Sold some young rams

Yesterday we took 4 young rams to Hoards Station livestock market. They were last years ram lambs that we had kept for potential breeding stock, but they weren't really good enough to keep any longer, so off they went to the auction. We got about $175 each for 4 of them. Not bad  as even if they had been sold as breeding stock, they would not have been more than $250 each

Lambing and solar panels

The solar panels are finally up and running and making electricity. We can see on the new meter how many KWs we make in a day. Maximum daily so far about 60 KW, but it is only March. Of course, this is all being subsidized indirectly by the good people of Ontario through hikes in their power bills. All part of McGuinty's green energy initiative. Did you see the program about this on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paiken?

We are now in the midst of lambing. Lots of ewe lambs so far this year, but we are only half way through. No bottle babies so far.

Another solar panel update

Well another month has gone by. Admittedly it is still winter but we have had some nice sunny days when we could have been making power....if we were hooked up! Anyway there is slow progress as we have now been approved by Hydro 1 our local electricity provided. We sent in some more forms and a cheque for the yet to appear special meter -cost about $1200. Now another wait while they take another few weeks to open the envelope! What is wrong with those folks at Hydro 1? I could open and read several hundred letters a day. Why can't they with several people on the job?

Anyway, I have just added a link to my wife's artist website, so check it out. There are some sheep pictures.

Update on solar panels

It has been a while since I posted on the subject of our solar panels on the barn roof, so here is the state of play. We now have the panels on the roof and the electrical work is all done and inspected. We are now waiting for Hydro-one to approve and hook us up.

An important piece of information was missing from the instructions from Ontario Power. There is a Form C which has to be filled in by your solar power company and e-mailed into the Hydro-one people. It important to e-mail-not fax, which we did originally-as their system for processing the faxes is not working!. Don't simply wait and hope for the best. You have to be pro-active and phone the Hydro-one people.

Another important point: The MicroFIT number has to be in subject line of the e-mail when you submit the Form C. They do not tell you this either in any written instructions. I assume they use telepathy to communicate!

It is a shame that this is taking so long, as our solar panel providers, ESEI solar, have been wonderful, and very quick and efficient. Their people even worked in the snow to get the panels up on the barn roof.

Sheep prices at Hoards Station

We took the last of our ram lambs in to Hoards Station livestock auction last Tuesday, the 13th December. The prices were about $2 a pound live weight for 85 lb lambs.
The last sale before Xmas is usually the best of the year, but there were hardly any people there as the weather was cold, windy and snowy, and the usual farmer's market was closed for that reason.
We have been debating with some of our fellow sheep farmers whether it is better to ship lambs to Cookstown north of Toronto. It is a bigger market and the prices are a little better, but is it worth the $7 or so for trucking and then there is shrinkage- loss of weight due to lack of food and water during transportation and waiting to be sold.

Solar update

Well, we have just got the conditional contract offer from the Ontario Power Authority for the MicroFIT program, so the next step is to contact the solar panel installers and get the panels up on the barn roof.

Going solar

We have decided to participate in the Ontario governments MicroFIT solar energy program as we have a lovely long sheep loafing barn with a south facing roof-perfect for solar panels. We are getting a 10 KW system which will only take up part of the roof. This is the maximum allowed under the program in order to get the 8O.2 cents a KW hour that Ontario Hydro will pay. This is for a roof-mounted system. A ground mounted one pays a bit less.

An engineer came out yesterday and approved the structure, with a couple of minor repairs where Jim had managed to hit the support truss with his tractor. It needed to be fixed anyway.

We had already applied for a contract with the MicroFIT people. They are backlogged -what's new?- so it could take a few weeks before the panels arrive. Anyone thinking of doing this, please do not put any money down until you have one of these contracts signed and ready to go. If you apply now, you will have to wait until the new year for MicroFIT approval.

We will keep you posted as to our progress with this scheme.

REGION 8 SHEEP MEETING is on Monday 18th Oct at 7 p.m at the primary school near the hospital in Napanee. Sheri will be talking on sheep hoof trimming, horn dis-budding and other topics.