Good morning!!!!

[sseelhoff]

33F as the sun goes down. Mid-teens tonight. It didn't turn sunny until late afternoon and not a great outside day all in all, stayed below 40F.

I fired up the stove this morning too. I will fire it again this evening probably.

Sharon and Sira are at a dog show this weekend. Sharon called this afternoon all excited because Sira took Best Of Opposite. Best of Show almost always goes to a male dog, just the way it is. So, it was a nice day for the girls of the family. I thought Sira would do well. She is in pretty good form now that she has had her last growth at 3+ years old. Took a while for her body to catch up with her muzzle size following her previous growth spurt.

Congrats! What breed of dog?

 

[dave1949]

Congrats! What breed of dog?

Thanks. Sira is a Leonberger. The show is the Northeast Regional Leonberger Club Spring Fling, so it's only Leonberger dogs shown. The members do a good bit of socializing too, group dinner, training clinics, a carting (drafting) test and Sharon is giving a demo on Rally Obedience.

Here is a beginning Rally youtube. The next level is to do the course off-leash. The signs on the floor give directions of what to do at each. The course is not fixed, the judge selects the signs and sequence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZPgPpOwJo8

Spring Fling Registration 2015

 

[deerseeker001]

Great Job,Congrats.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Spread the mushroom compost and gave it an initial tilling in. Pee U. This stuff reeks of manure. Fortunately, the wind is not blowing it towards our home. When I was there to get it, there was a semi dropping off a big load of rectangular hay bales. It looked quite stemmy. Not sure what it was, but I know they mix it into their compost pile.

Does anyone know where to get cotton seed meal in bulk? I will ask this on the Texas thread also.

 

[Eric Salop]

Good morning.

They played around with our clocks last night to adjust for summer. Neither me nor dog intended to change the time of our morning routine, however my "smart phone" alarm clock had different ideas and insisted we should now get up in the dark again. Dog wasn't impressed with my explanation on why I had got up so early on such a wet day.

I'm putting in a 6v (tiny) solar panel to maintain a charge to keep my 1947 Farmall's 6V battery charged. The meter says it putting out 10.3V.

Larger solar panels that put out a good few watts would need a regulator to limit the voltage. Your tiny panel may well be ok without. Panels give out a much higher voltage than normal if you are measuring the output when it is open circuit, so 10.3V wouldn't be unusual. Once it's connected to a battery it will drop. Most lead acid batteries like to be float charged (also called trickle charged) around 2.25-2.30 V per cell and if you don't exceed this they can be left on charge all the time. 6V batteries are made up of 3 cells, so that's 6.75 to 6.90V.

The maximum voltage when a battery is on long term charge also depends on the temperature of the battery. You can check with the manufacturer's data sheet, but a rough guide would be to not leave it on at higher than :-

2.3 V per cell at 25 C
2.29 at 30 C
2.27 at 40 C
2.25 at 50 C

Any higher will reduce the life and produce gas, and no one likes too much gas.

If your tiny panel was sold as a battery charger it should already have internally a series connected diode. Without the diode it would suck out current from the battery during the night.

 

[daugen]

good morning all. A chilly 27 degrees, I can hear my tulips shivering...going up to 50 today in clear weather.
Not much planned; if it's warm out this afternoon in the sun I might go out and plant some of the bulbs I bought.
I was instructed to soak the anenome bulbs and I took one out to inspect. Too funny. So I checked the next one. Almost as funny. Have a lot of caladium bulbs but too cold out to plant; they were insistent the ground get to 65 degrees. That might be a while, May I guess.

my memory of hay in PA was that the largest rectangular bales were the low grade hay headed for mushroom compost duty. Almost everyone else had converted to round balers in our area, though I'm sure further West in the Amish and Mennonite country the farmers who use balers are likely to be using ancient square balers and doing everything by hand.
the smaller rectangular bales were usually high quality hay headed for horses.

and as for Spring....

The years at the spring


And days at the morn;


Mornings at seven;


The hillsides dew-pearled;


The larks on the wing;


The snails on the thorn;


Gods in His heaven -
Alls right with the world!
~

Robert Browning

 

[Eric Salop]

Is there a British version of "redneck"? One electrician working on my house said he was proud to be a redneck. Ok.

Can't off the top of my head think of a direct English equivalent of Redneck, it's a term we know from TV and films. I thought a Redneck is someone who lives away from cities and does things without worrying too much what the law says. Sometimes with a tendency to use more force than brainpower and occasionally with banjos playing in the background. Have I got that right ?

 

[wngsprd]

24 wishing it was 70, but only getting up to 50. Well, I got the woodstove loaded and the coffee made, but put off feeding the birds until a little bit of dawn lights the sky and warms the bones.

How's waking up to plant **** and poetry in the same thread!

Eric - good info on the solar charger.

 

[Thomas]

10F clear sky high might reach 40...might.
Inside puttering this morning,warms up this afternoon remove plow and frame from tractor,try scoop gravel from snow banks.
Watch couple laps or so of the race,see Mrs. needs hand..than again might not be good idea.

Enjoy the day all.

 

[RoyJackson]

Can't off the top of my head think of a direct English equivalent of Redneck, it's a term we know from TV and films. I thought a Redneck is someone who lives away from cities and does things without worrying too much what the law says. Sometimes with a tendency to use more force than brainpower and occasionally with banjos playing in the background. Have I got that right ?

That's the stereotype...and there's some reality behind that stereotype.