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 435!

Hiking More, The Trench Digging Goes On And On, Rambling About The Times, Looking Towards The Next Adventure & Some Humans Just Suck

I should probably try to write this in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow instead of at the ass end of the day like it is now because I am rather fatigued but hell maybe I can manage to hammer out a few words and perhaps just do the editing and publishing tomorrow. I am trying to avoid making an espresso in order to get this all written and am probably fooling myself that I can make it through to the end without it so we will see how that goes. I am not just physically fatigued but I am emotionally and mentally fatigued as well which makes for an uncomfortable combination. For the most part I will just have to forgo writing about the things that have gotten me to this state because alas it is complex and lets just say that dealing with other humans can be frigging exhausting. Feeling like I do now reminds me of why I really love being alone in the woods with the dogs... simplicity!

Let's see here. The fucking trench! Maybe that should just be its own paragraph in and of itself but yeah I am still digging on it and yeah I am still making progress but whoa is that project getting really drawn out! I have continued putting in long hours on digging it (mostly in the morning when it is cool outside) and every day without fail along the way something distracts me from working on it and yeah it is mostly the 'dealing with other humans' that I mention in the first part of this post that has been the major cause of continued disruption. I also just get fed-up with working on it after four to six hours and am not just banging away at it all day long trying to get it done. Basically when I am digging on it I get to the point where I just tell myself 'that it will get done when it gets done' and work at a slow steady pace but another part of my mind immediately chimes in with 'it will rain eventually' and I start stressing myself out and dive back into it with real zeal and the cycle repeats.

Of course aching all over my body the last many days has not helped things at all especially since I am so stiff at this point from head to foot that I doubt that even a three hour soak in a hot bath would even take the tension out. A few days ago I did setup and use my on-demand hot shower and wound up soaking in the tub a good bit but at this point it is merely a fond memory. The last two days I was hoping to use the tub again but the daylight hours are pretty short here this time of year (especially because of the terrain) so there just has not been a lot of time left at the end of the day to accommodate that sort of luxury. Thankfully I have somehow managed to be up long before the sun each day and starting work outdoors as the sun rises (after I get some hiking exercise on the trails) so I am at least using as much daylight as I can while it is available. As far as getting more exercise goes I am making a slow start on the trail hiking/jogging and gradually getting my legs accustomed to it. One thing that I have noticed about the hiking is that all the muscle memory that I have about the trail (the placement of rocks, depressions, roots etc) sure has made running along the trails pretty easy so that is cool.

I had to stop and brew some espresso after all. It has just been a frigging decade of November in the last nine days! There is a lot of other stuff going on and the times have been (and still are) tense in general in this country (and yeah a mismanaged raging pandemic to boot) so lets just say that everything feels 'high stakes' and leave it at that. Like I said it feels like a decade has passed and I am barely out of the first week of November and still have the gauntlet of from now until January 20th to make it through but hell even then there is still the coronavirus and the flailing economy so who knows how long this level of intensity and stress could all drag on for. It is some trying times even for the mentally resilient so I cannot even imagine what it must be like for most folks who are not and I have assuredly been thankful to have that resilience because I have damn sure needed it over the last many months to get through all of the unhinged human activity and circumstances in this country.

Anyway, continuing my fall prep work I got the main trail raked the rest of the way and it went pretty quickly with the aid of one of my fellow homesteaders which was nice because I have been doing a lot of stuff alone lately. I also went around to all the places that I spread grass seed at the homestead proper last year and spread more seed over the same areas to continue filling in the mucky areas with nice vibrant 'Kentucky 32' grass. The areas that I did it last year in all have a lot of the grass grown in really thickly and the only areas that needed seeding were the high foot traffic areas. In other words I at least got the grass well established and now just need to get the seed to take in the barren spots. I did not bring quite enough grass seed with me today but I have it on my itinerary to do the rest of it tomorrow. For the most part I need to get some straw and cover the grass seed with it and then reseed and add more straw periodically for the entire winter and that would eliminate all the barren spots.

On a different note, I would love to spell out all the human relations jazz that has been going on of late around the homestead just to fucking word it out and get it all into some semblance of order but when it comes down to it there are too many damned 'ins and outs' to it all and to be blunt some folks behaviors not only suck but they even suck at sucking. I will say that I have held it together through it all quite marvelously and not been broken by it all yet but I have begun inquiries into other places to move to. I even got an affirmative answer on a place with the very first inquiry so that is cool because at least I am not feeling 'stuck' here and given the resources and time I could move if I so desire. I am assuredly on the fence about it as of now but it sure was a refreshing feeling just knowing that if I wanted to just grab the dogs (and of course the chickens) and go live somewhere else... that it is possible.

In many ways things have been pretty nice here but some of the stuff going on of late (with other folks of course) really turns my stomach and has me questioning just how much more of myself I want to keep putting into the place. In many ways it is really sad because hell I have been here such a short time and the place has already grown tremendously but of course growth is seldom a pleasant or even comfortable scenario... or at least where humans are involved. There is also always (or so it seems to me) the folks that refuse to grow. To be blunt I do not personally have a damn thing for them at that point because they have already given up and I fucking refuse to enable, pander, sympathize nor cater to them in any way because they are also often just angry and abusive. Basically those kinds of folks are not worth the price of admission to me so I just do not attend their shitshow and I damn sure do not invest in it.

Well now. I should have known better to even write one word about all that jazz but there you have it... or at least the condensed, restrained, privacy protecting version of it all. Also some of the folks that live here occasionally read my posts so spelling things out would just complicate everything further than it already is and that is the last damned thing that I need if I am ever going to lower my stress level. Mayhaps this post will fly under the radar but who the hell knows because it is after all still this wacky year where all kinds of stuff could go awry even though it is the most disappointing apocalypse ever... and there still has not been any zombies!

Whoa, this was a mess to edit and it is as good as it is going to get at this point. 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.