Floor Installment I

     About a year ago, the project began by tearing out the farm's kitchen floor(s).  Farm work moved the project to the back burner.  This spring's weather prompted a return to the project.  Step one: lay some ceramic tile for the kitchen wood burner.

    Then came the underlayment.  All six 4X8 sheets had to be cut and fitted.

     Presently, the 1X3 vinyl tiles are going in.   

      I’m hoping to be done in time for the Fourth of July holiday.  Progress is severely impeded by the “Big 3” that control my life:   Family, doctor appointments, and singing. 

     The quartet did a job for a father-son celebration of Father’s Day at the local memory care place.  At 10 a.m., the old duffers were enjoying a Coors Light with their donuts.  The activity director called it beer and breakfast.  We dubbed it the three B’s, breakfast, beer, and barbershop.

      I called on the ophthalmologist this Tuesday past.  She is ready to turn me over to the surgeon to see if my cockeye can be corrected by “adjusting” muscles.  Sounds like a knife to me.  She says we have the myasthenia in control.

      I reach my three-score-and-ten this Father’s Day.  In celebration, we took a trip to a mountain cabin with number two daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.  Great fun!  To complete the celebration, we had the quartet over for supper Saturday night.

     Who wants to work on a floor when he can be doing all that?

       

  

Innovative Solar Farms

       “Wanting to rent your land to place solar panels.”

     It came in the mail, a slick pamphlet like a lot of junk mail.  I glanced at it and started to toss it in the recycle bin.  This wasn’t the first offer I have had from folks wanting to rent land for a solar farm.

     The solar panel people follow the wind generator people because the wind generator companies have done the power line work, erecting substations and making connections to the main grid.  I stayed my hand and took a second look, not so much because I was thinking of surrounding myself with solar panels, to fill in the gaps between windmills.

    It was an idea that has been hatching in my brain for about a year.  I’m not sure what the original stimulus was.  For years, I have thought that global warming could be caused in part by all the black top we have installed over the years.

     Think of all the parking lots in shopping centers and sports complexes and college campuses and I don’t know what all.  That pavement absorbs, retains, and radiates a lot of heat on a summer day.  Imagine walking barefoot across the parking lot at 2 p.m. in July.

     Add a few automobiles, glass cages with the windows tightly shut to keep out the dishonest and the homeless.  Inside the cars, the temperature may exceed 150 degrees.  All that heat gets released into the atmosphere.

     Another stimulus for my idea, perhaps, can be found east of Ft. Lupton, a route I occasionally take.  A forty-acre field with gently rolling slopes has been converted to row upon row of solar panels.

     The idea reached full fruition on our trip to Tucson in January.  The parking lot at the Tucson airport has a covered parking lot.  I don’t remember if we paid a parking fee for using the airport lot.  If the lot were in DIA, you would pay a premium for covered parking.

    The cover is made up of solar panels, which generate some electricity while preventing your car from reaching convection oven temperatures.

      The pamphlet listed a website (http://innovativesolarfarms.com/solar-farm-land-lease-programs/).  I found the email reply address.

 No, you can NOT lease my land, but I do have a suggestion for you.

Go to the cities and cover parking lots with solar panels.  You would be much closer to the end user of the power, you would not be taking food-growing land out of production, you would be doing the patrons of the stores a great favor by protecting their automobiles from weather.

    You would reduce global warming quite a bit by shielding heat-absorbing blacktop and miniature greenhouses (automobiles) from the sun's rays with sun-shading solar panels.

     A contract with a Wal-Mart or Safeway, or Krueger’s would keep you busy for years.

     If you are not already familiar with it, check out the Tucson airport parking lot with its solar panels.

     Good luck.

     Kerplunk!  I could hear my email hitting the trash can minutes after I pushed “send.”  When I got no reply, I looked closer at the website.  They were offering $500-$700 per year for thirty years. 

    Hmmm!  I sent another email some days later.  “I’ve changed my mind.  I might be interested in leasing my land for a solar farm.”

    In a matter of two or three hours, I got a phone call.  The guy introduced himself and got right to the point.  “We have to have a minimum of 160 acres of fairly level ground as our first requirement.”

      At the moment of the phone call, I was reading a story to grandson, getting him close to taking a nap.  I did not want to prolong the conversation.  I wasn’t thinking of converting farmland to solar panels.  I was thinking of some CRP ground that will come out of contract in a few years.

    So I replied 100 acres is the biggest lot I had available.  He was serious about his minimum requirement.  He closed the conversation and was gone.  I finished reading the story and grandson was gone.

     The seed planted didn’t sprout.  I’m still looking for a solar company to take on Wal-Mart parking lots.  It still seems like a good idea.  There is probably some good reason why it isn’t feasible.  Surely, I’m not the only one to think of it.