Pigs.

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Pigs! Lately I’ve been watching or actually more like listening to YouTube videos while at work including North Country Off-Grid and jnull0 and Our Wyoming Life. I also sometimes listen to the NRA’s Cam Edwards 40 acres and a Fool podcast, where one of livestock he raises in tammaworth heritage hogs.

Growing up my neighbors raised hogs besides other livestock. Some of my friends from high school still have them. Pigs are kind of smelly, they root around in grain and food scraps that ferments when they rot. They can be rough on fences too and can tear up a landscape rooting around in the mud, seeking a good wallow to cool themselves out. Wild hogs, which have long escaped shooting preserves and farms can be incredibly destructive to farms and forest alike.

I’m not that much of a fan of store-bought bacon, especially after I let some bacon spoil and then try to cook it, but there are many cuts of pork that are incredibly delicious. Definitely need a strong fence, truck and a cage to move the hogs around, although I guess I would be better to shoot and process the animal on my own land. I’m not much of a meat cutter but I could learn, burying the guts on my own land so they rot away in a few years rather than sit in a landfill for a million years, compacted next to plastic bags and crushed television sets.

When I own my off grid cabin, my hope is to live as close to zero landfill as possible, putting waste to as high of use as possible.I don’t generate that much in food waste, keeping it out of the garbage keeps it drier so anything I end up ultimately burning out back will burn hotter and cleaner. Turning food scraps into feed and ultimately food is even better. Sure, I can and will compost but feed us a higher use. Likewise paper trash like shredded junk mail can be used for bedding, one more thing to keep out of landfills and out my burn pit, as most paper products don’t really burn that well, especially if they are wet.

Owning hogs might mean that I’m more strapped to my land, but when I’m at the point of having an off grid cabin I don’t think I’ll be as interested in traveling and camping, as I’ll have much of the same adventures on my land.

SVGZ Graphic: 25 Most Densely Population Municipalities in New York State
Thematic Map: Elevation of Otsego County
Terrain Map: North-South Lake Campground

Edison Wins!

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If thyristors, IGBTs, MOSFETS existed in 1890s, I bet Edison would have won the war of currents.

Power Lines

Generating plants would still use turbo alternators that produce AC power, but rectified to high voltage DC, for impedance free transmission of power — similar to in your car. I expect they would output around 400 Hz power prior to rectification, for maximum efficiency. You’d boost the voltage up for high voltage transmission, buck it when it got to household for safety.

Household electric motors would be driven by transistors producing high frequency (400 Hz or above) 3-phase alternating current, for maximum efficiency. Other DC-based electronics would use buck converters to further reduce voltage down to safe, usable levels. Every outlet and switch though would have to have heavier contacts due to the lack of zero point to withstand arching or use a MOSFET/IGBT to break connections rather then a mechanical switch.

Such a system would be more efficient, and use a lot less copper for transformer windings, but arching would be concern when contacts or wires broke. Might be more of a fire risk, and certainly a much greater shock risk, as you can’t let go of a high voltage DC wire easily due to lack of a zero point.

Such systems sort of exist in the world today — High Voltage Direct Current power transmission. But all existing HVDC systems are inverted back to AC power when connecting back to local substation — nobody uses DC down to the household level. But as more renewables come online, more people are switching power supplies and inverter-driven AC motors, this is a technology whose future might eventually come to the entire power grid.

Map: Normans Kill Ravines Preserve

Milk and the dairy business

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After my tiresome hike this weekend, I came back to my truck and opened the cooler got out a paper cup and poured myself a nice glass of milk. It was refreshing although maybe a little bit sticky on the lips. But I was super thirsty and that’s what I had.

I’ve always been a big milk drinker, typically buying two gallons of milk per week from Stewart’s. They have the best price and it’s right down the street from my apartment. I’ve always had an interest in the mostly docile large animals that make milk production a reality, how dairy farmers work their land to raise food for their cows and manage their production. They’re really is a lot that goes into a dairy.

Untitled [Expires September 16 2024]

YouTube has given me and the public at least a unique ability to see and learn much about the farm life from tractors to preparing the soil, planting and harvesting crops. It’s also shown the goings on in the tie stall barn from feeding to milking to raising and pulling calves. To artificial insemination and real bulls on ranches to preg testing cattle. Yeap, they have special plastic gloves for reaching up the anus and birth canal to check on the development of calves in the womb. I’ve learned more about the business decisions made every day and craft and science behind the milk business. Or even inside a milk processing plant that takes raw milk, processes it and pasteurizes it into many good products.

Being watched as the sun set

Really kind of fascinating stuff. Its interesting to know what’s going on in the field and in the barnyard as I travel the backcountry roads on my trips and travels. To make sense of smells of small town America to know what the various buildings on the farm represent. While I doubt I’ll ever get into the dairy business – my parents had dairy goats for a while, it’s interesting to learn more. While when I own my off grid cabin in the future I will likely do some homesteading, maybe so heritage hogs and chickens for meat, dairy is a tough thing to do with all the constant need to breed and bring the animals around for milking.