April 9, 2012

HUMAN INTEREST: An artist's rendering

By SCOTT WRIGHT

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SAND ROCK — Semi-retired local artist Cloud Farrow's handiwork is spread all over Cherokee County and to many, many points beyond.

A series of his drawings of circuit judges dating back to the 1800s adorns the walls in the courtroom at the county courthouse; young artists-in-training learn the art of pencil sketching from Farrow every Thursday at the public library in Centre; a Georgia man uses solar panels built by Farrow to power his boat dock on Weiss Lake.

Wait, what?

An old saying proclaims that someone who is a jack of all trades is a master of none. But whoever first penned that line never met Cloud Farrow. Funny, then, that the first person who would disagree with our assessment is Farrow himself.

Farrow, a Birmingham native who retired to Weiss Lake in 2003, persistently waves off praise, insisting that his detailed, almost lifelike pencil sketches are mere “doodles.” During a tour of the sprawling vegetable garden behind his home, Farrow is quick to point out several shortcomings—in his eyes, at least.

Take his homemade solar panels, for example. Farrow has two large banks of them wired up and pointed south. The power they generate runs the pumps he uses to water his seedlings—the seedlings he maintains himself inside a hand-built greenhouse.

“All this is tempered glass, which means you can't cut it,” Farrow explains, pointing above his head. “But you've got to use it or it might break in a hail storm.”

Farrow's mini-power station contains modulators, charge controllers and recycled car batteries, and admittedly isn't much to look at. But this contraption was his first try. Farrow claims he learns and makes improvements with every successive attempt at duplication.

“If you're not always trying to learn something, you're not living right,” Farrow says. “Learning makes living so much more fun. I'm always trying to learn something new.”

List his friend Bill's boathouse, which sits serenely in a secluded section of Weiss Lake, as one result of Farrow's ever-continuing education.

Bill, who hails from Georgia but spends as much time as possible casting his gaze across the calm waters, tried several times to run electricity to his boat house, which lies across a narrow road from his cabin.

“Someone stole the copper wiring, so we re-wired it,” Bill says. “They stole it again. When they stole it again after we installed aluminum wire we decided to try something new.”

Not surprisingly considering the repeat offenses, Bill says he seldom sees law enforcement patrolling his area of the county.

“They're not out here unless they're fishing,” he says with a laugh.

Farrow and Bill used to be neighbors, so the connection that led to the boat house's unique electrical connection was already in place. Bill knew about the system Farrow was using at his greenhouse, and asked about something similar that might be able to power a few appliances and the boat lift at his two-story lakeside retreat.

Farrow jumped at the chance to help his friend.

Farrow gets the pieces to build his solar panels, which can be built to whatever size is required to generate the appropriate amount of power, on the Internet. He strings the individual panels together, then coats them in a silicon solution that hardens to protect them. The whole apparatus sits behind tempered glass set in a frame.

Farrow's explanation of the precise workings of the system devolves into a series of technical terms: watts and volts, stepping down, converters, waves and modified waves, inverters, controllers and batteries.

Perhaps, he opines, the device becomes more relatable to the public at large by describing it in terms of dollars.

“Anyone could set up a system like this for a few hundred dollars,” he says. “The main objective for me would be to save people time and money, because I wasted a lot learning what I needed to know.”

Farrow says he'd be willing to share his knowledge with anyone who wants it, because “they're my neighbors, they're my community.”

“There is a great opportunity here for some young entrepreneur in Cherokee County,” Farrow says.

Farrow doesn't want that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for himself, either. Years of dedication to enhancing the lives of children shine through when he explains why not.

“This is a chance for a young person right here in Cherokee County,” Farrow says. “He's already here, just waiting for the chance. Maybe our telling this story will give him that chance to take this business and run with it.”