Another N channel enhancement mode MOSFET driven directly by a PIC12F629

[vintagecarguy]

At least, you should have a pull down resistor of about 10K ohms so to give the FET gate some kind of state during startup or if by change in your code the pin is made an input.

Thanks for the input; that makes sense to keep the gate low at startup. The system turns on from a cold start so it's good to
set the state low with a pulldown.