the fans use electricity, they generate heat, and then when the temperature goes up, the compressor turns on to make it cold again, using even more energy. This happens even when the outside temperature is 35 degrees. At that point, this thing should use no electricity at all! But it does because of those stupid fans on all the time.
Relays to the rescue! For the curious electricians out there you'll have to zoom in on my DIY schematic below. I built a second circuit in there that tells the fans to shut down once the setpoint has been reached, all while keeping the compressor circuit and fan circuit electrically isolated . Ah marvelous you say, but don't New England winters normally drop below 32 degrees? Indeed they do, so in comes a 2nd thermostat, if the temperature goes below 32 the fans kick on, as well as an outlet to a space heater. Then the temp goes up to 34 and everything turns off again. Well thats nice you say, don't they have these sort of options already available? Yep, but not for $20! And I designed it myself so I'm proud. I'll see if I can post the how-to on FarmHack.
I suppose a root cellar would save even more energy, so if anyone wants to loan me a backhoe I'll work on that.
Started irrigating the hoophouses. They get awfully dry in there over the winter. It will take a few days of sprinklers to really get the ground ready for spring greens.
But the rosemary overwintered just fine.
While I was doing some weeding Iggy (the stuffed chameleon) took a dust bath.
