The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 379)

over 3 years ago

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 379!

More On The New Rain Harvesting System, Making More Ashes & Bye Bye Faux-Hawk Hello Mohawk

It was all around one long day and I fell asleep super early and failed to get any writing done which is not all that big of a deal or anything in the not-so-grand scheme of things but now I do not want to have it nagging at me all day so I figured I would just sit down and write it this morning. I have so far drank almost a double dose of my morning espresso and am still dragging ass so please bear with me.

There was a good bit of rain throughout the night and first thing in the morning I went and checked on the status of that new rain harvesting system on the greenhouse and was a little underwhelmed at how much water that it had captured during the evening's rain event. I may have to re-design my 'initial flush' system so that more water reaches the drainage pipe when the rain is not all that heavy. I am going to do some tests on the initial flush system with a bucket of water and see just what sort of water volume it needs to stop flushing and start draining. In other words a small amount of rain does not seem to be enough to simultaneously fill the coffee can (my initial flush component) and also make its way into the drainage pipe that fills the holding tank. Fixing that scenario of too little water volume should be as easy as sealing the bottom portion of where I have the drainage pipe attached to the base of the coffee can so that the water can fill inside the can most of the way to the drainage pipe before it starts leaking out and accommodating the initial flush.

As far as that water system goes I really like how it is coming along and I spent a good part of my morning drawing up some plans on how to move the water further downhill to a larger holding tank and also researching how to build small wildlife and fish ponds. I also walked around a good bit and surveyed the terrain to see exactly where I could place more holding tanks, where I could bury any necessary tubing/pipes in existing swales and basically getting a clearer idea of just how much (and what) materials that I would need to get everything setup properly. The other thing that I looked at was how I can add a gutter to the new addition's roof and use it to fill a holding tank that overflows into the system from the greenhouse just to increase the volume of water harvested during each rain event.

On a different note, a few days ago I procured a bunch of old magazines and some damaged books that were more or less trash so I gathered up some firewood as well as some other burnables and got a fire going in the fire pit to make it all into ashes. I knew when I started the fire that I should probably just feed in a few items at a time but the magazines were full of bugs and I did not want to have a container of such items sitting in the dog yard for hours as I burned a few pieces at a time out of it and thus increase the likelihood of introducing those bugs to the shelter area. So instead I just piled everything into the fire pit at once and lit it up which was fine and all but I then had to tend the fire constantly to make sure that the layers and layers of paper got rotated in such a way that it all burned eventually.
It all made an impressive mound of ashes but I think that I might have to burn more of it today. Either way I now have plenty of ashes to cover the compost mound with or I do as long as I get them all harvested into a container and can keep the rain from destroying them.

Anyway, I have been trying to give myself a haircut and a shave every week or two just to change things up some and perhaps slowly nudge myself towards not 'letting myself go' like I have over the last many years. It is kind of fun to change my look so frequently because I am in such the habit of just having a single 'look' even long before I quit giving a damn about such things. The last two time I cut my hair I was going for a mohawk but it got pointed out to me by one of my fellow homesteaders that it was more of a 'faux-hawk' so this time when I cut it I made sure that no one would mistake it for being anything other than a true mohawk. Having never had such a haircut I gotta say that I really like it and although it seems a bit extreme I might keep it this way for a while. It damn sure fits my mood of late and I think that it makes for a nice post-apocalyptic hairstyle!

Well, I should wrap this up because daylight is burning and I have stuff to do outdoors. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night or something like that.

My new haircut!

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.