Originally Posted: 2020-02-09

Another week another snow storm! The storm brought with it the usual preparation time, as well as time to do some crafts, work on solar power problems, feed some hungry forest friends and watch a beautiful full moon two nights in a row. The thumbnail for this post shows the moon setting about 30 minutes before sunrise today. The sky was very bright all night and I took lots of pictures.

full moon near daylight
Full moon just before sunrise

I spent another day preparing for the snow and cleaning it up. Fortunately everyone was able to get out here for the weekend to visit safely. The biggest issue this storm brought was very dark days and little charging from the panels.

Normally a couple of days without great charging is not an issue I simply put the generator on and use the battery charger while running the house directly off the generator. A couple of hours of that and I’m good for the day. However as luck would have it the generator with the automatic voltage regulator stopped working and appears to have caused the charger to fail as well. Fortunately I still had my big generator and a standard car battery charger. The primary difference is instead of charging at 100 AMPS, the car one charges at 10 AMPS and just for fun, this snowstorm brought with it the coldest two days of the winter. I cranked up the wood stove, ran the generator for 9 hours and put a little bit extra charge on the batteries from the 10 AMP charger.

All worked out in the end and then we had two beautiful cold sunny days. The batteries are back up to where they need to be and no need to use the generator. I have a new charge controller on the way and tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do with the generator that is barely a year old and under warranty.

The rest of the week was simply wonderful! I gave my neighbour a hand cutting down a few cedar trees, which he will sell but cuts them now so the hungry deer can eat the leaves. He has been feeding our forest friends for years. I wrote a separate post about this called “Feeding Hungry Forest Friends“.

During the snowstorm I made some soaps, I tried making two kinds:

  • Honey scented soap, and
  • Coffee soap with honey scent.

The honey scented soaps worked out great and I’ve added them to my winter craft sales bin. The coffee soap is definitely grittier and not be used on delicate parts however greasy hands and rough skin the soap worked wonderfully. I tried washing with the honey soap mentioned above and it still smells a little bit like coffee. I also tried making a candle out of coffee and soy wax. When it dried it looked just like “cookies and cream” chocolate bar but alas you don’t smell the coffee when it burns, but it looks cool. I am on the fence whether I sell this at the craft fair. I have put the information about making candles in a separate Candle and Soap Making post.

Have a great week everyone!

By Barry