Our Bus Shirley
Named in the memory of Pat’s grandmother, the first ever solar powered bus turned garden centre and farmers’ market on wheels.
The Beginning
In January 2021, Fogarty’s purchased a 2015 Ford E450 MicroBird bus, over the course of 3 short months Pat went to work to transform said bus into a solar charged retail store on wheels!
The First Order Of Business
The first order of business was to give Shirley a new look! We sent her to the lovely folks at Acme Sign, located in Dartmouth, NS. The staff worked with us to design our branding and a partial wrap with photos from our farm, as you can see, they did a fantastic job!
The Redesign
The next and most challenging step of the build was refrigeration and custom shelving. Shirley boasts 100 cubic feet of merchandise refrigerators, the challenging part was fabricating everything to fit, every square inch counts when you have limited space.
Solar / Electrical
Shirley’s entire 12 volt system is powered from a 500 amp hour lithium iron phosphate battery bank that is charged by an 800 watt solar array mounted to the roof. A large inverter/charger converts the DC power to AC to run our lights, 360 cameras, POS system, heating, refrigeration and music. The inverter/charger also allows us to plug the bus into an AC outlet to charge the battery bank if we have an extended period of inclement weather, with ideal weather conditions the solar array generates more power than Shirley consumes.
The End Result
The end result is a fully mobile commercial space for Fogarty’s to sell their ultra local products within the Halifax Regional Municipality.
