Long distance running

I've never been a long distance runner.  I mean it's just something that's not right, although apparently the development of the ability to run a long way was a key event in our evolution.

I imagine that if you are running a long race, one of the important things is not to worry too much about how you are doing.  So I'm not too worried that for the last 20 days or so have been dominated by incredibly light or easterly winds.  The turbine is sited in a place which means it suffers from wind shadows when the wind is roughly easterly.  Not to worry.  When the wind drops as it has this week rush out and have a BBQ in glorious sunniness, and when it picks up again, as it has done now - wrap up against the blizzard and watch the turbine spin baby spin.

Caution: Hero at work

Last time Mike visited, in August, we built a goat shed.

This time he was here for - ooh almost 6 days - and we hung a gate, raised a fence about 4 ft to stop the goats attacking the willow and breaking through to the fruit trees, built a greenhouse out of old doors and converted the old oil tank into a tool shed.

Way to Go!

40 days.....

There is a long standing significance to 40 days - as this superb piece of complete nonsense utterly fails to explain. Wikipedia is more comprehensible and asserts that:

"The planet Venus forms a pentagram in the night sky every eight years with it returning to its original point every 40 years with a 40 day regression (some scholars believe that this ancient information was the basis for the number 40 becoming sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims)"

Quite a lot can happen in forty days. For example in the last forty days we had three power cuts, two of them deliberately instigated by Scottish and Southern Electricity (The "Hydro" of ancient Scottish mythology), and the casing was blown off the wind turbine putting it out of action for two days. And a whole lot more besides.

Here are the two graphs you've been waiting for showing the performance of the evance r9000 over the first 40 days...

The First 40 days shows clearly that the turbine, despite the power cuts and being taken off line, is performing almost bang on target. I think on the whole I would have preferred it to be more above target - this monitoring period being in winter and with summer's dead calm balmy days to come I would expect the blue area to dip below the purple. I would then expect the shortfall to be made up in the winter.

The line graph is more interesting. One day I'll explain it - but just now I've got to walk the dog.

oh all right then

When is this party?

Ok - so it's winter and its been windy and I mustn't get carried away and staring at spreadsheets will make you go blind and all that. BUT - the purple area is the required output to meet our party date - the blue bit shows how much the turbine is over-performing. At this rate the party will be March 28 2016. But don't change yer plans just yet.... it gets less windy in summer so that blue bit should shrink. But then again the turbine was switched off for 14 hours this week.

I promise not to do another graph until the month is out!

Actually - I've just realised that I need to re-do the graph as 'actual income' vs 'projected income' cos 'income' is not a direct conversion of power output cos 'income' is higher for the first roughly 21kWh of energy generated. Oh god I guess I'd better explain this.

Based on the amassed evidence of one electricity bill, our house uses about 21kWh per day. For those first 21 kWh I've allowed an additional 'income' of 11.66p pkWh. Of course this isn't really income - it's non-expenditure - but it has the same bottom line effect as income.

If I'd paid more attention at school maths when we did this stuff - rather than daring each other to climb out of the window when teacher wasn't looking (I did very well at this - but was beaten by a pal who managed to climb out of our window and in through the window of another classroom (while a class was on in there too), steal a fire extinguisher, climb out of the window and then walk in through the door of our class and announcing to the teacher that he was checking that all classrooms had a fire extinguisher and sitting down again. Teacher looked perplexed but couldn't work out what had happened - if I'd paid more attention I'd be able to confidently express this as a formula. Instead I'll have to make it up:

income = total energy generated x FiTs + (total power generated/2) x export tariff + 21 kWh x 11.66

So there.

Anyway - revised graph may follow - only i'm losing the will to live - how about you?

Party Invite - 28th December 2017

Sub-Title: The joy of spreadsheets

Sub-sub-title:- the irrelevance of spreadsheets

Sub-sub-sub-sub-title:- about bloody time too.

And other subsub-titles but I think you get the point.

It started almost as soon as we moved here - trying to find a wind turbine installer to survey the croft and offer us a quote. We'd succeeded in this part of the exercise in under a year - rapid progress as we now know.

Then there were long delays as we tried to get a grant from SRDP to help pay for the installation - we failed in this but things have moved on and the Feed In Tariff make the installation of renewable energy better value without public funding support.

Further delays ensued while we gnawed on our knuckles over the cost of the house renovations and the cost of getting the dairy etc prepared for the cheese making. There's been a number of big compromises here on the basis that we 'know' the wind turbine will generate income whereas the cheese enterprise is more speculative - but it's been a big sacrifice by Jussi.

And then came the delays in getting the installers and Scottish Hydro to re-quote, a delay of a couple of months to get a variation on the planning permission and generally getting the ducks quacking from the same hymn sheet.

Actual real work started around Christmas with digging trenches for the cables to run from the turbine to the byre. Then there was a pause (our main contractor's real job involves being in Nigeria most of the time so everything is stop-start :- a very typical Highland experience).

Then Jussi and the Girl went to Hamburg and things really started moving. I mention this so you feel sorry for me having to cope on my own with goats and dogs and cats and guinea pigs and chickens AND wind-turbine installers.

But 20/2/2012 is the day that the turbine was inally commissioned - and here are the piccies - including a shot of the actual generator which sits inside the nascelle - also showing the springs which pitch the turbine blades according to wind speed - very useful round here.

The total cost of the exercise, including planning permission, site surveys, the turbine, installation, groundworks and Scottish Hydro addition work is £31276:48. This is a lot. If the initial estimates of the installers are to be believed we should average a generation of 41.4 kWh per day. Based on a huge number of exceptionally wild assumptions this means that the turbine should pay for itself in 2138 days. Hence the party on the 28th December 2017. You are all invited and I promise the best home brew in the universe.

RSVP

You have no idea how much fun it is to watch the kW hours coming in - and to sit and watch the electricity meter spin backwards - as you'll see - albeit in double vision on account of the beer - when you come to the party. (You are welcome to come and visit in advance of the party of course - bookings being taken now for the summer).

Poppies

I went to the shop today and was asked if I was going to the service at the war memorial. I said "no". It was clearly the wrong answer and no further conversation ensued.

But Jeesh you should have heard the conversation going on in my head as I walked home. So I thought I'd share you a wee rant.

I have no problem with those who want to honour the 'fallen'*, and I have no problem with people who choose to do it by wearing poppies and attending ceremonies. But all too often such services use words like glory and honour and valour and I don't agree with these notions.

Invite me to a ceremony that invites us to learn from past mistakes and I'm more likely to attend.

Invite me to something that remembers the others that were killed, the murdered civilians who were bombed or starved from their homes, or merchant seaman who froze running the north atlantic convoys.

Invite me to something that cries for the fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers and lovers, sons and daughters that were left bereaved by the killings.

Invite me to something that cries out for true freedom of press and information so we can make honest choices about whether a war is just and so that we will never be lied to again - whether it's 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq or soldiers eating babies in occupied Belgium in 1914**, whether it's the flow of information controlled by the state, or controlled by a few powerful people like Rupert Murdoch***.

Invite me to something that spits on the memory of egotists and morons, from the 1st world war generals who sent wave after wave of terrified men over the trenches to certain death or pompous twats like Tony Blair shaking hands with 'the hand of history'.

This rant is not meant to dishonour the dead in any way, it's merely a plea that we learn and try to avoid such wastefulness again. It's a long standing campaign symbolised by the white poppy. Whatever we do we should break the link between honouring those killed and the sort of jingo-ism that it is so often polluted by.

There - time for a cuppa methinks.


* I think fallen means killed. It means killed in appalling circumstances, usually hundreds if not thousands of miles from home, family and loved ones. It usually means killed by having a lump of metal tear through your flesh leaving great holes in your body that you can stare in amazement at as your life ebbs away.

** If ever you are in Edinburgh make a trip to Pitt Street and find the relief over one of the industrial units entitled "The Glory of the German people 1914" It is a superb piece of bullshit propoganda and features German soldiers eating babies amongst other atrocities. How much more sophisticated are we now at spotting when we are being lied to, and how much more sophisticated are the liars?

*** Or perhaps Google?

RBS sponsors low carbon conference

Those lovely people at Friends of the Earth Scotland weren't too impressed, so they came up with this little ditty - well impressive!

Still living

Some of you may be worried that our last reported food experimentation has terminated our existence. Fret not. The Violino di Capri is bloody wonderful. Even the Girl loves it.

Recriminations

Hang it! That is the call this weekend. Hang the violino di capri.

Meanwhile I was regaled by an anecdote this week. A lady, a well respected member of the community was having work done on her house. She couldn't be there at the time and had to leave the house open so that the workman could let himself in. A common enough occurrence and nothing to worry about. Until she discovered the workman was a McPhee!!!

Violino di Capri

No relation.

The freezer is full. Need some other way of preserving the meat. Violino di Capri is our answer.

It's a cured goat leg - called a violin because you're supposed to hold it like a violin while you cut it. Hopefully not like a concert violinist, more like a folk violinist, if you are tempted to hold it like a classical player I whole-heartedly recommend cutting away from you.

The recipe came from here - and for once I followed the recipe. Except that we dont have sodiium nitrite, so I substituted more salt. And I couldn't be bothered to grind 10 grms of black pepper but we had some pre-ground white pepper instead. And we didn't have any powdered garlic so I just used 4 cloves of fresh garlic instead. And we dont have scales sensitive enough for anything less than 10 grams. So I guessed. 10 Juniper berries will be roughly 3 grams innit? (the recipe links used a rather small goat leg - ours was nigh on 3.5 kg)

And then of course will come the hanging in a chiller cabinet. We don't have one but we'll worry about that in the weeks to come.

The lack of sodium nitrite is a bit of a worry. It's a good idea to use it because it inhibits many nasty things like botulism. It also helps the meat keep a pink colour which is generally considered more attractive. My substitute for Sodium Nitrite was extra salt and a darn good anti-bacterial clean down of everything used in the prep. Here's hoping. Death by botulism is pretty unpleasant.

The lack of piccies is due to Jussi having the camera to photograph more goat kids.

I wanted to take piccies

Frozen goat meat for sale

Collection only.

One hotel has taken one of the kids we've had to slaughter this year. That leaves three for us to eat or sell. Given market conditions, we've drastically reduced the price - I mean there is no way we are making any money or even covering our costs at £5 per kilo, but it's market forces innit guv.

We've just eaten some for tea - and jolly goatdamn scrumptious it was too.

Proper Crofters

There are various tiers of crofting achievement. One of the most difficult to achieve is getting recognised by the Crofters Commission of having rights to the land you are farming - and then getting the rights to the common grazings which go along with the croft. We've succeeded in these things (although there is still some uncertainty over one of the three common grazings we are entitled to).

But up there with the impossible things is getting EU subsidies to help your enterprise. We've dutifully completed the necessary forms every year. Every year we get a letter saying we are not getting anything. Every year Jussi has phoned to ask why not and generally deposited as many fleas into the ears of the proverbial faceless pen pushers as possible.

This year we are to get a subsidy. £500 by way of thanks for trying to squeeze some life from the rocks and bogs that is our croft land. Not too shabby!

Goat curry recipes, Star Wars, improbability and fresh air

When I blogged a lot I noticed that if you put 'recipe' in the title of a post you got a lot more hits. So just to save the fury of recipe hunters I should admit now that there are no recipes in this post - but there is important news about a key ingredient.

Kidding has started. Rather late but it has begun. And we've had our first kids born in a field - which is slightly exciting. Although it was a funny sight to see twenty goats surrounding something in the grass - peering quizzically.

Goats give birth to slightly more females than males, unlike humans who give birth to slightly more males than females (because boys are weaker and less obstinate). We've had seven kids so far - and 7 males. Apart from being a lot of curry the chances of this are less than 0.78 % or 1 in 128. Who wants to bet on the sex of the next kid?

This years letter is T. You'll remember that we name goats according to their parentage (Anglo-Nubian have names related to Africa, British Alpine to myths and legends, and British Saanen to flora). The names aren't settled yet but the front runners thus far are: Taureg, Turtur, Tariq, Tablet, Troy, Titan, Triton, Thor, Tintin and Troll. Personally I can see a Star Wars character but that would be the wrong letter.

Timetables

I'll try that one again

Timetables

Ah-ha! The first cuckoo was heard this morning - and the swallows are back nesting in the goat house and boy oh boy what a spring.

And I've been working like working work work. Preparing a tender for our local community transport group - and gee whiz is it complicated. I've done tenders before, and I've experienced far more complicated tender processes, but the complication here is trying to vary timetables to suit what we perceive as local need, which adjusts driver hours and mileage (which has to be split into live miles and dead miles). It probably sounds straight forward enough - but there are a myriad of variations and the tendency is for me to be tied in knots most of the time. And to be honest the way Highland Council have written the timetables hasn't helped. Here is a typical example.

Meanwhile I return to blog cos I'm sick of staring at timetables. And here is the view from my home-office window. But I'm trying to keep the fact that I work for the Home Office a secret.

It's all fine

Jussi has taken the girl to Hamburg. I'm left with the goats the guinea pigs the chickens the cats the dog and a part-time job.

Took the dog to work on Tuesday - he doesn't like travelling in the van - squeaks a lot. Crapped himself. Smelly meeting.

BT have now disconnected the phone in the cottage. No contact with the outside world from the house WHATSOEVER. Managed to walk the dog to the phone exchange as BT Openreach sat there having breakfast and pleaded with the guy to do something about it.....he made no promises

Took the dog to another meeting today (and between times did this blog). I managed to rescue the tax disc but he's eating most everything else.

It's all fine though.

Three years today

Just a quick post while Jussi sits on the phone listening to Mozart courtesy of BT 'customer service'.

Three years eh? Where are we at? Well - not as far as we hoped but moving into the house has lifted spirits no end - despite the best efforts of BT. Jussi and the goats are thriving, The Girl is excelling at school, and I've got myself a job with ambitions.

Some of these ambitions, some of the good things noted above, some of the happy spirits are being tested by BT. Shall I tell you the story?

Their website promises people they can have their account moved in 5 days. Jussi phoned and we were promised connection in 3 weeks. Jussi phoned to complain and she was told about the telegraph poles being unsafe.

There are lots of stories about bad (not even poor, its BAD) customer service from BT around here. From other peoples experiences we know that nothing gets done unless you complain and complain again.

Jussi called again. No the telegraph poles are fine they told her. She demanded a superviser. Eventually, and man do they make you wait, average call times to BT exceed 30 minutes, if you are lucky about 10 of these are spent talking to someone. She got to speak to someone who told how hard it was to organise things where we live and on and on he went. He promised someone would call in a couple of days.

After the couple of days had passed Jussi called again. This time they promised someone from BT Openreach would call in a couple of days.

Yesterday the BT Openreach van appeared. The mannie looked around, said he needed to do some pole work but would be right back and he needed to get into the house. So we waited around for the day but he never returned.

Today we have a computer generated message (on the phone in the cottage which we have to use) saying that our appointment for connection has been put back by a further 6 days.

Jussi is still on the phone now, listening to Mozart, telling someone every 2 minutes that she is still there are she wants to speak to a superviser. But getting nowhere - except very very angry.

Now I know things are tough up here, and the sparse population makes service expensive to deliver. But compare with Scottish Hydro - a much less profitable company (but still profitable enough!) - who can fix all kinds of disasters in all kind of weathers. BT make an absolute bloody fortune and their customer service is seemingly deliberately obstinately useless.

Now she is speaking to someone - who are explaining that there is a problem which BT openreach has to sort. The superviser she is talking to now is being equally useless. She is now demanding to speak to the supervisers superviser. Oooh its getting louder. Superviser one is doing his best to get rid of her, but Jussi has learnt - keep trying - keep pushing....... The superviser is telling us that the work is being done as we speak. He doesn't realise that the exchange and the line to it is fully visible to us as she speaks. No one is working on this problem.

Of course BT wont let me talk about it to anyone, they will only speak to the account holder.

..... dot dot dot....

And then there were boxes

OK - so I'm a bit out of the habit of this - but people are screaming at me for piccies - so here's a few to shut them up.

Not very good piccies naturally. But I've not really got much time just now - if you really want to get a sense of what things look like : COME AND VISIT.

Look no radiators (downstairs) - underfloor heating R us - driven by an air source heat pump. Listen up people. This house is warm. Dry. AND Warm. capital wuh.

Probably the best room in the house is the upstairs landing. Not sure how we managed that. Almost all painted in Magnolia cos it's cheap and we're not proud.

We've almost emptied the sea container and most of our precious goods have survived. Now we are emptying the cottage and realising we have just way too much stuff. So we're gearing up for a car boot sale spring with the promise of losing a finger every time we buy anything. Sell sell sell.

Visit.

(But J&A are away from April 5th - 18th - sort of)

Happy New Year!

A bit late perhaps!

The winter onslaught continues - we've survived the snow, the minus 10C, and latterly splodgey splodgey rain. We feel thoroughly onslaughted - but somehow this winter has felt a bit easier - much of this is due to snow tyres on the van. That extra ability to get out when we needed to has made a big big difference.

Meanwhile the house build rolls on. The builders have been heroic - driving through from Caithness nearly every day when the snow was here - we only lost about a week. But the date of our moving in seems to be sliding inexorably away - almost within each and yet...

Here's some progress shots of the house - and it's really difficult to get decent piccies - especially on a dullish day with a camera low on batteries and still covered in dust from the chimney fire - oh the excitement you miss cos I've gotten out of the habit of blogging. Maybe I'll return soon.