Hello Everyone!

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 415!

Making Ashes, Cleaning Up Storm Debris, Downed Pines Everywhere & Too Few Calories Does Not Do The Body Good

It did not get quite as cold last night as the weather forecasters said that it would but it still got rather chilly and has stayed that way throughout the day today. The wind was blowing pretty steadily for much of the morning but by late afternoon it died down enough that I could finally have that outdoor fire that I have been wanting to have since the beginning of the new year a few days ago. Although I mainly just wanted to make some ashes for the compost I also wanted to dispose of all the downed tree branches in the dog yard as well as the dead pokeweed plants that have been littering the landscape for several months now. I did not actually burn all the pokeweed but I got the majority of it. The remainder of it is going to require a bit of axe work (or saw work) but I did not feel like getting any tools out to deal with them.

Late in the day yesterday I had taken the water system for the site offline (because it was supposed to freeze) so today I did the usual hiking around closing the opened spigots and eventually flipping the breaker for the well pump back on. While I was hiking around the place it was hard to miss seeing all the downed pine trees left from that recent storm and the closer that I looked the more of them that I noticed. I kicked the smaller pieces out of the roadways but at some point I should probably go around and section up the larger pieces for firewood or more likely as mulch given most of them are rotten from the pine beetles having killed them some time back. Mainly they are just a fire hazard laying about everywhere as they are but also they make for too much habitat for vermin which will eventually draw more snakes.

I wound up spending most of the day outside which was a nice change of pace compared to what I have been doing the last several months. Even though I did not do anything all that strenuous I feel completely wiped out from it all which is not all that surprising considering that I have basically been living on a few hundred calories a day for way longer than what is probably healthy for me. Aside from the physical consequences the mental effects of that have assuredly been playing hell on me and feeling perpetually hungry has left me way moodier than I would be otherwise. A few days back I got so damn tired of rice that I broke into the bag of potatoes that I have been letting sprout for the spring planting. At this rate I most likely will not have any left to plant and will need to procure more of them before the seasons change.

As much as I sort of want to just keep holing up indoors I have got to get back to doing stuff regardless of how many calories that I have available. It is a bit of a 'double-edged sword' though because while being active is good for me stuff like what happened today can happen whilst operating at a non-optimal nutrient level. I had been tending the fire for some time and at one point something caught my attention in the trees (I still have no idea what it was) and whipping my head around to see what it was resulted in everything beginning to spin and my damn legs getting wobbly. In hindsight it could have been bad given that I was standing over a fire at the time but fortunately I instinctively squatted down on my haunches and stayed there until it passed.

Like I said before I was not even doing anything all that strenuous outdoors today but if that had happened while wielding a tool a lot could have gone wrong (all too damn quickly) before I had time to react. After eating well for the one year that I was on government food assistance I am beginning to suspect that a lot of my 'clumsiness' over the years was maybe diet related. Some of that may have also been related to never quite being able to fully focus on stuff with all the damn stress of either finances or food nagging at me. I have no doubt that some of it is actual clumsiness but the more I think about the whole food scarcity thing and the role it has played in my life I think that I might be onto something there.

Anyway, this post is going to be a much shorter one than my others of late because I am rapidly sliding towards sleep and my fatigued brain is already going to struggle with getting this all edited and posted so I am just going to call it 'good enough' and get to it. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.