Curvy Fence Posts, Matters Of Terrain, Aching Feet, Gaming Hard & Taking A Real Day Off
I do not know how I feel about not posting yesterday but taking a little break from my usual routine of late was pretty nice and perhaps now I can maintain a better sleep cycle because I finally woke up at four this morning instead of several hours before that time which has been kind of wonky of late but hell I would rather wake up before four in the morning than after it.
Although I tend to simply follow whatever natural rhythm my body (and mind) falls into... all that waking up at two in the morning was wrecking any kind of late in the day productivity that I could do and (like I have mentioned several times on this journey) it was often leaving me falling asleep long before dark which meant that I was basically spending my days writing, working, eating and sleeping and yeah oddly enough I was doing them in that order also! Given that I have so much to do in order to get myself squared away in a new shelter I have not minded forgoing my winter downtime, pushing myself to my limits and following the old mantra of 'eat... work... sleep...' but the reality is that I have to find time to relax and 'live' along the way a bit also or why the hell am I even doing it all to start with!
On Day 18 it was a chilly frigging morning and I had a hard time convincing myself to leave the cozy warm tent and hike over to the new shelter site but by late in the morning I managed to shake off my inclination to take the day off, get my work clothes on and head over to the site to see what I could accomplish. The last several times that I have walked over there (to the new site) in the mornings I have been quite impressed not only with how far along the site has come from being a brush covered and heavily shaded slope to a wide open and very sunny clear area. The other thing that always strikes me is just how well I am being accommodated with the usage of the site and for its further development by the landowners which is fucking epic and not something that I have actually encountered a lot in the past. In other words having some folks help me get my own scenario squared away is really helpful because I do not have to scavenge for materials, hack stuff together and try to 'make do' in whatever area of land is available and often tends to be not ideal or even all that convenient. Having to deal with all of that often gets under my skin after a while and just makes things more difficult than they need to be so, when I walk to the site in the mornings I find it very 'refreshing' to say the absolute least!
Although I thought about building another fire I opted to just focus on getting more fence post holes dug and more posts installed for the new dog yard instead which turned out to be a wise decision because I was able to just focus on one task and get a lot done in the process. For whatever reason a bunch of the holes that I dug on the northern fence line (the section that I am currently working on) were not all that hard to dig and I was able to dig down much deeper before hitting that hard packed clay layer. What I think is going on there is that the northern fence line is part of the slope that is lower than the rest of the slope and with the way the water sheds off the entire site it gently flows both north and east before running off down hill towards that very first fence post that I installed on the northeast corner. Because of those features of the terrain I think that more topsoil has accumulated along that edge of the site and thus there is more of it to dig through before I hit the hard packed clay layer. That is my best guess at least but whatever the reason it sure made for some easy digging.
I only got four posts installed that day and since that particular fence line is the shortest and the one that is not going to be seen all that much I have been using the most curvy and tapered posts that I have available on it. Doing things that way makes for some tricky work getting the posts themselves plumb (as well as lined up properly) because 'curvy is as curvy does' but overall I like how it is coming along and am glad that I had the foresight to save the most curvy posts for that section of the fence. The only real downside to doing that has been that on almost each post hole I had to pull the post out and reshape the hole some to accommodate whatever curve I was working with which was not all that big of a deal except for in places where there was a lot of roots and I had to use the chisel head on my homemade rock-bar to cut the roots away which often made a mess of the already 'finished' hole but ultimately was not all that big of a deal.
My endeavors wore me out rather rapidly that day and I headed back to base camp a little before sunset when the temperature began to fall so that I could get the heaters turned on and warm the living quarters tent up before feeding the dogs and chickens. Once all that jazz was done I dove back into gaming online and totally binged out on it for most of the evening even though I was pretty tired from the day's activities. Considering that I generally devote a solid few weeks to gaming at the beginning of my usual winter downtime... I think that a few hours (days) of binging out on it to 'get my fix' is not all that bad of a thing and also I get to chat with my friends on there which is always nice for me and something that I look forward to doing each year just as much as I look forward to playing the actual game. I still think that the 'social' aspect is what keeps me doing it year after year and probably amounts to the best interactions with other humans that I actually have!
Anyway, after gaming most of the night away I slept in late on Day 19 and when I woke up it was nearly noon and of course I ached all over and it was chilly outside and I had zero drive to get outdoors and work on stuff. Mainly I needed to give my feet a break because they have been taking a beating of late because they have been staying damp constantly (in my rubber boots) and the callouses on them have been hurting because the rest of my feet tend to be very 'prune-like' except for at night when I am in the tent. It is difficult to describe what I am talking about but suffice it to say it makes walking painful and especially so when I am carrying stuff around and that sort of pain compounds whilst working on any sort of slope. I had been aware of what was going on with my feet ever since before I got moved fully (from all the packing etcetera) and I kept thinking that they would eventually get dried out enough but they just never did. It is worth noting that generally when I start off somewhere new this always happens but I usually have a fire at my camp that I can use to dry my feet out each night but in this instance I only have the 'wet heat' of the propane heater to dry them out which for whatever reason never quite does the same trick as a hot outdoor wood fire.
Aside from my feet bothering me I was probably overdue for a real day off (one where I did not even hike around) and I opted to also take a day off from writing just so that I would feel like I had devoted one hundred percent of my time to 'relaxing and recovering' which I assuredly did by playing my favorite video game, taking breaks to just chill with the dogs and letting my mind wander. As far as that last bit goes it was pretty damned nice because of course my mind has been in overdrive for way too long and it was nice to let it 'down shift' on its own to a 'lower gear' so to speak. It is of course rather understandable that my mind has been in overdrive (even before moving) but at this point I am going to have to gradually slow things down so that I can avoid getting burned out along the way. One thing is for sure and that is that I at least know my own patterns (and tendencies) and therefor I can adjust myself accordingly so that I can stay healthy physically, mentally and emotionally whilst avoiding the many pit falls along the way.
Well, I think that I am just going to keep this one short and sweet so that I will have plenty of time to do the editing and posting before the sun comes up and perhaps even have a little time to do some early morning gaming before I start my workday outdoors. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
The progress on the northern fence line!
The stumps near the northern fence line that I have yet to remove!
Thanks for reading!
Follow me on the Hive blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/@jacobpeacock
Please check out the Homesteading Community On The Hive Blockchain:
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
A playlist of my Jacob Goes Off Grid Videos can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CsWYxlqp36dEFkg5mnlzgY41bE761oK
Please consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page!!!
https://www.patreon.com/jacobpeacock
Contribute via Paypal:
https://PayPal.me/jacobpeacock
That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/apocalyptic-homesteading-day-18-19
