Our 7kw Kubota diesel generator would normally be found on a tractor. I don’t know how old this one is. I would suggest close to thirty years. We have been told it will long out live us all.

Late in the afternoon, one day last week, the fan belt on it died. We had thought about having a spare fan belt on hand for years (ten) but never got around to it. One other guy on the island has a similar generator. He had three spare fanbelts. (that is the kind of guy he is) Traded him a bottle of home made antipasto for it and E had the generator fixed by dinner.

This week, again, it stopped. Just wouldn’t start. Without so much as an adios it just quit. Fortunately we have a spare Yamaha 6600 which we have as a back up. You know, just in case. We have long wanted to hook it up with the Kubota so that it would just require a simple switch to change from one to the other. But E’s to do list is long and that particular job was way down the list.

The weather has been miserable lately and E didn’t feel like working in the rain to sort it all out so he just manually plugged the backup Yamaha into our system to solve the immediate problem. We have had all the power we needed for the last couple of days with our backup but, with better weather today, he set out for the gen shed to solve his problem d’jour. Job list, item one, fix Kubota generator.

One of the suggestions on the google forum for Kubota starter problems was “if all else fails tap it with a hammer”. E decided to “before trying anything” tap the starter with a hammer. Three taps and the generator started and is running like a charm.

My friend came to the rescue yesterday lending me 27 empty one-gallon plant pots so I could continue potting up the tomatoes. I spent the day today mixing soils together and prepping them for when I need to move tomatoes up to that size pot. Weather looks to be really great next week so there is hope for great progress in the growth of the greenhouse plants..

All plants have now been moved up to the greenhouse, although all are in varying stages of development, I am optimistic they will be ready for the plant sale. There are a ton of sweet peppers thriving, which I hadn’t expected. I learned last year to keep them in five-gallon, black plastic plant pots throughout the summer rather than planting them in the garden. The ones in the pots last year were three times the size of the ones moved into the garden soil. The bonus is that in September they can also be moved into the greenhouse to continue production. With the same thought in mind the plan is to plant a few tomatoes into big black pots to then also bring into the greenhouse in September.

140 onions (70 red and 70 yellow) have now been planted in between the rows of garlic. The thinking is, that space is limited and, when the onions are getting bigger and need space, the garlic will already have been harvested in July.

E thought fixing the generator would take the whole day, maybe need some parts ordered on-line, instead it took ten minutes. This freed up his day to spend dealing with

less pressing issues.