Forgive me, I know I’m going on at unnecessary length but there’s something about this situation that tickles my inner Oliver Wendell Douglas. I went to bed unusually late last night and slept unusually heavily, and woke to find I had completely missed what must have been an extremely unpleasant snowstorm. The temperature crashed into the low teens and the wind drove the snow into drifts in the lee of every object it couldn’t just knock over. By eight ayem when I went out to feed and water them, not even the chickens had wanted out of their coop: Seymour contented himself with crowing the morning in with his head stuck out the little door and the rest of him inside the coop where it was relatively warm.
Enough snow stuck, of course, that I still had to climb the ladder and squeegee an inch of loose powder off the solar panels (It was overcast when I got out of bed, but the sky had completely cleared by eight) and I’m still warming my toes from the unavoidable flurry of morning outdoor chores. Now I’ve got the panels clear, the porch swept, the chickens fed and watered and the woodbox filled, and meanwhile the cabin heated up nice and toasty.
Point being, I slept through a storm I would normally have expected to suffer through. And now in its frigid aftermath I’m no more uncomfortable than you probably are, wherever you are. And after all this time, that feels like a serious accomplishment. 🙂
I wonder if you could rig a rope-and-pulley thing to wipe the solar panels from inside? Like a windshield wiper on a car? Big squeegees like the professional window-cleaners use? A rest position for the wiper arm that wouldn’t get iced over, like the parking position for the wiper on the back window of an SUV or minivan?
The very thought of you taking on and spitting in the face of adversity and winning is nice to hear about. Stay warm Joel…