Wow, where did the time go?

Oh yea. Lots of projects, a bit of fun, and a bit of terror.

Let's start with the rundown of projects:

Driveway

Our USVI Earth Change Permit allowed us to clear the road, our home site, and the driveway. Obviously we got the road cleared in order to even set up our current camp (known as Camp Delta, hopefully our last) and get a driveway and site cleared. Making the driveway up to our eventual homesite wasn't too bad with the tractor doing the stump clearing and our trusty Ego hedger. A relatively mild 9-10 degree slope (the road up has a maximum of about 13 degrees, which is wild if you have freezing weather), brings us to a beautiful hilltop at about 740 feet above sealevel. The views to the south, west and north are distant ocean with some nice valley in between with a brush/suburb easterly view. Once I get up the courage I will start up the north side of the hill in order to connect the south and north driveways together for our desired circle driveway, but the slope on the north side gets a bit more intense at 15-20 degrees so it will take a bit of planning to make this more comfortable for me with the tractor.

Camp Delta Creature Comforts

We finally took some time to build some outdoor desks off of pallet wood and pallets. Then we unpacked our office chairs (which have held up surprisingly well with the move and humidity) and we can enjoy the outdoors while getting work done. We're still trying to determine the best way to block the sun for screen visiblity and general comfort but working outside in a real chair has been a life changing moment. We were both really starting to get impacted by the poor padding and ergonomics of the RV bench seats physically and having the outdoors surround you while you focus is really relaxing.

We also built a larger cooking / prep area table which consumed a few pallets worth of wood but has given us a nice and large area to set the induction cooktop (Nuwave Pro Chef on Amazon, highly recommended), food, and general prep. Some left over sheathing from the shed gave us a good work surface and sealing it has kept the wood in good shape.

Yoga Deck

Clearing some of the road and removing dead trees gave us some decent timber. We took that, slapped some pallets on top, and made a nice Yoga deck. It has great views to the west for sunsets, and keeps a nice space for stretching and meditation.

New Batteries

We came here with an order of AGM batteries. The batteries were great to get us through, but as I learned more about AGM batteries and as we've been getting comfortable it became a huge source of stress for me personally. AGM batteries are great when you use them right, and we've treated ours pretty well, but the shift in the sun (and us not wanting to cut down trees) caused me a lot more stress than I had anticipated. AGM like to be fully charged, hate to be discharged more than 50%, and are kinda finnicky. We decided to purchase some LiFePO4 batteries (specifically the EG4 LiFePOwer4 100 Ah rack mount batteries) because they were well reviewed and lithium batteries do much better on a solar lifestyle.

Let me tell you. It's been amazing. I set these things up, only purchasing two of them to start, and we can use nearly all of the 200 Ah without causing damage. The AGM batteries we had were 4 12V, 200Ah batteries which means their effective Ah rating is 100Ah and in series they gave us the 48v we needed.

We plan on using the AGM batteries later for our shop because they do really well with high loads like a welder and we can keep them mostly topped off (which makes them happy) during the week with solar.

For anyone looking for an off grid setup AGM really aren't ideal and you should (I kick myself here) just go with LiFEPO4 from the start. I know 12v series batteries in to a paralleled bank is pretty common to get 48v and more amp-hours, and it's likely easier to replace individual 12v batteries than a whole bank like our new ones are, but having these 100Ah in one unit makes it super simple to wire.

Harvest Time

Well, it's not much. We've had two watermelon (mmmm), we can grow basil like weeds, our lime tree gave us some super yummy limes, the orange tree is looking to give us a few oranges here soon. Our tomato plant gave us a beautiful orb weaver spider but nothing else. The comfrey is still doing whatever it does. Our guava tree has been ignored and it's loving life. The pineapple planted from a cutting is vibing with the guava tree. Next year we should have a tastey treat. Our Hass avocado tree decided to lose all its leaves, but I spotted a couple new ones recently so I don't know what is going on with it but I hope it decides life is worth living. Green onions, rosemary, pomegranate, a hot pepper similar to Scotch Bonnet and our flamboyant tree have all done really well.

The flamboyant seeds we started began their adventure here. We picked up a seed pod when we first came here (and got engaged), brought it back with us to Colorado. It came back to St Crfoix in our container, and for kicks I tried to sprout a few seeds. They're doing well! We also can grow papaya like crazy, the ones along the road are growing wild and doing incredible and the ones I put too close together are slowly coming into their own.

What's failed: Any greens we just threw seeds in the ground (kale, lettuce), potatoes, mint (surprising), the Hass, onions, garlic. We didn't spend much time planning those so it's not surprising but kinda sad. Most of our herbs have been eaten by various things so we're going to need to prep some better raised gardens and bug netting.

What Else Is New?

A chore I never imagined is mowing a road. But we're doing that. We have an order of some more Ego tools to make the job easier. I can't imagine trying to do all of this with gasoline powered tools, it's been so nice to be able to power the tools from the sun and never worry about fire danger or running out of gas. Frankly, the batteries tend to last longer than we do.

We are still working through the process of getting house plans. That's been a whole other story that we will post on later, once I can really express myself. It's been frustrating.

My folks came down to visit and that was a great time. We did so much stuff it was good to get snapped out of endless-chore mode and back to the fun of why we moved here. Sea kayaking is in our future, it was a blast. The botanical gardens was great, learned so much and we have a few more connections and ideas for years to come.

The End?

Nah. We still have so much more to do, and we've met a lot of great people down here. The weather has been pretty nice. I never thought I'd be cold in 74 degree weather, but it turns out I can be. Courtney wears a hoodie and pants. Not bad for a couple born and raised in Colorado, eh?