There Be Storms, A Supply Run, Drying In The Solar Shack Roof, Compulsive Gardening & Birthday Podcast Musings
That next round of foul weather arrived some time in the wee hours of the morning today and this time there has been a lot of thunder and even some uncomfortably close lightning flashes that lit the interior of the tent up and made me back away from all the electronics. It has not rained constantly but it may as well have given the frequency and volume of it. I had one brief window of time early in the day to install two sheets of zip board on the roof of the new little building (in a temporary fashion) just to keep the interior of the building mostly dry during the storm. Basically the day has been a total bust in the productivity department but at least the dogs are handling all the thunder well and I am feeling pretty stoked about the arrival of spring and all the various projects that I am engaged in.
It has of course been a wacky journey these last many years now and I always feel that somehow I fail to convey enough useful stuff to make these entries worth writing let alone reading. It is funny because anytime that I pose that question to myself I immediately fall back on my initial directive of 'simply sharing my life' which sounds easy enough at face value and all that jazz but really it is always an endeavor that is anything but simple. How the heck does a person sum up what it is like living in the times that we are now in without churning out novels which merely describe all the inconveniences and oddities that are occurring? On some level I am taking notes of the 'goings on' in the larger world but I remain hesitant to word things down whilst grappling with the collective turbulence myself. I do not know how to express my sentiment in this regard any clearer than to say that it is a daunting task and all I can really offer is my own experiences no matter how subjective they are.
Yesterday, I went out on my monthly supply run. I even got to go by a building supply store along the way which was super awesome because I got myself a bunch of odds and ends that I have been wanting for many months now. I also got myself a birthday present in the form of a ten inch electric miter saw which will make doing all the blocking for the new building's roof system much easier and albeit more accurate. I can cut a rather straight line with a circular saw but whoa I am over it at this point and glad that I found an affordable saw that will do everything that I need it to do with precision and accuracy. I also got the parts that I needed to setup a gravity-fed rainwater barrel so that is pretty cool because that particular project has been stagnant for the better part of a year now due to lacking the parts.
The entire trip to town was more or less my 'spoil myself' trip and I did rather well at resisting blowing all my funds and still managed to get most of the stuff that I wanted. Several things that I wanted to get were out of stock so had they been available I probably would have spent all my birthday funds. The landowner even got the zip-board, zip tape, fascia material, some wall studs and a few other various items for the new solar shack so that was super awesome. I can now stay busy (weather permitting) at getting the building dried in before the lumber package for the cabin arrives in the next few weeks.
Alright, it has been several days now since I wrote anything on this and I should try to finish it off and get everyone caught up. Since I am awake before the sun is up perhaps I will have some time this morning to do so before I truly begin my day. I guess that I need to start making more time for doing the writing each day (or at least every other day) but now that the warmer months are here who knows how that will work out considering all the stuff that I want to work on outdoors and how I am often too fatigued in the evenings to do any writing. I do like writing early in the morning but for whatever reason I just have not felt inclined to spend the first portion of the day pecking out words on a keyboard which in the long run is not helping me stay on a consistent posting schedule.
Anyway, on day one hundred and twenty-seven I got all the zip-board installed on the roof of the new building and then the following day I got all the fascia installed and the zip-board's seams all taped up with that insanely effective zip-board flashing tape. Since I used white wood (spruce) for the rafters of the building and I did not want to risk it getting wet from the rain (before I can put drip edge and roofing metal on the roof) I wound up taping the edges of the zip-board as well and lapping the tape about three quarters of an inch over the top and down the side of the fascia. Doing so (combined with all the other taping) effectively sealed the roof against water infiltration and almost an hour after I finished a big storm blew in and it poured rain which gave the roof a good stress test in the water-proof department and I was happy to see that it worked wonderfully well.
I still have no real plans for that building besides putting some solar panels on its roof and utilizing the bottom portion (in the short-term) for building material and tool storage while I build the cabin. As a side note most of the materials for the cabin have been ordered and should be arriving in the next week or so which is very exciting to say the least. I keep thinking of ways to enclose the building with that heavy mil clear vinyl but ultimately I keep avoiding doing it because currently having the bottom of the building open gives me a lot more room to work on stuff and to store building materials.
The downside to that is that when it rains and the wind is blowing the bottom portion of the building gets wet which makes it not so great for storing stuff in it. So far I have held off on enclosing it but each time that it rains I feel a little more compelled to saying "screw the convenience" and just finishing the building off. Another reason that I am hesitant to get the building enclosed is that I need to fix one of the cinder block piers that the building is sitting on because during the construction process one of them shifted and although it is not hazardous or anything... I still have to fix it before it becomes so. All that I have to do is jack up and block that corner of the building before removing the cinder blocks, dig out a little more room for the bottom cinder block and then re-install both the blocks so it is not that big of a deal.
The other thing that I want to do before enclosing the building is to anchor it to the ground somehow. I am thinking to just use some of those big metal 'ground screws' and metal straps to anchor it all to the ground which would effectively make it the stoutest and most storm resistant building on the property. I even went around the cube's super structure and used various types of metal hardware to tie all the timbers together to make the building even stronger in case of super high winds. I guess that it is safe to say that my recent brush with severe weather (and tornado warnings) has vastly influenced how (and why) I constructed the building in the first place. I keep calling it 'my glorified solar panel rack' but honestly having a nice storm shelter would be incredibly comforting which is also why I have been hesitant to install the clear vinyl for the walls and thinking of holding off until I can get some plywood for the exterior instead.
On a different note. I had a birthday a few days ago and it was the best one that I have had in years so that was pretty pleasant. I did get to see the landowners late in the day and they brought me a pineapple upside down cake (made by one of their relatives) which was absolutely delicious and gave my birthday a much needed plot twist. For the most part I just hung out with the dogs, did some minor construction projects, played some loud music and relaxed for the day. I always get frigging lonely on and around my birthday but thankfully this year it was not all that bad and my desire for human company waned rapidly. I always feel sort of foolish after feeling that way for a day or two around my birthday but I guess that is because it is just so out of character for me to want human companionship at this point in life. Thankfully it does not happen all that often and I can rest easy knowing that hermiting my life away is much more appealing than the alternative.
Yesterday, I pretty much just took the day off so that I could try to get caught up on more of my domestic duties (like washing a bunch of socks) but I did have an 'aha' moment when I realized that the big flower pots that I have would be better for planting stuff in than being used for storage. When I was moving to this property I had crammed a bunch of stuff in the flower pots and put them out of my mind entirely but while I was looking for some metal hardware for the new building in one of them I was like 'well damn these are perfect for planting potatoes in' which had somehow eluded me for several weeks as I looked for stuff to plant them in! So far I only freed up one of them and got some potatoes planted in it and I think that I have two more of them once I find containers to hold the stuff currently stored in them. I still have this incredible compulsion to plant as much stuff as I possibly can this year and although I am off to a good start with it I still have a lot of planting to do over the coming weeks.
It has all been quite the journey over the last several years and I often find myself at a loss for words to describe just how much my life has both changed during that time and oddly remained the same in many ways... but with improvements. With documenting my life has come the inevitable dialing in of both said life and my overall lifestyle so go figure. My coping skills have assuredly become stronger and my ability to 'stay the course' for the long-haul has become easier to do over time and although there will always be hardships my response to them has shifted drastically towards the realm of pragmatism and practicality and away from eliciting an emotional response that all too often just made things more difficult in the past.
Well, the sun is out and although it is looking like it might rain soon I should wrap this up and get it all edited so that I can get on with my day. I did make a podcast a few days ago so I will try to get that edited and added to this entry. I was a bit buzzed when I made it the day before my birthday so bear that in mind but overall it is a pretty good one if you do not mind crowing roosters, music playing in the background and me rambling on about the goings on of my life. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 128 Podcast:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zbxHET3JN1NgPOiBAiGk7tvileYyT52M/view?usp=sharing
The first corn plant popped up!
The new roof before I installed the fascia and tape!
The new roof with the tape and fascia installed.
The first snake I have seen at the new shelter site was a nearly seven foot long Eastern King snake!
A short video of the snake can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_VdcMXLKBIDujLWZMBtmPFCjQpdE8B33/view?usp=sharing
Thanks for reading!
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That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/apocalyptic-homesteading-day-125-130
