08:15 – It was 51.9F (11C) when I took Colin out around 0645 this morning, sunny and clear.
Colin and I had scrambled eggs and fried Treet for dinner last night. Barbara is due back from Winston this morning. Unfortunately, she brought back a cold with her from Campbell Folk School, and now I have it.
Herschel from Shaw Brothers is downstairs doing a final check on the plumbing before the drop-ceiling installers arrive later today. I asked him in passing about septic tank care, and mentioned that we’d been flushing Rid-X down the toilet periodically. He suggested that instead of Rid-X we just flush a packet of baker’s yeast once a month, which he says works as well or better than Rid-X and is much cheaper.
Last night, Colin and I watched An American Homestead videos on YouTube on the Roku. They’ve been doing this for five years, and have something over 300 videos posted. Sometimes, they make me cringe. One of the videos I watched last night showed them all drinking “natural organic milk”, which is to say raw milk. They claim–not only without scientific basis but in opposition to all of the scientific data–that raw milk is not only safe to drink but is actually better for you than that nasty homogenized, pasteurized modern milk. Yeah, right. Raw milk is an excellent culture medium for bacteria, and they’re not milking cows under aseptic conditions. I hope for their sake there’re no tuberculosis bacteria floating around their farm. The coliforms are bad enough.
I also question some of their other decisions. For example, last night I watched a video where they were discussing plans to install a solar power set up to keep the water tank filled that they use to feed their aquaponics system and water their garden. That’s fine, but they planned to install the solar panels, a charge controller, deep-cycle batteries, and an inverter. Why?
The tank holds sufficient water to carry them for weeks. Why not just install the solar panels and connect them directly to a 12V pump? Let the pump run when there’s sun on the panels. They don’t need the batteries unless they need to store that power, which they don’t. They don’t need the inverter, with all of the conversion losses, when they could just use 12V directly to drive the pump.
But overall, it’s a very interesting series of videos. I’m partway through season two, with season three remaining.