I was surprised he came out at all.  I always heard one will stay back and watch the kits while the other hunts.  He was sitting in a position where he could see Fiona but also had a direct line for hearing back to the den.  Fiona ate a few bites and then started hiding the rest of the food in various spots around the area.  I'm guessing she wanted to hide it so other animals wouldn't get it and then she will come back later to eat or for Fred to eat once I was gone.  

Anything new with the actual homestead projects?

You mean like actual work projects?  Those aren't much fun any more.  Seriously, when it comes to hanging out with 7 foxes or being covered head to toe in dirt and sweat the foxes are going to win every time.  

I do have updates going back to September that I could have posted.  The last update looks around Nov with the mini-excavator doing creek work but that was just a tiny part of what I did.  I thought I had posted of more of those pictures in this thread but looking back I do not see them.  Once the time change comes and weather cools I lose a lot of interest in playing/working outside until spring comes.  

I have been doing a ton of clean up, lots of dead trees and falling branches.  I finally started work on another area of the property that was completely over grown.  Been doing some additional dirt work along the creek which also included cleaning up some dirt/rock piles that had dropped off the other year.  It takes a lot to keep that property clean  and tidy and despite working at it I'm still failing that.

A project I have been tackling the last month is pulling down a bunch of Tree of Heaven trees (Ailanthus altissima) leaning over the road, over the neighbors power line, and over the neighbors house.  They are Chinese invasive species that grows extremely fast but that makes them extremely brittle, susceptible to rot on the inside, and they drop branches all the time.  Having them lean over the road and neighbors property has bothered me since I bought the place.  There is/was also a large one with a slight lean backwards over my house.  It needed to go but I wasn't how to safely take it down.  I did manage to do that and have video.  

I finally pulled down the worst of the worst trees leaning over the road.  It was maybe 35' tall but was leaning at a 20 degree angle over the road, which includes 4 massive fiber optic lines, next to the street light, and it was tucked in behind a black cherry tree.  I knew as soon as I started pulling the tree it would bind against the black cherry tree, then because it is so brittle the hinge on the stump to snap letting the tree rotate and fall wherever, if it fell 10 feet to the right it would take out the power line to the neighbors house.  If I couldn't pull it then it would fall on the fiber optic lines and into traffic on the road.  There was also a chance if I pulled to hard the tree would just snap where I had the pull rope and the top would become lodged in the fiber optic lines while dangling into the street.  I'm too stubborn to pay a tree company with a truck a few hundred dollars to make a couple cuts and drop the branches when I could just use a vehicle to pull it over for free.  The tree fell exactly like I thought it would.  I even kept the hinge thicker hoping it would hold longer, it did not.  Everything went fine until it hit the black cherry tree, I was slowly pulling it hoping it would eventually slip by, then I heard the hinge pop and just gunned my vehicle to yank it over.  It came down in 4 different pieces, got within 5 feet of taking the neighbors power line out, but more or less fell on my property with no damage to anything else.


Here is a before picture. The red line on the left shows the shape of the tree and how it leans hard over the road and is behind the black cherry.  I ended up removing every other tree, besides the black cherry, in order to get to the outlines tree.  The red line on the right is the power line from the light pole to the neighbors house.




Side view of the tree, all the branches for it start at thepower pole are hanging over the road.




Wider view of the area.  All but 2 trees are the chinese invasive species, the small hackberry the pull rope is tied to and the black cherry.




An example of how brittle the trees are.  Just from dropping it the branches shatter.

Thankfully the trees are very light weight and easy to pull over even if they are leaning the wrong way.  I tried to this with a hackberry last year while using my tractor.  It did not go well.  

Between the light weight and the tow rope the result is I look like an expert at falling trees.  This one dropped right where I wanted and didn't touch the sassafras tree that it fell next to.



This tree was concerning as it was top heavy in multiple directions.  All the infrastructure lines behind and to the side of it are clearly visible.  



It dropped where I wanted, missed the sassafras tree and did not interfere with the traffic on the road.  




Making progress and a mess.  I have cut more trees down than this but I don't have any after pictures yet.

Nice! That is the kind of update I have been waiting for.

Good show.

I started working out there once the time changed back.  Not sure why winter affects me so much now.  I grew up a lot further north on a farm and used to work outside all winter long.  Now I've just gotten comfortable and lazy I guess and prefer not too.  

The lines are fiber optic lines and the pole is owned by AT&T.  The phone companies do not care about trees and put it all on the owner.  The street light has had problems and I tried to get the crews working on it to cut the branches back but they won't.  I called the city and said they were interfering with the street lights and city said they would trim them back but never did.  I just want that chance of a lawsuit taken off my plate.  Also those trees put out millions of seeds combined and those suckers will grow everywhere.  I'm working on removing all of that type of tree from the property.  

The next step is trying to figure out what type of trees to plant back there.  I need something that will grow tall enough a dump truck can fit under it but not something that will grow more than 30 feet or grow too wide and hit the neighbors house.  

Technically the tree will sit about 2 feet above the driveway as the rock wall sort of creates a raised bed.  So no branches below 13 ft.  It would take pruning of the lower branches for it to work.  Or I just need to find a tree that is less than 10 ft in diameter when mature.  Still not sure that I will find what I think I'm looking for but that is what my idea is right now.

Two nights ago  The "little one" in the back and mom up front.




Last night picture of the mom.  You can see the indentation behind her rib cage which I haven't seen in a long time.  I wish I could find the den and get a camera put in there.  

Fiona has been coming around and looking well but we've had rain the last 2 nights and I haven't seen her.  The Little One was gone for 2 nights but she showed up tonight.  She looks just her mom.  I can only tell them apart by how close they will come to me or where they are sitting in the yard when i get out there.

When they were all kits there was a smaller one that always hung back in the shed and Fiona would take food to it.  Even when they were all 3/4 grown that one would hang back and Fiona would bring some food to it.  If I had to guess that would be the little one that she allowed to stay around; hence the name Little One.  I have no way of knowing for sure though, just a guess based on behavior.

The boys ran off on their own which is what all the research I did said they would do.  Once fall comes the kits are supposed to leave the area and go off on their own adventures.  Fiona would snap at them if they got close her while eating but she never went after them or their food.  The only one she actively chased off was the 5th kit that showed up half way through summer.  It was the oddest thing, there would be 3 kits and her eating in the fall, and she would run circles around the other two kits while chasing the last kit away.  Then she would come back and continue eating with her 2 kits.  That's when I started thinking the 5th kit came from another family.  

Fox photo shoot 5-26-2023   @Kitties-with-Sigs

This is "Little" the smallest kit from last year who still hangs around.




The foxes are constantly scanning every direction and focus on every little noise.  With two foxes near each other that becomes even more obvious.

My prior posts in this thread is the best timeline.   It was on 4/30 that she came back after being gone for 5 days.  Assuming she had them the night I heard the animal in distress that would be around April 25th that she had them.  I have a picture from April 29th last year which shows she was nursing then.  I think she had them a few weeks later than she did last year.  

It wasn't until July last year before I first saw a glimpse of the kits.  I would expect it to be another month for that.  

Things just got a little more interesting with the foxes.  Fiona is a grandmother.  Now I really need to come up with a different name for "Little" because in a month or two things are going to get really confusing.

Any suggestions for what I should name the fox in the background of the pictures above?

Poor quality picture but it is just barely possible to tell that she is nursing.




As for the backyard and gardens the grass has come in nicely but there is still a lot of work to do on the gardens.  The lilies are starting to bloom and the foxes hang out in the background.



The tiger lilies just opened up.

The two female foxes on the left and another fox from last years litter on the right.  The fox on the right is larger and stands back further.  He is comfortable with me seeing him and if I toss a hotdog he is running towards it before it hits ground which means he is familiar with how I feed them.  The original male fox never behaved that way, so I assume it is one of the young males that stuck around until winter.  

wish we could get some foxes to hang around.

There is a family of otters living in the creek.  Two adults and at least 2 little ones.  They weren't too thrilled that I saw them.  They swam away but then came back to a tree rootball that is in the creek and went behind it.  

@Kitties-with-Sigs

First sighting to the new batch of fox kits last night!  It was near dark so I don't have any pictures.  Fiona started running off with small bites of hotdog and would return in 30 seconds.  Previously she would only run off with a whole hotdog and it is about a 2 minute round trip to her den.  On the third small piece that she took off with I followed her at a distance and got to see at least 2 kits come out from the brush to her.  She is a month later at bringing them out and they are a bit larger than they were last year but not a month older.  The male was around as well and I tossed him a couple whole hotdogs.  Once I moved to a spot where the male could see me the kits disappeared.  I heard a couple small barks, which is similar to what I heard last year from the male telling the kits to hide.  

The daughter comes nightly for hotdogs as well.  She will take food and run off as well.  There is a male that daughter seems friendly with and there was male the other night where I saw the kits but he did not look like the original dad.  The daughter seems to run off in the same direction as the mother.  So maybe they have near by dens?  I have no clue how that works.  The behavior tonight was really confusing as well.  The daughter followed me when I moved closer to where the kits come out at.  She would take hotdog pieces and hide them.  At one point she headed over to where the kits were but didn't feed any of them.

Tonight I saw them all and got a bit closer but still kept at least a 50' distance.  Being 50' away, at dusk, and in the shade resulted in some great potato pics.




This guy decided to join the fun...




Actual distance I was from the foxes.  This is raw image of the first picture.  The gray blobs in front of the building are the mom and 2 kits and the daughter is on the right hand side in the middle of the frame.

@Kitties-with-Sigs

First video I have of the fox babies.  I've only seen 2 so far.  Last year she had 4 but around the size they are now the dad took 2 with him and the mom kept 2.  So I'm not sure how many there are.  A male does show up for food but doesn't take it to where the mom or daughter goes.

Tonight was a mess of foxes.  Fred finally showed back up. The last time I remember seeing him as last November. Fiona, Little, and Larry all made appearances.  Fred had little ones with him but I'm not sure if they were in addition to the two in my video or included them.  At one point I'm pretty sure I saw 3 little ones running around together.  It was near dark and everything was a blur with foxes running everywhere.  Last night I'm pretty sure I saw Little's offspring, as a 1/4 size fox appeared and she took food over to it.  Fiona's offspring are just over 1/3 grown.  I'm still not sure where Larry fits in.  

Any updates on the beautiful homestead, aside from the foxes?

I do.  The foxes are by far the most entertaining for me though and I don't end up covered in dirt or sawdust while being drenched in sweat.

Garden and firepit area back in early July.  It is coming along nicely.







Walnut trees continue to be a pain




Started work on the next solar ground mount so I can finish building out my system.



Lifting it into place



The conduit trench has been dug and conduit ran.  This is where I am at right now.  I want to add another ground rod before filling everything back in.  Then I will need to mount the panels and figure out the layout of the wiring.  I went with the a different layout of the panels this time just to see how it turns out. That complicates the wiring a bit since I'm using Enphase micro-inverters and the cable that connects to the panels has ports set at a specific length.  

A year ago this month I started moving the back of that garden area to create a larger sitting/standing area by the fire pit.









Now the area is flat and has thick grass.

Thanks Swire!

So far I have seen 4 little foxes.  Two are half the size of the others and I believe they belong to daughter.  The little one in this picture goes to the grand mother for food but the day this picture was taken ignored her when she walked by and then chased after and sat by the daughter.  It's very interesting to see them operating as one big multi-generational family.  Everything I read said foxes go their own way at 1 year old.




This was about 30 second earlier.  Mom up front, daughter, and the little one.

@Kitties-with-Sigs

Fox update.  

I have seen 9 foxes so far but have a feeling there maybe 10.  There were 5 little ones below the terrace wall and 3 adults and 1 little one with me above the wall.  I'm still not sure of the count or family structure.  I'm leaning towards 4 little ones from the original mom and 2 little ones from the daughter mainly due to size difference and behavior.  It could be 5 and 1 or even 6 and 0.  Other than 1 little one the daughter, Little, seems uninterested in caring for any of the others while the mom, Fiona, cares for all 6.

To make it more confusing, Fiona and her litter come from behind the the shed in the middle of the property.  Little comes from the corner of the house and would take food back to the corner of the house.  Weeks ago I fed everyone and Little took food to the corner of the house while making the noise foxes make to call their young.  The other week Little was nowhere to be found, she went 2 or 3 days without showing up.  Fiona then carried food to the corner of the house making the noise to call the young.  Very interesting but very confusing.

Establishing order.  This behavior I find intriguing.  The little ones will fight over food, with some snapping and nipping as they try to steal food or claim their area to keep others away.  Little, usually stays on the upper level with me but gets greedy and will go to the lower level and try to get more food with the young ones.  Last week she started getting aggressive with them, snapping at them and stealing food.  I yelled at her once trying to get her to knock it off.  Apparently that didn't work.  At one point I had turned my back to everything to look around and heard her snapping at the young ones following aggressive growling and snapping.  I thought maybe she laid into one of the little ones that didn't back down.  Instead I see Fiona walking away from the creek, about 100ft from where they are fed.  A minute later I see Little poking her head up from the creek and slowly coming back out.  Apparently Fiona had enough of Little being aggressive and went after her chasing her into the creek.  Little has not acted up like that since.  Two nights ago a possum came out on the upper level and was very aggressive, moving quickly and snapping, towards Fiona and a little one.  They moved away instead of engaging it. Last night one of the males, I'm going to call him Larry, who is comfortable being near me was out with them when the possum came out acting like he owned the place.  Larry laid into him hard, multiple bites, a couple shakes, and a toss.  The possum ran off apparently learning his place.  

Another interesting behavior, which I may or may not be correct about, and why I think there would be 10 foxes.  Last year Fred, the original dad, was always in the far back observing and providing security. The little ones below the terrace wall come out in the path between wooded areas.  Several times I have been barked at by a fox that I cannot see.  Fred would need to be in the woods to be behind everyone and I can't see him.  The other night I went down to the lower level to put some chicken eggs out and Larry, who stays more in the middle of the group and visible started barking at me for getting too close.  The other night I had a couple of the little ones on the upper terrace and was only throwing food to them, trying to get the rest of them to come up.  Either the rest of them started to get too far away from Fred or Fred was getting mad that I wasn't feeding the lower level ones, either way he started barking me and stopped once I started feeding the foxes on the lower level.  Then Larry started barking at me to feed the little ones on the upper level.  At least that is what it seemed liked.  This is the first time that 2 different foxes in two different areas of the yard barked at me.

No research that I have come across suggests that foxes will work together in multi-generational units.  Everything says they all go their own way in the fall.  

Five little ones on the lower terrace.

For those interested in non-fox updates...

The second solar array hit a snag.  I was hoping to rotate the second ground mount about 90 degrees from the original to take up less horizontal space; however, gravity decided to remind me that engineering something isn't that easy.  I thought I was almost done and started to mount panels but something was wrong; I could not get even 2 panels to line up together properly.  Turns out the middle part of the mount had already sagged/warped about 1 1/2" inches just under its own weight.  Those supports were vertical in the original but rotated 90 were now horizontal and not nearly as strong that way.  I had to use large ratchet straps to pull everything back into place, add support, and remount the rails.

I built the mount in a way that I could, in theory, flip it so that the top would become the bottom and I could work on it.  Unfortunately that became a necessity, at least with the mount.




To start with I added a 4x6x12 to the top edge to serve as a beam that everything else would hang off of.  Had I originally done this I might have been ok.  Since I can flip my mount instead of trying to raise a 4"x6"x12' up in the air about 12', by myself, I was able to work at ground level after flipping the mount.





Even with the straps and new beam there was still significant sag in the supports.  I added 2x4s below each cross member and then screwed them all together.  




This is what it looks like with the beam and supports.  The strap in the middle is to hold the mount in this position as it is slightly top heavy due to extra weight of the beam.  Once the panels are on it should be slightly bottom heavy.




Next up I will mark the centerline again and then run a string line for the panels.  That will ensure that even if the supports aren't perfectly aligned I will still have a straight centerline to align all the panels.  

Making progress on the solar.  String line is in place the panels line up much better since I reinforced the mount.




Getting some evening work on my array.  One factor of my mount design was to be able to put the array flat or even tip it upside down.  Stacking it 5 panels tall makes it very difficult to get to the upper panels...unless you can tilt it flat and then it easily accessible by an 8 ft step ladder.  It hasn't been bad lifting the panels on to the side rail and then sliding them up and over.

I still have 4 microinverters and 2 more panels to put up.  Then connect the panels to the microinverters, the inverters to the trunk cable, and secure the wiring.  After that I have to add another junction box, make a short run of wire to the main junction box, and connect all the circuits.

I've had multiple tomato plants get spots on them and start to wilt in July.  Oddly other plants right next to them were thriving.  I took 3 different plants into the Extension Office and they had the lab at UK analyze them to determine what virus/bacteria would be causing it.  All the labs came back negative and they concluded that it must be wilt from Walnut trees.  This patch of garden is located as far as possible from the walnut trees.  The root zone of the nearest tree would end 50' away from the garden.  The tree itself is close to 75' away.

A month ago the leave were just wilting, now they are dead.  If you look behind this plant you see a large thriving tomato plant.  Cherry tomato plants that I have seem immune to everything and are doing very well.

Recent family photo of part of the current generation of foxes.  At least 3 more are missing from the picture.  I'm still trying to get the rest of them to come up to this level of the yard, mainly so I can get a good picture and count of them.

In the back row, the second from the left, that fox I call Mini for obvious reasons.  

All 10 panels mounted and connected to the micro-inverters.  The next step is to finish the electrical connection to my house.  Most of the conduit is already ran but there is about a 4' piece and the final junction box that I need to install.  After that is running the wire and making the connections.  It is only about a 30' run of wire to the main junction box on the other array.  Then I can tilt the array to the proper angle for this time of year.

The fox family dynamics are getting strained but I'm not sure if it a generational thing or just a behavioral thing.  Tonight Fiona was feeding Mini but then started attacking Mini and running her off.  I'm not sure if that is because Mini is too needy/demanding about every little bit of food or not.  She did the same to Little last year as Little exhibited the same behavior about food.  Or does Fiona know that Mini belongs to Little and was trying to secure the area for her own pups?  Then Fiona aggressively went after Little twice attacking her and chasing her out of the area.  Little was being aggressive at getting every little bit of food she could but not snapping at Fiona's little ones this time.  A bit later Little came back and kept more distance and Fiona left her alone.  

I saw 8 foxes tonight.  Two stayed on the lower tier.  The initial six (see picture below) was Fiona up front, Larry on the left, unnamed, unnamed, Mini, unnamed.  I'm not exactly sure when Little showed up.  She did come up to the upper tier but she wasn't there in the beginning. I don't think Larry is Fred, as Larry has been near me when I heard another male fox bark.  Larry's behavior does not match how Fred acted last year.  Yet Larry will take food to the little ones and will make them chase him down for food just like Fred did last year.  

Electrical connections for the second array complete.   I still need to adjust the angle of the array, clean up the job site, wash the panels....etc but the array is now producing power.




One slight problem, early morning the first array casts a shadow on part of the second array reducing the power production.  The good thing about using micro-inverters is the only the shaded panels get affected instead of the entire array.  This image from the Enphase Enlighten software shows that well.  Around 11:30am is when the shadow disappears.  I am losing about 0.5 kWh of production over the course of the morning due to the shading.  For me that is about 5 cents worth of power.  The first array is on rails just like second array.  I might try loosening the bolts and sliding it over about a foot.  The first array is also shaded by top of a walnut tree.







I have a 16 circuit Emporia energy monitor installed in the house which lets me monitor how much power I use or generate per circuit.  It has reports/graph that can show by the second, minute, hour, or day. This is the report for 1 leg of the incoming solar showing solar power through the day more than doubled from the previous day after I connected the second array.  




Day total for the last month for the entire house, not just solar production. I pushed a surplus of 16 kWh to the grid yesterday on top of what the house consumed.  The Enphase software says I produced 20.3 kWh.  The peak of the other days was just below 8kWh.  The few bars in blue must have been from days it was raining.  I have 1:1 net metering right now so all that extra is recorded as a credit which I end up using in the winter months.  But for now the panels produce more solar than the house uses.  

@swire - always enjoy your updates

what rails/brackets are you using on your mount?

I used the Ironridge brand and bought it from the AltE Store.  https://www.altestore.com/search/?w=&x=0&y=0&w=ironridge

It's all designed to work together and is very easy to install.  I bought the heaviest duty rail sections as they are supposed to be able to handle up to a 12 ft span.  I think they sag a bit but they are still doing ok.  

Ironridge XR-1000 Rail, 17 Foot Section
Clear (Mill) IronRidge Slotted L Foot
IronRidge Universal Fastening Object (UFO)

The XR-1000 rails have 3 slots in them, two on the side and one on the top.  The bolts they sell are have a parallelogram shape base that fits into the slot when aligned properly but then once turned will lock into place and not rotate or fall out.  That makes it easy to slide and move things up and down the rails before locking things into place and only requires one wrench to do so.  

You can see the two back rails the L shaped foot.  Since I was mounting aluminum to pressure treated wood I used a silicone spacer under each foot and a galvanized lag screw.  The UFO fastener goes between the two panels and into the top of the rail.  As you tighten it down the fastener scuffs up the top of the panel to remote the paint which bonds the panel to the rail through the fastener.  The micro-inverters are also mounted to the top slot in the rail.  

To slide my first array over all I need to do is loosen up these nuts, 16 of them total, and in theory the rails should slide.  Since they have weight on them and all 4 rails need to slide at the same time it will probably be much more difficult to slide the array than I think.  



UFO fastener




Complete list of hardware and pre-Biden inflation prices:

EcoFasten Solar Stainless Steel Lag Bolt, 5/16 x 3" - quantity: 40 - price: $44.00
Ecofasten Solar 5/16" EPDM Bonded Washer - 25PK - quantity: 2 - price: $9.98
Ironridge XR Rail Wire Clips (Bag of 20) - quantity: 2 - price: $18.50
Ironridge XR-1000 Rail, 17 Foot Section, Clear - quantity: 8 - price: $526.00
Ironridge End Cap for XR-1000 Rails - Pair (Left/Right) - quantity: 8 - price: $20.40
Bonding Hardware, Square, for FlashFoot 2 and L Foot, Each - quantity: 32 - price: $40.00
IronRidge Universal Fastening Object (UFO), Clear, Each - quantity: 52 - price: $117.00
IronRidge XR Grounding Lug w Hardware, Each - quantity: 8 - price: $33.20
IronRidge Microinverter Bonding Hardware, TBolt, Each - quantity: 24 - price: $28.56
Clear (Mill) IronRidge Slotted L Foot - quantity: 32 - price: $64.00
IronRidge XR Stopper Sleeve, 40MM, Clear,EACH - quantity: 20 - price: $7.80
Bare Copper Wire by the Foot, 6AWG,solid - quantity: 100 - price: $75.00

Basket total: $984.44
Shipping: $309.47
Order Total: $1,293.91

Time to clean the solar panels.  One feature of my mount design is the ability to turn the panels vertical or nearly vertical. Being able to adjust the tilt lets me pick the best angle for the sun as it changes during the year but it also makes cleaning them easier.


These are set at a 30 degree angle which the ideal tilt area for my location in September.




Dropped them near vertical for cleaning




Cleaning supplies and equipment.  The bucket on the tractor is used as a work platform.  Not needed to brush but is to get the pressure washer nozzle close.



An example of some of the dirt on the panels



Pre-soak with grime remover concentrate applied through the pressure washer.



Scrubbing with a soft bristle brush.  Even though the panels don't look dirty the water coming off them was brown when I was rinsing them off.  Each panel was sprayed with cleaner, brushed, cleaner, brushed, and sprayed with cleaner again before switching to the high pressure wash.



High pressure wash/rinse



The bucket was needed to reach the top of the 5 row array.  



Cleaned and shiny panels



Arrays pushed back into position.  Set them to about 32 degrees as the October tilt angle is 35.8 degrees.  Ready to see how they perform tomorrow.  

Thanks for the detailed info.

I've got a few 395s that I'm putting on moveable skids for now (2 per skid), just to get them in play around the property, but will be doing some permanent mounts in the future for a few arrays and am trying to work out how I want to mount them.