The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 381)
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.
The Fantastica Chronicles Day 381!
Setting Up A Rain Water Holding Tank, De-Barking Black Locust, Building An Outdoor Stove & Peace Of Fucking Mind Is Priceless
It turned out to be a heck of a long day and I am glad that I made an early start on doing stuff and for the most part was able to work throughout the day without getting overly distracted or get interrupted by the rain. I have been raising some funds the last few days so that I can afford to get propane for the winter as well as flea medicine and perhaps even a few months of dog food stocked up and while I dislike having to resort to that sort of thing when I do it I try to check my email and messages often in case I need to thank anyone and/or answer questions which always leads me to looking at my phone way more than I usually would and after a few days of doing it I often feel mildly obsessed because I am checking the phone so often. As far as raising funds goes things actually worked out awesomely and I received enough contributions to cover getting the flea medicine, all my propane for the winter and enough that I can stockpile some dog food. I seldom reach my goals with any sort of crowd funding endeavor so doing so in these economically challenging times is a damn good feeling and I have immense gratitude for those that made it possible.
I spent the early part of my day piddling around the shelter site doing my usual daily chores and trying to wrap my head around how exactly to setup my water holding tanks and where to put my solar panels at. I always feel like I am sort of wasting time when I get stuck 'looking at things' and trying to plan my next moves on projects but I also keep in mind just how vital thinking things through is to avoid mistakes and the dreaded unintended consequences.
With all my 'head scratching' I did not come up with any truly new ideas so I quickly changed gears to figuring out where I want to expand the fence around the shelter site to. I wound up pulling several long and curvy pieces of black locust from my material pile and laying them out around the shelter site perimeter to see which pieces would fit where as top rails for a new fence. I also just wanted to get a visual on how such a fence would look and where I would ultimately need to build gates at to keep the area as functional as possible without limiting my access points. Although I really like having just one gate to enter the dog yard the way the terrain is here and the way that I have things setup with the greenhouse and the trails I am thinking that I at least need one or maybe two more gates just for the sake of convenience. Anyway, once I figured out what material that I needed to start the fence I set some of it atop my workbench to dry out in the sun and started the process of de-barking the pieces that needed it. I am still unsure if I want to 'waste' that much black locust material on a fence but most of the pieces that I am looking at using are only good for rails and supports/braces anyway so it is not really all that wasteful and it would make for a rather nice looking fence.
All that jazz aside, later in the day I finally took the time to start building that outdoor oven (cooking area) that I started all those months ago. I dunno why that project caught my attention but sometimes it is best for me to not question things overly much and just follow my intuition/inspiration. All in all though, I roughed in the base of the oven with all the rocks that I had piled up near the site a few months back, lined the bottom of it inside with flat stones and even made a nice shelf from a big rock on the left hand side of the oven. For now it is not much of an oven and is more of an outdoor stove-top (once I add a grill or grate to it) which is fine and all because I at least now have a convenient way to cook outdoors over a wood fire if the need arises.
When I started that project I was like 'I will just lay a few stones' but I got totally over-involved and the next thing that I knew my pile of stones was all used up and I had to fight off the temptation to gather more stones (as well as some clay) and keep building! It actually came out pretty neat but I should probably do some test fires in it before I go too much further just to see where I should vent the fire pits at and where I should locate the chimney or chimneys. Since I am not working off a blueprint or plans or anything I will just have to experiment along the way to see what works best.
Late in the afternoon I wound up tinkering with the greenhouse rain water harvesting system some more and got it setup with a ten gallon holding tank and that plastic tote that I was previously using as a holding tank. The ten gallon tank I attached a pipe to with a screen on the end and just shoved the pipe into the black drainage pipe coming from the gutter and then shoved in two pieces of pipe above it (without screens on them) that are positioned downhill to fill the plastic tote. None of that setup it 'water tight' or anything so a good bit of water still flows from the drainage pipe but at least the pipe that leads to the ten gallon holding tank receives enough water to fill the tank rather quickly. For now I do not mind that I do not capture one hundred percent of the water coming from the gutter's drainage pipe because I do not have a receptacle in place to catch all the water that the roof can produce and want to avoid 'choking the flow' in such a way that it makes the water backup in the drainage pipe and/or the gutter. I am also really undecided on what I am going to do to get the water downhill and if I am going to build a small pond or bury a large holding tank or whatever I wind up doing in that area so I think that it is better to just 'keep things loose' for now and see what emerges.
On a different note, I am personally doing alright and am keeping on a rather even keel in my day to day life and somehow avoiding either becoming overly depressed or manic along the way. I have so much stuff churning around in my mind about all the things going on in the world today and the potential hazards of the future and although in the past I have let myself overwork myself as a way to deal with stress and anxiety... I have actually been doing rather well at avoiding that and often throughout the day I find myself sitting down (on a log, or my porch, or wherever I am) and just sort of soaking everything in and letting my mind wander the range of possibilities of what I can actually do to improve my scenario with the resources at my disposal. I guess that most folks would just call it 'taking a break' but hell I have often found myself doing it a dozen or more times a day of late and each time I wind up sort of reveling in the enjoyment of my lifestyle, the peace of mind it brings me and how it seems to always antagonize my imagination and general 'thinking outside the box' in such a way that I come up with solutions and my life feels meaningful because of the perspective it all grants me. Living like this is always going to be challenging but I can at least determine the attitude that I approach those challenges with and how that attitude is reflected in what I share with others. I guess that small bit of 'control' over my attitude is just enough for me to pacify my 'control freak' nature and just accept everything that happens (or does not happen) as nature (life) playing itself out however the hell it wants to.
Well, it is now around six thirty in the morning and I have been writing for almost two hours since I first woke up. I fell asleep a little after dark yesterday and failed to write my daily post so as soon as I awoke today I opened the text editor and ponderously started pecking out words so that I could start my day with a clear mind and not feel like I left something from yesterday unfinished. It is always tricky to recap a previous day especially after a night of intense dreams but as long as I managed to take some pictures the day before it is never that difficult to piece the previous day together in my mind and be able to somehow sum it up. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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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