The golf cart stopped going last week and I finally got a chance to start the troubleshooting process.

We've been running it pretty hard lately on some rough ground, and my first thought was to take the batteries out so I could flip it on its side to see if anything had gotten damaged.

Everything looked fine, and the batteries measure a full charge. It could be the solenoid, or a problem with one of the switches. The next step will be to seek some professional advice from the guy we took it to last year.

It only took about 2 minutes to install an eye hook on the port and starboard side of the do it yourself golf cart dump box.

Now we have tie down points to attach a bungee cord to for easy snugging.

 

Today I discovered that 7 buckets of manure in the back with 3 buckets riding shotgun and 2 buckets of gravel on the floor board is about the load limit for the new home made golf cart dump box.

I can't believe it took us this long to make such an obvious improvement in carrying capacity.

These new peel and stick solar panels are more efficient than the fragile glass panels and cost about 300 bucks less. This new design allows for more robust applications, such as on the roof of a golf cart without the fear of your expensive panel breaking. Having the sun constantly charging your batteries prevents the sulfates from building up and extends the life of the battery bank by a minimum of 25%.

Since a golf cart is sometimes considered an electric car by the IRS you can deduct a nice 30% of your solar investment and you may even qualify for a few hundred bucks per year as a battery credit. These kits usually cost about 1600 dollars, weigh about 4 pounds and take about 15 minutes to install.

Add an inverter and it can double as an emergency back up power system for your home if you can manage to park it close enough to reach an extension cord to.

Want a free golf cart?  Move to Oklahoma!  A federal tax rebate currently allows people buying street-legal golf carts to write off $4,200 to $5,500 of the cost.  Add in the state rebate in Oklahoma and your golf cart is free.  (Although Oklahoma may have figured out this loophole and be working to fix it.)

Even if you don't live in Oklahoma, now might be a time to buy that golf cart for your homestead.  We've been thrilled at the way our electric golf cart acts as a utility vehicle on the farm, hauling leaves, firewood, and bodies (living, of course.)  It runs through the mud with ease, only has to be charged every month or two, and hardly ever breaks down.

Right now, I believe the only types of golf cart that fit the federal subsidy are made by Tomberlin and Star, the cheapest models of which can cost as little as $2,000 once you take your tax credit.  It sounds like a great deal, but some folks suspect these cheaply bought but sturdily constructed golf carts will be available used starting next year for extremely small sums.  So maybe it'd be better to wait and save even more....

Now, use the money you saved to buy Mark's homemade chicken waterer.

It's been almost a week now since we upgraded the rear tires on the golf cart and the only regret I have is that we didn't do this as soon as we liberated her from the nice and clean campground that she came from. I would guess that our ground grippage has doubled in comparison to the traction cables we had rigged on her before.

We decided to upgrade the traction chains on the golf cart to a more respectable solution. Now we can cruise through the mud with a bit more ease.

Yesterday we figured out the hard way what happens when you exceed the load limit in the heavy hauler trailer we use with the golf cart.

Normally it seems to be able to handle a full load of wood half haphazardly thrown in, but when you carefully stack each log next to its neighbor the volume increases to the point of a problem.


I heard a loud pop coming from the driveway where Anna was hauling firewood and knew some sort of tire mishap had occurred.

I think they sell these replacement wheels at the big box stores, or maybe we'll get lucky and our tire guy will work another rubber miracle by bringing it back to a functional life for a small fee?

I was struck by a throwaway sentence in Good Farmers, a book about traditional farming practices in Central America and Mexico.  The author noted that traditional farmers usually lack heavy equipment and funds to pay for lots of hired help, so they have to take a process-oriented approach to big tasks rather than being project-oriented.  For example, if they have a steep hillside that they'd like to terrace and create farmable ground, traditional farmers are more likely to put in a spare afternoon here and there building the terrace bit by bit rather than renting a bulldozer to get 'r done.

Homesteading is slowly teaching me to slip out of my project-oriented mindset and enjoy the journey.  For example, the wood we bought was delivered to our parking area, half a mile from our house.  At first, I was considering just taking a day and making golf cart trip after golf cart trip to bring the wood back to its shed.  But instead I've been taking in a load of wood whenever I need to drive the golf cart out to the cars anyway.  A week later, our shed is already a third of the way full!

 

If you listen closely you can hear the very distinct sound of Lucy's tail hitting the seat of her golf cart, which is one of my personal top 10 favorite sounds of all time.

It's really nice of her to let us use it whenever we need to haul anything or anybody back to the trailer.

  

We had another flat on the Club Car golf cart yesterday. It was on the only wheel without an inner tube. That's 3 separate trips to the tire guy in the span of a year.

The lesson to learn here is if you're going to use a golf cart under heavy farm conditions then you might as well install inner tubes in all 4 tires and save yourself some time and energy.

This loaded golf cart picture was taken yesterday and represents a full day's work of building, packing, and printing for our automatic chicken waterer microbusiness.

Our local Post Office deserves a big pat on the back for making the shipping side of our business fun and easy.

I took advantage of the last few hours of frozen ground yesterday to haul in a load of composted wood chips to add to the sheet mulch.  The wood chips have been sitting in our parking area for about three years now, I think, and as I shovelled them up I felt they were almost too good to lay down on a path.  Many of the chips had decomposed into rich brown dirt, and the nearby trees had begun to sneak their roots up to steal the bounty.

I suspect that may be our last trip in the golf cart for several days.  I'm thrilled by the forecast warm weather, but it's going to turn the driveway to goop before the ground starts to dry.  No driving for a while!

We gathered another load of manure Tuesday afternoon.  Last winter at this time, our pickup truck was working and we hauled manure in the truck and on a trailer behind the truck.  I shovelled a lot of that manure four times --- into the pickup, out of the pickup into a heap on the ground, into a wheelbarrow, and then from barrow to bed.  Phew!

This year, without a pickup truck, we're instead shovelling manure into five gallon buckets.  Given our ultra-fuel-efficient car and the one mile drive from farm to farm (8 cents per round trip), this method actually seems to work better.  We only shovel the manure once, into the buckets.  After that, we can lift the buckets into the golf cart, and then pour them individually onto our garden beds. 

But an even better way is on the horizon --- we ran into another neighbor who told us that if we help him shovel out his barn he'll drive a whole flatbed dump truck load to our garden.  If Mark had a more envious disposition, he would have been jealous at the lust which leapt into my eyes....

The sun was out for a few hours today proving that winter is slowly losing its grip on us.


This seems to be the maximum load I can get the golf cart to pull all the way up our hill.

When we got the golf cart back Monday, we started to drive it back to the house and promptly bottomed out.  We were tired, cold, and wet, so decided to leave it for the time being.

Then it poured down rain for two days, and we got sidetracked with other important chores (including taking Strider to be snipped!)  Finally, yesterday afternoon, I headed out to poke at the golf cart again.  I brought Mark's favorite hand tool --- the spud bar (more commonly known as a tamping bar.)  I can barely lift the thing, but it's extremely useful for breaking up soil when digging, then compacting the soil when putting it back in place around a fencepost.  I figured it might also work well as a lever to pry the golf cart up off the ground.

I slipped the spud bar under the grounded portion of the cart and lifted.  Whee! --- the cart slid down the tilted spud bar and up the hill.  The rainy weather and endless grant proposal I've been working on had me a bit down in the dumps, but the satisfaction of pulling the cart loose jolted me back into a good mood.  The spud bar --- mother's little helper.

The golf cart is now safe and sound back on the farm.

I didn't get the technical details of what exactly was wrong due to the mechanic not being in the shop, but hopefully we'll find out from him later what the major malfunction was.

I'll put the traction straps back on the wheels tomorrow and that should put us back in business for navigating the muddy driveway.

We got the golf cart to the mechanic this morning.  Yay!

Now Mark's at a board retreat until Sunday afternoon.

So it's just me...and the cats...and the dog...and the chickens.

Keeping the fire going (I hope.)

And eating chocolate chip cookies with nuts (that Mark hates) baked so that the center is nearly raw (which Mark hates.)

Sometimes it's good to have a weekend all my own.

By lunchtime yesterday, I had a grant proposal in the mail and a client's website updated.  Time to go out and play with Mark and the golf cart!

After the cut, I've included a bunch of photos about the process since I figure it might be useful to other folks who need to get a large piece of machinery up onto a trailer.  The trick is to back your trailer up to a steep enough hill so that the rear end of the trailer ends up level with the ground.

Here you see the only party injured by the afternoon's activity.  I forgot about my bread dough and let it rise for four hours instead of one.  Oops.  Luckily, the yeast still had plenty of gumption left to rise again in the pan.

The photos....

The ground thawed out enough today to get some traction for pulling the golf cart up the hill. Once we got it up the hill it took a while to figure out how to load it onto the trailer.

We decided to use the hand winch to pull it up another smaller hill to take advantage of the slant. Then we used the winch again to secure one side of the trailer to a tree and tied down the other side with a tow strap. At that point it only took a carefully guided roll backwards to seat it snuggly into place.

The trip into town will have to wait till tomorrow. It might seem like a small problem to solve, but when I saw everything loaded up and tied down I took a deep breath and felt like we had climbed a large mountain and jumped a significant hurdle. The fact that we struggled through it together made the victory even sweeter.

Operation golf cart went a lot more smoothly than I'd thought it would yesterday.  Until, that is, we reached the ford.

Mark gave a push and I hopped in to steer as the golf cart rolled down the steep side of the ford.  Then he rushed around across the footbridge to pull it up the other side.

We only made it halfway up the other side of the ford before we gave up.  Mark was pulling with all his might and I was pushing with all of mine, but the cart wouldn't budge.  So we drove my little blue Festiva down across snowy, ungravelled ground to try to pull it out.  Read more....

The golf cart stopped working and I have not been able to diagnose the exact problem. I found a guy in town that is willing to work on it, but we have to get it there first.

We made some good progress today with me pulling and Anna pushing and steering. Hopefully we can get it up the hill and loaded onto the trailer tomorrow.

Yes...it is quite a workout pulling a full size golf cart through the snow and mud and there's no way I could have made it as far as we did without Anna pushing, which I guess is a pretty good metaphor for a happy relationship where lots of exciting things get accomplished with the combined effort of two people who work well together.

With the golf cart not working the old yellow TC1840H steel yard cart has been getting a serious work out these past few weeks helping with firewood gathering.

It seems about twice as easy to pull if you catch the ground while it's still frozen.

I prepare the turkey breast and throw it in the oven.  Chop up potatoes and sweet potatoes and onions and garlic and spread them around the base.  Baste the turkey and prepare the stuffing.  Baste the turkey and throw the stuffing in the oven.   Baste the turkey....

...and Mark comes in next to frantic.  Half an inch of rain last night and the creek has risen to mid calf.  The golf cart is mysteriously ill, the footbridge treacherous.  How will my family make it in to enjoy our feast?

I look at him with soapy hands, three different side dishes yet to be begun running through my head.  I don't know.  Can they wear boots and wade through the water?  Read more....

The traction chains started slipping after a few days of back and forth in the mud.

I took each wheel back off and doubled the amount of rope and weaves. I also secured the rope ends with some metal wire.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that for about 5 dollars per tire you can get 100 percent nitrogen pumped into your tires. Nitrogen is more stable and will not fluctuate when the temperature changes. It is also reported to decrease the amount of inner tire decay.

Helium might seem like it could make your vehicle lighter, but it won't.... and then you have to deal with your car talking in that high pitched tone.

There's always so much work to do on the farm that we never seem to have time to be proactive, only reactive.  Water is a prime example.  Since the summer, we've had "bury water lines" on our to do list, but it never quite made it up onto the tasks we meant to conquer in any given week.  So when the first really cold spell hit, our lines froze and we were out of water.

Over the next week, Mark and I plan to get the water lines buried and the problem solved.  But in the short term, the dishes were piling up a foot above the sink.  So Sunday afternoon Mark and I set out in pursuit of immediate water.  We loaded some buckets into the club car and drove down to the creek through winter mud --- the kind that sits over half frozen ground and lets none of the recent rain drain away from the surface.

Our journey occurred before Mark installed the ice chains, so it was no surprise that we got stuck a few times and had to work our way free.  Mark lifted up the offending portion of the golf cart with the spud bar while I hit the acceleration and also pushed the cart along with one foot --- kinda like in the Flintstones but with my foot sticking out the side of the cart instead of through a hole in the floor.  Soon enough we'd filled up buckets at the creek and strapped them in place for the slipping, sliding journey home.

When we pulled up at the trailer door, both of us splattered with mud and water, our buckets had lost half of the water they'd started out with.  But both of us were laughing and invigorated from the adventure --- our buckets were indeed half full!

One good way to increase the traction on your golf cart is to add some ice chains.

The last few days have been wetter than usual and the extra mud presents a small navigation challenge.

I discovered today that it's best to remove the entire wheel in order to loop the connectors around and weave the whole thing together. Snug it up as tight as it will allow to minimize the extra bits from rubbing on the mud shield.

We used a few feet of synthetic rope for some additional holding power.  The whole operation took less than an hour and increased the mud pulling factor by at least 50 percent.

If you have a tire on your golf cart that develops a slow leak, you might want to consider an inner tube.

You don't need to replace the tire, especially if it still has plenty of good tread left. I took a trip into the big city this afternoon and found a tire store that installed new tubes for just under 15 dollars.

If you have a problem with getting your hands dirty and you have money to burn you might not find this tire condom as funny as I did. If you use this product in public you will most likely provoke some uncontrollable laughter by anyone who might pass by.

Throwing logs into the Heavy Hauler is much easier compared to the pick-up truck due to its lower profile. We can usually squeeze about 2 or 3 nights' worth of wood into one load.

We picked up this mini-trailer for just under 100 dollars. It can be moved by hand, but once it has a full load the pulling can be painful due to the tow bar banging against the back of your ankles.

It has a handy dump feature that we have yet to utilize. I'm not sure I would pay extra for this ability because the wheels make it easy to tilt back and with just a bit of effort you can flip the whole unit over, which is what needs to be done when it fills up with rain water.

The last few weeks have had everybody wondering about the future of our economy. Common sense says that hard times will require a good deal of sacrifice. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to predict that one of the first areas most folks will feel the squeeze is in higher fuel costs. This post will be an attempt to share with you what I've learned about building your own electric powered vehicle.

I'm sure everybody has seen those futuristic looking hybrid cars on the road, and I'm also sure that only a small percentage of you have the extra cash to spend 40 thousand dollars in an effort to save a few dollars at the pump. There is a lot of information on the internet these day about home made electric transports, and a good place to begin is EV Album.com. Here you can find an easy to navigate collection of projects including electric powered bikes, motorcycles, cars, and trucks. There's even a guy who managed to get a small tractor working with a golf cart motor.

The cheapest way to get moving with electric power is to convert one of your pedal powered bikes. There are some nifty kits available that use a small motor that attaches directly to the hub of your bike wheel. These packages start at around 300 dollars and can go up to a thousand and more depending on battery size and motor power. I've heard of several people adapting starter motors to power a bike chain, and if you're lucky you might be able to get a bike motorized for less than 50 bucks this way, but be prepared to walk home a few times before you get it perfected.

The next step up in electric mobility would be converting a motorcycle. The average low end cost seems to be about 1500 dollars with some people managing a bit under that and most going several thousand over. You can expect to get somewhere between a 10 and 50 mile range on each charge depending on road conditions and how good your batteries are.  

The holy grail of electric locomotion would be the elecrtic car/truck. Once you find the right car to convert and take out its gas powered engine you should be prepared to spend at least 10 thousand dollars and 100 or more man hours to get something reliable. The maximum range people seem to be reporting is around 50 miles, which will most likely improve as battery technology gets better. At the time of this writting the most popular vehicle for this type of conversion is the Chevy S-10 truck.

I considered what it would take to replace our old Isuzu farm truck's engine with an electric motor. Once I priced the motor, batteries, motor controller, battery charger, and other various items I concluded that it would be easier and cheaper to just buy a used golf cart. We found one on Craigs list a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at its performance crossing our creek and dealing with the muddy conditions here. Of course it doesn't have the same power as the four wheel drive truck, but it's a breeze to get unstuck if you have someone pushing from behind, and sometimes it just feels better to get by with less.