Creek Flood!

Most amazing rain storm exploded here today....

this (in the video below) is what it looked like after! There is a build up, as i walk down the road, to more and more intense amounts of water...



XOxoOX

Testing For Hydro Electric Power Possibilities

Remember how last week I was curious about how I could get off grid power without cutting down my trees? Well, here goes my first attempt to find a way to get sustainable power, in the semi dark! Hydro-power! One of my readers here at The Oko Box pointed out that I have many water sources on my property and there may be a possiblity of harnessing the energy from that...so I was really excited when Mr. Tebbe contacted me from the Sundance Power Systems company in Weaverville,NC to discuss possible hydro power options.
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The first step I had to do was to test how many seconds it would take my creek to fill up a bucket. I searched along the creek for a spot to shove a bucket under, but then remembered the creek is already piped into my pond on a decline...
I kept dropping the bucket when it would start to fill, so Bort handed me his Nalgene bottle which has little measuring dealies along the side (32 ounces). It took 2 seconds to fill & overflow a 32 ounce space.
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WATER RATE: 8 seconds to fill 1 Gallon of water
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I also measured the height of the full water drop at that spot, which is approx 3.5 to 4 feet high.
I started some Hydro Electric research as suggested by Mr. Tebbe... and found that this kind of project hits right at the heart of every learning disability I was ever diagnosed with! ha ha.
...
First I found a "simple formula" for figuring out if you can house a lil' hydro power :
"A simple formula for approximating electric power production at a hydroelectric plant is: P = ρhrgk, where
P is Power in watts,
ρ is the density of water (~1000 kg/m3),
h is height in meters,
r is flow rate in cubic meters per second,
g is acceleration due to gravity of 9.8 m/s2,
k is a coefficient of efficiency ranging from 0 to 1. Efficiency is often higher (that is, closer to 1) with larger and more modern turbines. "
...
The only result/solution for the Luck Cabin's Hydro-ness I mathmatically came up with after examining that formula was this:
LESLIE x ABOVECRAZYTALK = WTF
...
This is engineer stuff. (Is reader Lou Cheese out there? I bet you make something of this jibber jabber!!)
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What I wanna know is hydro-electric a possibility for the Luck Cabin (where i use about 30-40$ of electric a month/ or approx. 250KWH per month)
...how much power could my lil' pipe of creek water produce?
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Xoxoxox

JuJu Across The Water (continued story...)

RECAP: JuJu Bean the donkey was terrified of water and we were stuck at the creek well into the dark of night when a neighbor pulled up and let me take JuJu to her barn and put her in a nice roomy horse stall for the night --- till we could figure out during daylight hours how to get her across!
It wasn't just creeks she hated, even a big puddle would bring her to a sudden hault ... and we had two rushing creeks to get across in order to get to my cabin, her new home. The first creek which was putting the absolute terror into her, there are no pictures of... that one was the first and hardest and here is how we had to do it....
At the first creek she knew she was stronger then me and when she saw an opportunity, she made a turn, pulled the rope from my hands and began trotting uphill, back towards the neighbor's barn -- with me and Bort walking swiftly behind her, then me finally getting close enough to her to start to run and grab the rope... she had a glint in her eye as we both ran side by side and she eventually let me catch her. Once I got her back down to the creek, we quickly had her tied to the hitch on a car so that she couldnt run away again....
Then we had to coax JuJu with these things:::::
1. apples
2. eye contact
3. spankings with a thin stick
4. pulling the rope over the creek

Two men pulled the rope (also tied to the car), one lady spanked with the stick, and I called JuJu to me from the other side of the creek- till she finally gave in after ALOT of heart breaking resistance.
The terrible thing was, right after she made it over the first creek, we had a second one to go over only 100 feet down the road! (I've got a really rugged driveway!) You can see as I am pulling the rope I am making a pout face for JuJu Bean cause I felt so bad for her!
But after the drama from the first creek, the memory of being spanked, the reward of the apple after she crosses, tug from the car and some serious trust/eye contact convincing she made it across the second body of water easier and we were on our way home FINallY! YAY!!! Go JuJu!

Proud! My neighbors and friends rock out wit' der' socks out! I love them and could not have done it alone.....

I made it easily up the road after that and got JuJu the donkey into her gated area, where she nibbled on hay, corn on the cob and tree sapling leaves... and started to LUv me!

She already HEE HAW's when she sees me out of excitment and follows me around her fenced area! I can't wait till I can take her hiking and she won't mind the water anymore. :)))

PS - (the title of this post is a play on this Paul McCartney song.)

Xoxoxo

LIVE video: The Luck Cabin

Eva' wondered what I (Leslie!) might actually sound like, look like, walk & talk like? What the nature around me is really like... what noises the creek makes, what birds circle the sky?
Well, my friend Daniel took some live video last week...

I promise not all of it is as circling, shaky, car sick style as the very first scene trying to follow the turkey vulture - if that part makes ya' puker-ish to watch in the beginning then skip to the next scenes of serenity. (And I'll try not to be shy about the fact that I was actually filmed for the first time since I was probably 16 years old...)

PART ONE:



PART TWO:



XOXOoxo

Showing Daniel (more on why visitors f-en rock...)

That's my friend Daniel... a guy who's living in the city & was needing a nature fix.... something I can provide in endless quantities. We went for a walk along the creek beginning at my cabin and following the road. In the picture above that may look like a creek he is crossing but actually it is the road to my driveway - the creek that crosses it is kinda big in one spot.

We saw some cool things today, beginning with low flying turkey vultures circling over head...
Neat trees, so many i wish i knew what they were, what their purpose is. Can anyone identify what the tree below is by it's bark? It was quite large and I don't recognize it. That is Daniel in the background next to it , he was throwing big rocks into the water - boys like to throw and breaks things, and sometimes so do I.
There are some beautiful signs of spring happening now - tiny flowers and the succulents are varying their colors and getting more lively and plump. Purple is my favorite color... so these awed me...
Water does magical things to trees- weather, decay, rain, shaping it's dead wood into something sculptural, something i want to wear as a mask, or crawl into and live.
I don't know how I did it, but i totally match the moss in the background. My decorator mom would be proud. ;) (BTW, those are mardi gras beads I am wearing that where my Mimi's, she'd used for a flapper costume... i was feeling her spirit today!)
Thanks so much Daniel for coming to visit me & letting me show you my pieces of nature, even if I am a spazzy recluse. At least I am less dangerous then a brown recluse.
PS- a real live video... not my usual slide show but a moving picture video will be coming soon thanks to my friend Daniel and his cool camera! Ya'll will love it.

XoXoxox

Don't Judge A Rock....

by it's cover... what may be hard and gray on one side,

turns out to be the most beautiful, dazzling ice blue quartz crystal on the other.
XoXo

Sitting By the Creek Side

There are just some days where you find your own heart, and feel as though the beauty is suddenly ten times as amazing as it even was before. It helps that the weather is warm, jus' like Spring time should be.

Here is what my heart tells me today:
Look for the light in everything and everyone - intuition is there to separate fact from fiction, it is there to stop all the details from taking over our lives, and leave us free to feel love for all that is. AKA- the bigger picture is the better picture. (Hope that wasn't too deep or corny... here's some pictures & a song instead of more words...)


XoXo

Hunting For My Mailbox

Don't look at the undies handing on the clothes line, look at that jumbo mailbox!!! I had no idea where the heck to put my mailbox, but where it's sitting on the porch isn't the right place - ya know how rural mail works, the mailboxes gather in a cluster somewhere, like a family. So i started walking down the road in search for the mailbox family i hoped to eventually find...

There are creeks that run across my driveway, not under it, but like right on top the road. Gives me fond flashbacks to the flash floods in the roads of New Orleans ... these creeks ain't got nothing on a crescent city flood - except that they are clean and way prettier!
I walked and walked downhill ---- for so long that the sounds of rushing water in the creeks was making me thirsty and I could feel the muscles in my legs straining from sitting around too much all winter. It's like a never ending forest...
with BIG creeks, big amounts of water creating loud sounds as it hits more rocks below...
AND lots of BIG rocks....
and some crazily BIG McMansion Log homes.....
And FINALLY the family of big jumbo mailboxes I had envisioned!!! YAY! Now I can plant my flag, and truly settle into my new home. USPS here I come... ;)
XoXOxoxo