The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 369)

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(Edited)

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.

[End Introduction]

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 369!

Day 369. Shuffling Stuff Around, Washing Building Materials With Bleach Water, Making Ashes & Having Yet Another Really Long Day

It was definitely much cooler outside when I woke up around seven o'clock this morning which was pretty nice even though I know that it heralds that autumn is rapidly approaching. I have some pretty mixed feelings about the coming winter because although I probably will not go hungry or anything (due to the fact that I now receive government food assistance) I am very concerned over being able to afford propane to meet my heating needs. It is too damn early to be stressing about that quite yet but given the state of things combined with a slew of premonitions that I repeatedly keep having I am inclined to believe that it is going to be one heck of a winter. Given the way this entire year has gone I think that I will just do my best to be prepared for anything and will not be all that surprised if all kinds of crazy shit happens along the way.

I hiked to the homestead proper rather early and with the help of one of my fellow homesteaders I got everything from in front of and under the camper moved out of the way so now the camper is ready to be towed away. Not all of the stuff that was stored in front of the camper was mine so I did not feel all that guilty about recruiting some help but if it had been stuff that I could have moved by myself I probably would have done so on my own. Having an extra pair of hands sure made moving my stuff faster though and for the most part we just added it all to that pile of stuff that I have been staging by the trail-head.

During the afternoon I carried all the stuff that needs to stay dry from the trail-head to the shelter area where I piled it in the greenhouse which at this point is a total cluster fuck of stuff that I need to sort through and figure out where I am going to store it. Most of that stuff I was originally thinking of storing in that 'arched room' but given that I am unhappy with how that room came out (and that I am going to re-do it soon) I think that for now the greenhouse is the best option even though the piles of disorganized stuff in there makes me cringe every time that I see it or even think about it all.

Although it was a bit windy today I burned most of that old moldy cardboard from the boxes that I had stuff stored in and at this point I have a pretty nice pile of ashes accumulated so hopefully I can get them all into a bucket before it rains again and turns them into a useless clump and/or washes them away. It still is not quite enough ashes to cover my compost mound with but I am at least getting closer to having what I need to fully encase the mound. I also need to harvest more clay to cover the ashes with but that should not be all that hard to do given that big clay deposit that I found right beside the compost mound.

Late in the day I used my broom and some bleach water to kill all the mold on the building materials that I scavenged from that demolition work that I did the other day in the camper and although I leaned it all up against the shelter to dry I failed to get it all stacked atop the shelter afterwards because by then I was totally wiped out and took a nap. Thankfully I woke up after only two hours of sleep a little before dark and had plenty of time to feed all the animals before the sun was fully set and although I could have managed getting all those materials stored away I do not think that a little rain (or dew) will hurt them all that much.

As much as I am glad that the whole 'storage snafu' thing is winding down towards an end I am also 'not quite out of the woods yet' (so to speak) because like I said the greenhouse is a mess, I still have some stuff at the trail-head to move, I have to de-mold all those fabric items, I have to re-do the 'arched room' installation and somehow manage to de-clutter everything around the shelter area so that it looks more like a little homestead instead of a fucking 'junkstead' which is pretty much what it looks like right now. It was one hell of a push to get to where I am currently with everything but a lot of other things have suffered along the way because of it so I will more than likely be playing 'catch up' the next several weeks to get back on course with things around here.

In some ways I am glad that the whole 'storage snafu' thing occurred because it forced me to consolidate all my stuff to the shelter area and to go through all my stuff in the process and slim things down a bit. I actually did not throw a whole lot of stuff away and wound up giving away a lot of stuff to some of my fellow homesteaders instead and hopefully they find those things to be useful.

The little storage room that I built holds the stuff that it needs to rather well but there definitely is not room enough in there to actually walk inside of it unless I pile a bunch of stuff onto the bed in there which I do not want to do because I basically want to keep the bed free so that I can make another work table next to it for doing projects on. The ventilation is total shit in there and the room stays really hot so I will at some point need to add those vents to it that I mentioned a while back and perhaps even add some fans to the vents to insure that the air will actually move around which will be important to do before the cold weather because the room is un-insulated and if it gets hot in there while it is cold outside then it will produce a lot of condensation and eventually become a giant mold factory to boot.

Well, I have rambled on enough for one evening and am just going to wrap this up so that I can unwind, fall asleep and hopefully have some pleasant dreams that will make me feel like my life is at least marginally enjoyable or something. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

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I have been seeing a lot of these toads around the shelter lately!

Thanks for reading!

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.

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.

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That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!



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