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 438!

A Backwards Morning, Spreading More Grass Seed & Tending The Trench Trail

It rained throughout much of the evening and was still raining this morning when I first woke up so I just went back to sleep even though I could have gotten up and at the very least been productive online. The oddity of my technological fascination mixed with my hands on labor intensive approach to my lifestyle is not lost on me and although most folks would probably think that those things would be at odds with each other... it suits me just fine. Of course during my winter downtime I tend to do a lot more online stuff but there are still all the daily chores that must be done as well as the projects that are safer to do in the winter when the snakes are in their brumation cycle.

Along with it being a rainy morning it was also very chilly and all my joints ached so much that I had a hard time feeling motivated to do anything besides hanging out with the dogs in the shelter. I eventually shook my inclination to nap the day away off and after three pots of espresso I bundled up in a warm sweater, got my boots on and headed outdoors to see what all I could accomplish. As most folks know I generally start my day by cleaning up the dog waste from the dog yard and then letting the chickens out but for some reason today I just let the chickens out first and decided to shovel up the waste later in the day. I still have no inclination as to why I did things differently today but it just felt like the right thing to do.

Recently I have been spreading a lot of grass seed around (like I mentioned a few days ago) and with the weather conditions being what they were I decided that it was a good opportunity to do it some more. So I filled a few containers with grass seed and hiked to the homestead proper where I basically re-seeded everything that I had just seeded a few days before. One thing that I did notice is that the chickens and the guinea fowl that belong to my fellow homesteaders had done a heck of a job eating a bunch of the grass seed that I had spread a few days ago so I was rather liberal with today's application of seeds and spread a lot more of the stuff than I usually would have in the hopes that much of it will get pressed into the muck by foot traffic before the birds can get to them.

Once all that was done I walked along the trail where the trench was and did my best to smash down the lumpy areas that were along it which were really pronounced after all of the rain had washed the loose soil away. I noticed that some spots along it will probably require being filled in just to smooth things out now that the soil that I filled the trench with has begun to settle more. It is nowhere near as good of a trail as it used to be but given enough effort I think that I may be able to get it worked into better condition to withstand the winter. While I was walking over the trail I noticed a few small stumps and thorn vines that I had previously missed the day before so I got the axe and a pair of loppers and removed them so that the trail would be truly free of obstacles. I also spread grass seed over the entire trail and hopefully it will sprout rapidly and help control the erosion and of course help with the mucky areas.

Anyway, I did manage to accomplish a few other things throughout the day that I was hoping to get done but overall it was a rainy and gloomy day until very late in the afternoon when the sun peaked out from behind the cloud cover and was so bright and warm that I finally got to take my sweater off and all my joints quit aching and even though it was a rather brief moment even though I was thankful for the respite.

Well, this post is going to be much briefer than what I usually write but I want to avoid venting here about all that jazz that I have vented about the last few days. Nothing has really changed with all that stuff but I had the startling realization today that out of all my fellow homesteaders that I have talked about moving to a new place to not one of them has said that they wish that I would stay so I guess that I should just take that as the sign that it assuredly is and start really focusing on moving on in life knowing that I gave it my best here. 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.