Grapes of Wrath and Things

Well, I managed to harvest the black grapes OK, on Sunday 15th October, the day after Caroline's 50th birthday Ceilidh bash - which was a roaring success by the way, raising over £900 for the ME charity. (Thanks a million to all who contributed.)

Anyway, here I am with the harvest half-collected:


You'll notice I'm wearing my very stylish "Chuckle Brothers" jumper. At least that's what my extremely supportive sons call it.

Well those grapes were pretty good on the whole, and a week later I managed to squeeze out around 18 litres.


That's all now busily fermenting away in the garage ... yes!!

The green ones, on the other hand, were a complete disaster. They started off in early summer looking very promising indeed. Then they suddenly gave up the ghost around mid-July and began to go dark grey and shrivel. This is what they finally looked like. Huh...


It was either drought, shanking, mildew, vine-weavil or one of about 179 other nasties that can trouble grapes. It certainly wasn't lack of feeding 'cos I was particularly diligent about that.

On a brighter note - spotted this very attractive butterfly sunning itself on the side of my wind-generator:


The machine definitely seems to be more useful as a wild-life reserve than as a means of powering the house. Of course it would probably help if it were sited somewhere where it could actually feel the wind!

And speaking of such things, I recently invested in a second solar panel. Just finished fitting it up to the existing sytem.


The new one's on the right. That gives me a stupendous 28 watts. Or could. Theoretically. If the conditions were right.

You will have observed that it is mounted vertically. Not, you might think, the most effective attitude. But it's easier to mount that way, and if it's good enough for the CIS Building in Manchester it ought to be good enough for me.

And it seems to be enough to cope with a PIR-operated light outside the back door, another in the garage, and a couple of bed-side lights. Also provides power to the shed and the greenhouse. Of course I can't have many of them running simulataneously.

And just to "prove" it does work - here it is feeding a healthy voltage to the batteries:



The green LED on the charge controller indicates the batteries are sufficiently charged to provide power. And yes, that really is 13.7 volts.

I'm deeply indebted to Pete for designing the very nice solar logo that you can just see at the top of the pic.

Mind you, as winter draws on so to speak, I suppose I'll be lucky if it all keeps working over the solstice period, what! Ne'er mind, eh? Panto rehearsals to look forward to.

SNOW WHITE.

Don't missi it!!