Solar Farms in Ontario

It has been a while since I last posted, but here is an update on what is going on.

I am still contacting organizations in Forestburg and meeting with people to determine if they need any sort of help.  Some people know they need help, others say that they need help but know of other organizations needing more help than they do, and some organizations do not require any form of assistance. I don't have too much to write about Forestburg for this past week because I ended up taking a last minute trip to Ontario for a funeral.

Ontario is where I spent the first seven years of my life, until my family moved to Alberta, but I have a lot of family in Ontario and a lot of my relatives have farms.  When most people think of rural areas they don't think of rural municipalities, but more of farms with crops and livestock. While driving in South- western Ontario between Sarnia and Petrolia my uncle pointed out a farm that was like none I had ever seen before.  It was a solar farm.

This is the solar farm. Rows and rows of solar panels.

This solar farm sells energy to the Hydro Company which then sells the power to those in the area.  A few farmers have also invested in solar panels on their farm while others have created a co-op to help cover the initial cost of the panels, with the aim of dividing the money that comes in when the excess energy is purchased. Solar energy is sustainable and even though the initial cost is significant, the reward over the next few years and decades are worth it.

Most farmers  are not able to use an entire field for solar panels, nor would they have the funds to "plant" the solar panels, but having a solar farm is an interesting concept.  The field that these arrays are "planted" in is what some locals called "not good farming land" because it was usually flooded in the spring and lacked drainage needed to grow any sort of crop.  I guess if you can't plant anything at least you can harvest sunlight.

Here is another picture from my trip, nothing related to work, or rural areas or anything like that.  It's just one of my favourite spots to visit when I go home to Ontario to visit my relatives.  This is the Bluewater Bridge, and it may look like any other bridge, but an interesting thing about it is that it connects Canada(Sarnia, Ontario) and the USA(Port Huron, Michigan).  I did not bring my passport to Ontario with me on this trip so I couldn't cross over to the States, but about half way through the St. Clair River is the border between these two countries, and the land on the other side is the United States.  I appreciate the water and am always amazed that Sarnia has a Coast Guard, but it has to in order to protect this border.