Two skunks and one raccoon dead in the last two weeks. I'm beginning to wonder.

Last week I caught one red-handed inside the cat feeder. I couldn't very well shoot him in there lest I spoil the cat food and probably the feeder itself. So I blocked off one entrance and set the trap at the other one. Sure enough he was in the trap by morning. The raccoon was caught the conventional way by setting the trap in the wash outside the fence.

This evening when I went outside to fill the cat feeder, I heard an odd scratching sound coming from under the storage trailer. Flashlight in hand, I saw Irene under the trailer, but she was not the source of the sound. It was another skunk, trying to get into the cat enclosure by crawling through the hollow rear bumper of the trailer! Well he was the proverbial sitting duck. I popped him with a .22 round, shoved his carcass out of the bumper, then retreated to the house as Satan's Own Perfume billowed forth from his orifice.

I lost count somewhere over 25 skunks last time this happened...

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Progress Pics
I wired the low voltage breaker box this weekend, or at least the supply side together with the battery equalizer.


The other end of those wires are here at the battery posts. It looks a little rat's nest-ish, but this is a temporary setup as I will be upgrading the battery bank probably before the end of this year. Nickel Iron batteries, baby!


I also got a decent start on installing the conduit spine that will run the length of the house to distribute the low voltage (12v and 24v) power.


I miscounted some parts and so ran out before I was done. But that corresponded closely enough with running out of time so it wasn't a major issue.


Not pictured is the additional foam fill I installed around the lower solar hot water tank. I still need more cans to complete insulating this tank. It was hard to judge the effectiveness as today was a hazy partly to mostly cloudy day and, as a result, I didn't get enough hot water to shower with.

I meant to take more photos of this as it went together, but this is Mom's greenhouse completed as far as it will be for now.

In five years or so, when this UV stabilized polyethylene finally gives up the ghost, she will replace it with the same clear corrugated panels that are on the roof.

In the meanwhile it is producing hot air every sunny morning, and that is reducing her winter heating bills. This window fan pushes house air into the greenhouse and it returns fifteen or twenty degrees warmer via another open window.

She is also growing lettuce and radishes, which we have eaten from already. But the main reason for building this was the winter heating benefit. She keeps her house cool at night, but as soon as the sun is up and shining on the greenhouse, the house temperature jumps ten degrees in short order.

"Tuk tuk tuk", I say, and the chickens come running.


I have a handful of Sahara mustard I pulled from my garden for them. They love this stuff. It is edible for humans too.

I wondered on this blog several years ago whether this would make good chicken food and it does. It is a weed and somewhat invasive at that. But it grows like a...well like a weed, and makes a high calcium green for the chickens. So I've been thinking actually of gathering seed and deliberately planting it in winter "chicken pasture" beds.

What else? In the evenings this weekend I've been working on a planned upgrade to my bass guitar.

I bought an inexpensive bass to start myself out with, and as I've gotten better at playing, I've been wanting the bass to sound better to match. A while ago I bought a set of Ernie Ball flatwound strings, and the improvement was astonishing. Now I'm gutting the innards and starting over with higher quality electronics.

Here it is with strings, pick-guard and electronic innards removed.


The first thing I did was improve the grounding contact under the bridge. I have long suspected the ground wire was not making proper contact with the bridge, because the bass would pick up a lot of hum when my hands were off the strings.

Next I lined the inside of the pickup cavities and the electronics cavity with self-adhesive copper foil. This will be tied to ground as well to shield the electronics from stray hum signal.

The back of the pick-guard over the electronics also got a foil shield.


As I write this, I have just gotten started wiring up the new components on the back of the pick-guard. I am upgrading the standard jazz bass wiring to include a series/parallel feature via the push-pull-potentiometer combo at the left. The wiring diagram is in the background, but for any interested it can be found at seymourduncan.com, here.

The normal arrangement is for the two pickups on a jazz bass to be run in parallel. By running them in series I get a volume boost in the mid-range. Just a nifty feature I wanted to play with. There are many more interesting modifications available at Seymour Duncan.

This project will be finished another weekend evening, as I am out of time and need to head to bed for my 4:30 AM wakeup time. Gotta leave myself time to deal with any more skunks in the trap in the morning...

Labels: San Pedro homestead