Baby it's cold outside

 Ya'll know that winter is cold?

We got snow already! Sure, it was gone in two days, but it still lasted two days. That's longer than snow usually lasts in Tennessee, and it came a lot earlier than it normally would.

While this makes the humans happy, the dogs have mixed feelings on the subject:

It also turns out (and this shouldn't surprise anybody when I say it, but my dumb ass had to learn this the hard way) it's a hell of a lot harder to keep water warm when it's cold as balls outside.

So after completely failing to get a bath hot enough to wash comfortably, we realized we needed to insulate the tub, which is now adorable:

You know the saying--if it looks stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid. Head's up to anybody else who thinks bathing in the woods is a good idea (it is), you're gonna want to insulate your tub prior to November. You'll save a lot of wood for heating, and you'll save yourself the realization that you're a fuckin' moron.

On the upshot, we did get a new critter on camera--a bobcat this time:

Look at that big beautiful bastard. Gorgeous, isn't it? That's my favorite wildlife picture we've gotten since the bear came through.  It almost looks like a ghost because of the lighting, which I think is appropriate for a wild cat.

While I don't have a single photo of the events, Thanksgiving also went beautifully--cooked the whole meal over the fire, had the family come out and spend some time hanging out, and since we were outdoors the whole time and miles away from anybody we haven't already had contact with, we managed to be pretty responsible about it. 

On the whole, I think this photo sums up November 2020 on the Shackleford homestead:

If you give a mouse a cookie

So now that we have internet... what's next?

This is more of a question than you'd expect, because the internet is a 3/4 mile hike away from our cabin.  Even direct line-of-sight, it's a quarter mile away and up a big ass damn hill.

Plus, now the same place that has internet has a ton of electricity--with four hundred watts of juice, we can charge batteries and phones and tablets and laptops, but what are we going to do? Just sit in the grass while we wait?

Hell naw. Enter, "Cafe Telco".  The shack formerly known as Telco Shack has a whole new lease on life.  Check this bitch out:

Bam! Suck on my creature comforts.

See, Mrs. Shackleford sent me a text one day saying "Murphy TV?" and I said "...you're a genius", and she said "shut up and get to building, scrub."

So that cabinet holds a TV, propane stove, some basic niceties like coffee and tea, and has a chalkboard for the front.

Whole thing folds down to make a nice-sized table (it's 32" by 40") and it's plenty level and sturdy.

Now, when we're working or charging something, we can relax, like Mrs. S and the puppies here:

This development pleases the dogs:

We also upgraded the batteries in Cafe Telco, to a pair of big-ass 100 amp batteries:

And things are trucking along nicely:

Make power go

 Alright, so we can get internet, but we have to have someplace to put internet.

Problem is, the internet is only physically available in the furthest possible place on our land away from where we spend our time.  

But it's really good internet (better than we have in the city, in fact).

Enter, Cafe Telco, nee Telco Shack:

Doesn't have to be anything fancy--it's just to hold some batteries and a router and a few other pieces of miscellany.  So the weekend of Halloween, Mrs. Shackleford and I loaded up a bunch of plywood and 2x4s in the truck and drove out to the homestead to put up a 4x8 shack. 

Luckily, something small like this goes together quickly, so in the first day I was able to get the shack built out, and then had the second day to wire it up:

Those solar panels there are 100 watts each, at 12v.  They're joined in series and parallel to bring them up to 24v total, like this:

This isn't my first solar setup, so I was feeling pretty confident about the design. The 24v charge controller that I got will let me run up to 40 amps through it, and since each of those panels can only do 100 watts maximum, that means they're going to max out at about 8 amps, so the idea behind running the panels this way is that I'm currently at half my maximum input, and I can add another two pairs of panels before I max out my charge controller.

Obviously, because I was feeling pretty confident, I had to fuck up on the batteries.

When I was first setting this up, I just had two little 35 amp batteries--those little black fellas there.  I think they're golf cart batteries, actually.

Problem is, I've set up a BUNCH of 12v solar systems, and this was my first time doing a 24v system, so let me show you first what I needed to do.  This is pretty simple:

Right? Nothing fancy, just a simple series circuit with my two batteries. 

Here's what my dumb-ass did because I was in autopilot and wasn't thinking while I worked:

Whoops! That's a bomb.

So after briefly melting one of the battery terminals all to shit--see the end-result below--I corrected my mistake and radioed Mrs. Shackleford to have a good laugh about how I nearly done blowed myself up. 

See that melted terminal in the back, kids? If you ever want to discover how quickly you can move, just accidentally make an explosive arc-welder while miles away from any possibility of help or rescue. 

Good news is that nobody was hurt except for my pride (and possibly my retinas), and the Telco Shack was born. 

The next weekend, the co-op sent out a technician who did a bang-up job wiring the Telco Shack with gigabit fiber!

Hot diggity, we can work from the woods now!