Well, Season 1 of the Not Just Heather podcast was due to wrap up last month, however my off-grid system had a major failure during a particularly long period of un-sunny winter weather, which left me completely without power. I am very lucky that lasted less than a week before the generator was fixed and have since had some nicer sunny weather. We have 3 wonderful guests left who recorded with me for Season 1, and I look forward to completing the editing of their episodes to be able to share them with you.
Since getting the generator back up and running, my generator fuel bill (which is my power bill) for the past four weeks has been horrifically expensive. It costs $43 NZD for 20L of fuel, and we were going through 20L almost every 3 days…
Good news on the power front though, due to a connection of ours, we’ve secured a set of batteries that we’ve been able to wire up to create a back-up battery bank. This way I’m not reliant on my back up generator (which if you know of my journey, has caused me many an issue in the past). And a favourite saying I have is: “Always have alternatives to your alternatives!”
However, while winter causes the most power problems, and the timber shortage in NZ, balancing all the work projects has snowballed and has commandeered my nights & weekends, and I’ve had some serious family issues to deal with as well.
My sister gave me a book one year called “On Top of Everything” by Sarah-Kate Lynch which is an apt description of the past month.
Despite all that, I am ok, just worn out.
I really appreciate everyone who has reached out, and also my humble apologies for being offline for some time while I tried to wrangle life. I am not quite out of the woods yet, but I am working very hard to get things sorted out.
I hope this finds you well, and I’d love to hear how you are getting on.
Heather x
(P.S. Once Season 1 of the Not Just Heather podcast is successfully completed, I’m going to take time to work on Sunshine & PowerCuts which is being transformed from two alternating episodes to become one episode published monthly. I am looking forward to celebrating 10 years of my Off-Grid journey in December 2021! It’s a huge achievement I am proud of managing a modern life while developing my own power system.
The Just Heather podcast is a work in progress that needs time that I haven’t had to give it, but I am looking forward to exploring the recording of a personal journal untethered to how I make power.
And finally,Women On Mic is a project I am very proud of! Offering a way to build an educational resource together is amazing and I hope it helps those that find it and I hope we can reach more women to share their samples of their mics to help others. If you haven’t already, would you mind sharing the project with those that you know, and encouraging them to submit samples! Thank you! xx)