The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 329)

Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.

A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!

The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.

I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.

The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.

TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.

[End Introduction]

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 329!

Making More Ashes, Chicory Plants & Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Writers.

I was once again up rather late into the evening but I somehow managed to get up this morning around the same time that I did yesterday so I guess that I am at least 'treading water' in that regard even though I have yet to achieve my goal of waking up long before dawn and gong to sleep early at night. I know that of late I keep starting these posts with a 'report' on my sleeping habits and although it probably is not all that interesting to anyone else I find it important enough of a factor to make note of it to sort of 'keep track of' my own progress on that front. Eventually the repetition of doing so will begin to grate on me and I will more than likely lapse back into starting these posts by writing about the weather like I used to do.

As far as days go it was not a super productive one but I did manage to harvest a few potatoes from an outdoor garden, cut back some unwanted vegetation growing along the dog yard fence and also burn a bunch of household burnables as well as a good portion of some sticks that I had in a pile left over from when I first cleared the site to build the shelter. The ashes that I have created are still nowhere near enough to cover the dog poop compost with but they are slowly adding up so I will just have to keep burning stuff. I am almost tempted to procure some agricultural lime to spread over the compost but that stuff is pretty damn hard on the earthworms and would be rather counterproductive even though it sure would keep the flies from escaping the mound once they lay their eggs. The lime melts the flies wings and although the ashes do the same thing it at least does not (as far as I can tell) adversely affect the earthworms.

On a different note, my gardening endeavors have pretty much been a massive flop this year and although some of that has to do with the shaded location that I am in another part of it has been purely neglect on my part which just 'is what it is' and no amount of regret is going to change any of that. One thing that has seemed to do rather well in the greenhouse (even being neglected) is some chicory that I planted in there. There are actually several tall chicory plants with flowers on them and for the last several days I have been trying to get good pictures of them but each time they are either closed by the time that I try to take the pictures or the pictures come out super blurry. Today I took about twenty pictures of the flowers and only one of the pictures came out slightly less than horrible. Part of me just wants to take a hammer to the damn phone that I take pictures with because it seems like more often than not recently the pictures come out blurry looking.

Anyway, a big thunderstorm rolled in this afternoon so I spent much of the latter part of the day cooped up indoors 'chasing my own tail' over the whole storage scenario and my stress over my current financial situation which is complete shit at the moment. Having this new phone bill each month really skews my budget but damn not having the aggravation of intermittent, inconsistent, unreliable and slow internet connectivity is pretty damn nice even if it proves to eventually be wholly unsustainable considering that I am barely making enough money to feed me and the dogs as it is.

Part of me would like to travel back in time and hit the younger me that wanted to grow up to be a 'writer' in the fucking head in the hopes of knocking some damn sense into myself. I often hear people say 'do it because you love it and not for the money' (which applies to way more than just writing) but the folks that generally say that sort of horseshit are those who already have enough money (or a way of making it) that does not leave them feeling half-starved most months and stressed out that their endeavors not only lack any value but they are also a failure at something they are passionate about. I digress though because if I do not I will just wind up meandering down some rabbit warren on the topic that will assuredly do nothing to improve my mood.

Well, that is about it for now and I am going to just wrap this up, do the nauseating editing/posting and try to unwind for the evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

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One of the chicory flowers.

Thanks for reading!

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