This morning, when I did my rounds, it was dark enough that I was able to see which of the LED bulbs on our fence lights were working or not, and pulled the burnt out bulbs.

Of the 4 strings of white lights we’ve got out there, two of them had more burnt out bulbs than lit ones! They will be replaced completely, and the working bulbs will be used to fill in the gaps on the other two strings. Anything left over will be kept as spares.

I’m rather disappointed in these. LED lights should last a lot longer, even if they are on all the time. With one of the strings, all the bulbs on one side – more than half the string – were out. If there were not more strings of lights plugged in at the other end that are working, I would have thought it was a break in the wires or something, but power is getting through just fine.

I’ve been getting these at Costco, and they bring the same brand out in advance of Christmas every year. Unfortunately, they don’t sell spare bulbs, and the lights comes with only 2 spares in the boxes. I’d tried to find spares elsewhere, but it turns out that other stores don’t carry the brand. The spares they have are for the brands they carry, and that’s it. It turns out there can be substantial differences in the parts that plug in, even if the bulbs themselves look identical!

It has warmed up quite a bit today. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because I should be able to do some stuff outside that I couldn’t do when it was colder. Bad because we now have freezing rain, so it’s incredibly slippery out there! I almost fell, coming out of the sun room with kibble for the outside cat food bowls. This, even knowing that it was icy and being careful! Driving my daughter to work wasn’t too bad. I could really feel the difference with the new tires. The highway was more melted than frozen; a combination that is actually more dangerous to drive on than if it was one or the other.

We’re supposed to stay around 0C today. I’m hoping it’s enough for things to melt and dry a bit on the south facing steps. I’m wanting to use a spray foam insulation to fill a gap that has formed as the steps at our main entry has slowly sunk over the decades.

We’ve also started to use some of the rigid insulation indoors. The East facing doors are easy; we don’t use them in the winter at all, so it was just a matter of cutting a couple of pieces to fit in between the doors. Hopefully, that will mean no more frost at the bottom of the inner door this winter!

The main entry doors are doing to take a bit more finagling. Frost builds up at the base of the inner door, too, but with the entry being in constant use, we have to find a way to affix the insulation to the door itself, in such a way that it can be easily removed in the spring, without damaging the door itself, but will also withstand the upcoming winter temperatures. We’ll be working on that part in a couple of days.

For now, I’m going to finally get organized and try that pro-biotic fermented vegetable version of sauerkraut again!

The Re-Farmer