Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: Hi I am Jacob.

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

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 7!

Making An Early Start, Dogs Doing Rodent Control, A String Layout For A Fence, Felling Trees & Site Selection Thoughts

I dunno why I keep waking up around two in the morning but I did it again today and although I am still waiting on my second pot of espresso to finish brewing I figured that I should at least start writing and see what emerges. It is kind of interesting that since I have more or less settled into a routine here that I work really long days (counting the early morning writing they are often fourteen hour days) and have not felt all that disgruntled or even grumpy along the way which is pretty damned amazing considering that all my routines of the past year and a half have been disrupted and I am basically camping for the time being which is never all that comfortable of a scenario for me because I like having four solid walls around me and an actual roof over my head. Perhaps it is just my determination (and morale) that keeps me feeling content in the scenario and that coupled with the knowledge that my living situation is a temporary one seems to be doing the trick so I would probably do well not to over-analyze it too much.

Instead of working on filling in the trench (as my daily land project) I wound up taking the dogs to an area of the property where some stuff is stored under tarps so that they could look for snakes in the area and also do some rodent control. While looking for something a few days before I had seen a large rat under one of the tarps and asked one of the land owners if it was okay to use the dogs in the area to deal with the rodents and thankfully they were all for it. To be clear the site has not had a whole lot of human activity at it and with the rattlesnake population it is best to curb any rodent activity (mostly the activity caused by humans creating habitat and a food supply for them) before the population can explode and hence provide the rattlesnakes with more food and thus increase their population as well. It is always a tricky balance to keep but one that I think is much easier to manage before a population explosion of either rodents or venomous snakes can occur. As a side note it may be wise in the long run to introduce some large eastern king snakes to the place and solve both problems in one fell swoop!

The rat hunt went rather well and as soon as I lifted that same tarp a big rat looked at me with that 'ratty look' of 'hey what the hell are you doing' before running off and me losing sight of it among the stuff beneath the tarp. Since it was a rather chilly morning I was not all that concerned with snakes because they would be quite lethargic and torpid in the cold temperatures but I was careful nonetheless and had the dogs sniff around the entire tarp before I ever touched it. Once I got the tarp off that mound of stuff (and the rat had fled) I destroyed the two nests that I found and let the dogs do their thing looking for rodents. While I was working on the nests I heard a squealing sound and looked around to see that my boy dog had found the rat (wherever it had been hiding) and had broken its back. Of course I did not let the little critter suffer or anything and stomped on its head with the heel of my boot to dispatch it before digging a small hole and burying it. It might all sound kind of brutal but rodent control is a pretty damned vital thing and aside from feeding the snake population they also tend to be destructive little buggers.

After all that jazz was done I put all the dogs in the portable dog yard at the new shelter site that I have been working on and after gathering some tools and setting up the music I got to work setting up some temporary corner posts (for the new dog yard) and pulling some mason string between them to act as guides for when the new fence gets installed. All in all the process of creating stout temporary corner posts was not all that difficult but I had a heck of a time trying to get the 'rectangle' of the fence's footprint squared up which was more a result of not wanting to fell some trees that have squirrel nests in them and the terrain itself than anything else. In the end I wound up squaring the uphill fence-line and the southern-most line and slightly angling the northern and eastern line which is fine because fences do not have to be perfectly square to do their intended job.

The bottom (eastern) fence-line is angled in such a way that it will get good sun throughout the year which is pretty cool because there are a bunch of well-established grape vines along it that I hope to train onto the fence in the springtime when they begin producing new growth. The location of the grape vines have actually played a significant role in how I did the layout for the fence and although I plan on training them on the fence itself I am also thinking to string wire above the fence-line to train the vines onto which will help alleviate the vines putting too much weight on the fence itself when they get large and begin producing grapes. Basically fences are great and all for what they do but if I can produce food for myself and the local wildlife with it then I think that is spectacular.

Once I got all the strings pulled for the fence-line I was able to gain a better understanding of what trees I would need to fell in order to preserve the fence in the long run and to make the actual installation not be impeded by the trees themselves. Although I have been mostly doing all the clearing with a small pull-saw, a pair of loppers and my electric chain saw many of the remaining trees were either too large for those tools or had split trunks that would require a different tool to cut down. So, I borrowed the landowners' chainsaw and after adding some new ethanol-free mixed fuel to it and letting it idle for about a half an hour I got it running quite well. The saw had sat for quite some time (a few years) with fuel in it without being used so it was pretty awesome that I did not have to drain the old fuel, strip it down and clean the carburetor before using it. Anyway, it sure made quick work of cutting down some of the larger trees and dealing with the large trunk split-base trees and I even waffled the tops of the larger trunks to promote rot and bug infestation so they will not just grow back via coppicing.

I of course bucked the larger trees and added their skinny branches to my ever-growing brush piles, cut up the medium sized curvy pieces for firewood and ricked the long poles off the ground with some dunnage that I made while bucking the trees. I wound up stacking them near where I am thinking to build the new cabin so that I can use them to create scaffolding and a framework that I can attach to for hoisting the walls with. Since I will be building each panel of the cabin (complete with insulation) before erecting them I think that it will be quite handy to have the scaffolding (hoist framework) in place to either use a block and tackle with (or just some pulleys) to help easy the erection process. I am still a bit fuzzy on the actual design of the framework but what I am thinking to do is to build two tripods (one on either side of the cabin) and adjoin them across the top horizontally with the longest (and stoutest) log that I can find and hoist from it. It might actually be more prudent to just use the block and tackle along with a long rope attached to a vehicle to do the actual hoisting but for now I am just going to keep my options open and see how things evolve.

All the chainsaw work (and various other activities) wore me the heck out by late afternoon and I once again found myself wrapping things up at the new shelter site early and heading back to base camp where I got all the critters fed, cooked a big meal for myself, ate half of it and fell fast asleep before the sun had set for the day. Although I could eek out a few more hours of work the last few days (that I have fallen asleep before the sun goes down) I would rather not push myself much harder than I already am because I really like the pace that I have been working at and do not want to disrupt it by pushing myself to my limit each day nor being fatigued at the end of the day and perhaps injuring myself because of it. I have assuredly gotten into a productive 'rhythm' at this new location and waking up at two in the morning sure gives me plenty of time to get my writing done long before the sun rises as well as getting to enjoy nearly six hours of 'stillness and quietude' before beginning the manual labor portion of my day which amounts to nearly eight hours each day. Yeah those fourteen hour days are probably not going to last for long because it will eventually get much colder but I figure that it is probably best if I can maximize them for as long as possible before that occurs!

Aside from the occasional bouts of late in the day weariness I have been holding up rather well, the dogs have adjusted to the new place and the chickens seem mostly content... so all is well. My three younger dogs have taken to lifting up the PVC dog yard fence and 'escaping' if I leave them alone at the new shelter site and wander off with other folks and start discussing things. I think that they wind up hearing me (and other folks) talking (and other folks' dogs) but since they cannot see what is gong on they feel it is their responsibility to come and investigate what the heck I am up to. When it happened this day some of the other folks dogs were in their (very secure) dog yard and my boy dog and the big male dog (as well as the smaller female dog) had a row with each other from opposite sides of the fence. That kind of stuff is always grating on the nerves and just stressful in general (on humans and dogs alike) and I was sorely disappointed not just that the dogs 'escaped' in the first place but that when I pulled my boy dog away and got him heading away from the other dogs he disobediently darted back to them after only making it about six meters away! I of course got a hold of him again and pulled him away but not before it set the other dogs off again.

To be clear here I have known about the 'escaping' problem for the last few days and have yet to remedy it by staking down the PVC dog yard because I will be moving it soon once I finish felling some more trees slightly downhill at the new shelter site. They really have done well in the past in that fence setup (aside from when I had shoddy wire mesh on the gate) and I think that this new 'escaping' thing is just them trying to do their duty fueled by apprehension of us being at an unfamiliar site. I think that the dogs are actually working together to lift the fence up and escape and I am rather tempted to setup a camera, simulate the circumstances of the other two times the have 'escaped' and seeing how the heck they are doing it. I am pretty sure that my boy dog can scale the one point five meter tall fence but that does not account for how the other two are freeing themselves.

All that jazz aside, things are going pretty well here and although the workload has been intensive (and calorie heavy) for the most part I have no complaints and am grateful to have such a nice base camp setup, adequate short-term storage and the wonderful opportunity of setting up a new shelter site. Like I have said before this particular shelter site is but a stepping stone for the actual homestead site that will be created later in that secluded area of the property. I have been routinely scouting the edges of that 'secluded' area just to learn the lay of the land, look for a good place for an access road (or find an old logging skidder path to make into a road) and to look for the best option for the site itself. The area for the long-term secluded site is roughly 3.3 acres (1.3 hectares) so there are plenty of options available and I do not mind having the time to witness all four seasons in the area before choosing the best site.

Some of the things that I like to know about a potential site is how much sun does it get throughout the year, what kind of bugs are in the area (like seasonal no-see-ums, chiggers, mosquitoes, flies etcetera) what kind of wildlife is in the area as well as how the runoff water flows across the surface in the area. I am definitely inclined to work with nature instead of against it and always sort of cringe when I see folks just disrupt everything in the environment and enforce their 'vision' for their home upon a place instead of working with the natural surroundings. Do not get me wrong on all that because there is always going to be an impact when a human (especially accompanied by other critters like pets and livestock) go out into the woods and create a place to live but I think that the notion of felling every tree and scraping the land bare with heavy machinery is a piss poor approach. Obviously in some scenarios that is just what is required but even that can be done in such a way that the terrain and runoff water are worked with instead of worked against.

Good site selection and planning requires taking the time to observe the land itself and really getting to know its 'ins and outs' in such a way that well-informed choices can be made with how it is impacted. With the creation of buildings themselves it is always important to account for how the water will shed off of them and where that water will go in the end because honestly proper water management can 'make or break' a site. Of course folks can always add gutter systems and water collection devices but truthfully that is always a rather cost prohibitive factor that is not always affordable and especially so for folks like me that are just financially scraping by to start with. Even though I have become rather proficient at fabricating my own gutters (and various components of rain collection systems) I still think that they should be a secondary measure for water management and the primary measure should be the building's placement in regards to the terrain and proximity to other structures.

Anyway, I have probably rambled on enough for one morning and should wrap this all up, do the editing and get it posted so that I will be finished with it all before the sun once again makes its way up over the horizon and begins lighting up the pine forests and scrub lands with its morning hues. The sunrises and sunsets are rather beautiful here but I have yet to find a good location to get pictures of them from but hopefully I can devote some time to that once I get settled in a bit more. For now I am just going to keep plugging along and trying to remember to take pictures of the stuff that I am doing each day which is always challenging because I have been in a rather 'full tilt work-to-do' mindset and not thinking a whole lot about producing media.

Well, I guess that is about that for now! I hope that everyone is doing well (or well enough) and has a nice day/night and I will assuredly do the same.

More about me: 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.

Nearly four 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 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.