Fires, red wine and retreating...

AUGUST 2017 UPDATE

Despite some glorious sunny, still days, this Winter at Three Dams seems to have been one of the coldest experienced so far. There have been many sub zero nights and plenty of frosts and fogs in the early morning. Needless to say, much firewood has been burnt keeping the house toasty and the red wine at room temperature! The vineyard has been mulched and pruned and with a bit of luck, should produce enough fruit next year to make the first batch of Three Dams Estate Tempranillo!

It's even been too cold outside for Ziggy who has spent a considerable amount of time these last few months sleeping in front of the fire. Despite the cold, there has been little rain this winter. Fortunately the amount of rain we have had has topped up all the tanks to overflowing which will be great come summer.

The exciting news this week is that I managed to score 6 secondhand 250 watt Jinko solar panels from a solar installer I found on EBay. I ended up paying $900 for the 6 panels which equates to 0.60c per watt. Back in 2008 when the off grid system was initially set up, we paid almost $900 for ONE 120 watt solar panel. This equates to $7.50 per watt! These panels will replace the current array which is not large enough to fully charge the new battery bank we installed last year. The old panels will be re-purposed for use on the new off-grid accomodation cabins.