A couple of announcements then on to some shocking news!
The current plan is to start the season the week of June 23rd. This could change but probably won’t. Use the erasable pencil font in your electronic calendar just in case.
I will send out pick-up instruction for your location sometime in the first week or two of June. I try to get them out the first week but if it is good farming weather the emails tend to get pushed to the second week.
We still have shares. Please keep spreading the word!!
Farm News
A while back I wrote about our recent electrifying approach to deer management. So far the results of this project have been mixed. For the first week we didn’t see any evidence of deer in those fields we protected with the electric fence. However this week we found deer tracks inside the fence (see picture above) and some plant damage from what we believe to have been caused by the maker of those deer tracks. It could have been giant rabbits with deer foot shoes but I’m an Occam’s Razor kind of guy so I’m going with deer. Not a happy day.
Our hypothesis for what allowed this intrusion is that the design of the fence did not prevent the deer from jumping “through” the fence. We believe that the electrical part of the fence is working correctly and that the deer are getting shocked but that the deer that got into the enclosed area may have already committed to jumping through when it got shocked so the shock didn’t stop it from penetrating our defense. Then of course it had to figure out how to get back out of the fence without getting shocked, which hopefully wasn’t possible and so it bit the bullet so to speak and jumped back out, hopefully never to return.
But we couldn’t base the success of the farm’s deer protection system to hope so we did the only thing we could think to do at this time — add two more electrically charged wires to the fence. Our initial design had four rows of lines one foot apart alternating between energized and ground. Then another two lines above at two foot increments, both grounded. The thought was that the deer would walk up to the fence, get shocked and then either run away or look to see there were wires in the way preventing their jumping over. We knew there was the possibility that the deer would jump through the two foot gap but at the time we built the fence the local supplier did not have enough insulators for us to add eight wires total. So we went with the six wire fence.
This week we made it into an eight wire fence by adding a wire in each of the two foot gaps thus now having eight wires each a foot apart. Nothing fancy. Now for the interesting part. To add the new wires we first put all the insulators on the t-post, then ran the wire around the perimeter and then threaded the wire into the insulators. We then wrapped one end of the wire around an end post with an insulator. Once this was complete I moved to the other end of the wire by the other end post to wrap it around that end post with an insulator. When I grabbed the wire I got a fairly impressive jolt. What made it so impressive is that the system was turned off and completely disconnected! Where was this current coming from? Did we just create a free electricity generator? Woohoo. I’m rich!
Unfortunately no. For those of you who have been to the farm you may have noticed the high voltage power lines that skirt the northern half of the farm running from east to west (or do they run west to east?) The northern leg of our electric deer fence runs parallel to the power lines. And what happens when you run a conductive wire parallel to another line that has power? That’s right. It induces an electrical charge into the un-powered line! So by having the north leg of the fence running parallel to the power line we usurped power from the power company to power our electric fence. Free electricity for all — except for the electric company!
But wait a minute. When we first set up the fence a few weeks ago we did not get shocked. Back then we did not have any current in our fence until we turned on the energizer. Why did it act differently this time? My best guess — and it is only a best guess since I’m a farmer not an electrical engineer or a physicist — is that the weather when we ran the first six lines was dry whereas the weather for these final two lines was drizzly and misty. I don’t know why this would cause the induced current but at the very least this would make me a better ground.
Now here is the part I can”t explain at all. When we hooked up the new wires to the old, electrified wires (but without the energizer on or connected) the new wires were no longer energized. Prior to making this connection I measured the voltage using an electric fence tester and we were getting a fairly consistent 500 volts. There was a bit of flickering but mostly steady. None of the previously installed wires had any voltage. You’d think since they follow the same path and have basically the same design they would also be energized by the high voltage power line but they aren’t. And when we connect the old to the new they all have no voltage. Where did the voltage go? The only explanation I can come up with is that the old wires are somehow slightly grounded (maybe a few weeds or something touching them). But when the fence is energized the tester reads 5000 volts and gives a pretty good zap if you touch them (which I have done too many times). Maybe having multiple wires connected in parallel somehow negates each other. Who knows.
Now here is the funny part. After many shocks and our subsequent “solution” to remedy the situation (connecting all the hot wires together) we had one last step to do. We needed to put a strainer on the two new lines. What is a strainer? It is basically a metal ratchet that you place in the line to tighten the line. To install the strainer you cut the line, crimp one side of the cut line to one end of the strainer. Then thread the other end into the ratchet end of the strainer then ratchet it until it is as tight as you feel is appropriate.
So step one: cut the line. No problem. Step two: crimp connect the strainer to one end of the cut line. No problem. Step three: thread the other end of the line into the ratchet end of the strainer. Big problem! Shocks for all who tried! Shock. Shock. Shock. Why all this shocking all of a sudden? Didn’t the connection of all the hot wires together solve this shocking problem? Well, once you think about it it is obvious. When we cut the line we disconnected the shocking end from the connection we made to the old hot wires. Remember when I mentioned earlier that once we made this connection the voltage dropped to an undetectable level? Well, now the one end of the wire is no longer connected to the other and this end just so happens to be the end that runs under the power lines. So now the wire has an induced voltage with no where to go — until we touch the wire. Zap!
It took me a few minutes to figure this out and to also figure out how to solve this problem. If we could only get the wire into the strainer ratchet the circuit would be complete and the electricity would go wherever it was going in the other wires. But we couldn’t touch the wire without getting zapped. Finally it dawned on me that I had to ground this end of the wire until we completed the strainer install which would complete the connection and get the electricity out of the wire. Once I grounded it there was no more current going through whoever touched it. Of course none of the employees wanted to be the tester so I of course manned-up and grabbed a hold of the wire. And of course was not killed, which I can prove by writing this newsletter. But since I am not completely dumb I used the fence tester first to ensure I was not going to be zapped. After all this work I must say I feel energized!
Anyway, if someone can explain why connecting the new hot wires to the old hot wires stopped the flow of electricity through my body when I touched the new wires I’d love to know the answer and will gladly share it with the two other people who read this newsletter. If you don’t know the answer you can still send in questions, comments, suggestions, insulated safety equipment or other things you think would be helpful or interesting for us here at the farm.
Joke of the Week
Why don’t the carrots in the harvest crate get shocked? Because they are no longer grounded.