Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 676)
Hello Everyone!
An early start, Fading dreams, Watching the storms, A weather dog, Prepping the topsoil trap & Some DC power thoughts!
I awoke a fair bit earlier than on many mornings lately and have more or less just been staring off into space as I sip espresso and let my mind wake up all the way. Before I first awoke I was dreaming something rather intensely but it faded from my mind as soon as I opened my eyes and began shuffling around and doing my morning routines.
In other news. I am happy to report that a good bit of the inflammation in my leg has faded since yesterday so perhaps my treatment strategy has been working and I can continue avoiding taking any medicine for it. Honestly I am unsure if it is actually healing up or if I am simply not agitating it (by staying off my feet) but at least it is not getting worse at the moment.
Over the coming days I need to remain on track with getting that leg healed up and I may well have to continue keeping my hikes super short and limited to the flatter areas around here. Considering that the majority of the property is rather flat... doing so will not be difficult but I will assuredly miss my little jaunts along the shortest path to the meadow.
Okay, the morning is dragging on here and it is still quite chilly even though the sun has made its way over the horizon so I guess that autumn is assuredly here! The last several days of high winds sure have deposited a heck of a lot of fallen leaves around the shelter site... so I really am beginning to have my work cut out for me on getting them all raked up.
On a different note. Since I have been largely focused on doing a bunch of land scouting and research lately... my attention has been all over the place and I keep forgetting to be mindful of the weather and specifically hurricane season. My solution is to start getting back into the habit of listening to the weather radio at least once a day and looking at the radar at least every other day.
The weather is well worth keeping track of for any number of reasons and I assuredly know the wisdom of doing so but when it comes right down to it... I need to start 'watching the horizon' (so to speak) and not get surprised by anything... especially a tropical storm or hurricane! There is of course also my 'weather dog' that would let me know of anything about to imminently occur... or up three days out... but best not to count on that alone.
Alright, it is now long after sunset and although the day was not all that physically demanding (aside from digging a hole in the topsoil trap) it was nonetheless a long day and required that I do a lot of extended focusing and paying attention to details! I almost put off adding to this entry so that I could continue working on that stuff (the detailed work not the digging) but decided I needed a well earned break.
For the most part I did a bunch of housekeeping on an old video gaming channel that I made a long time ago and often forget about! Thankfully I gained access to the main internet connection here for a few days... and actually have enough time to do some uploads while I am cooped up.
Since I have access to that high-speed connection I can hopefully get a few homesteading videos made soon because I really do want to get some good documentation of my current setup. As a side note, it is worth mentioning that this little homestead area is the best that I have helped to create so far and it is well worth capturing the nuances of its overall setup!
Like today when I got to thinking about the approaching hurricane and realized that I really needed to get the topsoil trap prepped to handle the large influx of rain water! I have yet to actually finish said prep work because I still have to remove the soil and put it on the compost mounds... but just getting it all broken up was enough of a task for one day!
I am of course doing other things to prepare like filling my extra water containers but by the look of things it will not be much of a storm by the time it reaches here. Not that I am going to underestimate it or anything but it does not hurt to be in a state of readiness and have all my ducks in a row.
The other thing that I have been doing in preparation is checking on my solar rig to make sure my main battery is tapped off. I have also been charging whatever devices that I may need just in case the grid goes down over the coming days. On a related note, I keep thinking that as soon as I can do so I am going to invest heavily in a really good battery bank and/or what some people call a solar generator.
I really do need to expand my energy storage devices (especially my five volt power banks) because all of it has well over five years of use on it. Also I think that I want to order some adapters for my cordless tool batteries because some of the units I have been looking at just attach to the battery, have a light, one or two USB ports and a twelve volt DC output... which yeah all of which would be super handy!
One last thing in regards to the cordless tool batteries is that I have been steadily looking for DC to DC (vehicle) chargers for the kind of batteries that I have but they are still way too expensive. Having utilized one on my older (lower voltage) batteries for years I gotta say they make a big difference when working off grid and relying on solar.
All that jazz aside. The leaves are still dropping like crazy around here and autumn is truly in the air so all things considered the stormy weather is right on time! Even during the late afternoon the wind was still gusting (harder than it has been recently) and there was a chill to it that I could not ignore... so yup the seasons are changing fast!
Over the coming weeks I think that I want to really get ready for more severe weather and perhaps do a big overhaul on my entire preparedness rig just to be safe. Like I was saying earlier... I really dislike the notion of being surprised by a disaster scenario and yeah it is never far from my mind when those monster storms are looming on the horizon no matter what time of year it is!
Well, the hour is growing late here and I better call this entry 'good enough' and get on with the editing, proofreading and posting portion of my evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice lifetime.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
That's a very good plan for hurricane season that you have chosen and it's also good to hear how better you are now from your leg. The weather is always very good to be monitored in our surroundings.