A Chilly Day In The Shade, Fence Post Installation, A Snafued Gate Scenario, Kenneled Dogs & An Unfrozen Water System
It is yet another chilly morning here and I was up late again so as you can figure I am in slow motion this morning and sort of just mulling over the weird dreams that I was having as I sip my espresso and listen to the chickens cooing in their cage a few meters outside the tent. I am still rather amazed at how warm the tent stays during the wee hours of the morning when the temperatures plummet and I shut off the propane heater before going to sleep. That recirculating oil heater that I have been using has been doing an excellent job of keeping the tent warm and more importantly in this particular scenario it keeps the humidity inside the tent down to a reasonable level which is super nice considering the humid region that I am now living in.
All in all for three weeks into 'roughing it' I am pretty damn cozy and have settled into my new routines rather well... or at least 'well enough' to keep me feeling comfortable whilst working towards getting a new cabin and dog yard built. As much as I would like to say that I am making 'good progress' on things here I just cannot do it because I am actually making 'awesome progress' here which has been made possible by the landowners providing me with the materials that I need to do the projects that I am doing which as I have stated before is absolutely awesome in and of itself and not really something that I have encountered much over the last several years... so yeah as mind blowing as it is I am not having to 'work with junk' on this adventure!
I pretty much did the same thing that I did the day before and spent the morning first writing, then doing some gaming until the sun was near its zenith and warmed things up outdoors a bit which I must admit that for such a sunny day it never got all that warm and especially so in the shade. To give you an idea of how it was in the shade the phone that I take pictures with got so cold that its camera lens got fogged and no matter what I did the pictures just did not come out that well even though I tried setting the phone in the sun (to warm it up) and also tried keeping it in my pocket to warm it up with body heat to no avail. After nearly four years of documenting my life you would think that I would have bought a real camera by now and maybe it is time that I seriously entertain doing so because sometimes the quality of the pictures that I take makes me cringe but I guess in the not-so-grand scheme of things the pictures are not exactly the 'meat' of what I am sharing so it makes sense that I have yet to do much to improve them.
Anyway, I began working on the western fence line of the new dog yard and got about half of its post installed and probably could have gotten a few more of them installed if I had not been working in the shade and gotten quite chilled along the way. The western fence line is the top portion of the terraced slope that comprises the new shelter site and I guess that since it is near one of the access roads that it has a lot of topsoil (that has eroded from the portions of the property above the site itself) and because of that, digging the fence post holes was much easier than the rest of the ones that I have been digging. There was one fence post that I wound up shifting a wee bit to one side (of the nearly three meter layout that I have been utilizing) because I ran into a really big root and trying to cut it out of the way would have disturbed entirely too much of the ground in the area and given the nature of the loamy ground it would be quite tricky to get it re-established so I figured that the best approach is to just disturb it as little as possible in the first place.
This entire time that I have been working on the new site I have been picturing putting the main gate for the dog yard in a specific place and it was not until I was at that spot digging the fence post holes that I noticed there are two small stumps just inside of where the gate will open at. I mean hell I have walked over that spot dozens of times a day over the last three weeks and never really made the connection between the stumps being in the way and the gate being there! I briefly considered moving the gate but discarded that idea because doing so would disrupt the direct path from the access road to the interior of the site itself and in doing so I would always blame some perceived 'laziness' (of not removing the stumps) as the culprit for the inconvenience. Long story short there... I decided to just continue with the gate as planned and to 'put in the work' to remove the stumps even though it will undoubtedly disturb the ground there a heck of a lot and be a real test of trying to re-establish it especially given the amount of foot traffic it will receive. What I am thinking to do is to just wait on the stump removal until after the dog yard is done (and the cabin building is complete) and since the dog yard will have three gates I can just use a different gate until I first remove the stumps and then get the ground there re-established in such a way that it will not turn into a mucky mess of clay and dirt directly in the main path leading into the interior of the site.
Anyway, late in the afternoon the landowners came by for a visit and brought me an awesome dish of egg foo yung from a nearby (relatively speaking) eatery and given that I was already chilly and the food was warm... I wrapped up everything at the new shelter site and headed back to base camp to the warmth of the tent where I could enjoy the meal which to me was one heck of a treat! Like I have said before I generally like to 'tidy up' whatever work site that I am on at the end of each day and not leave anything unfinished but the allure of the food was so strong that I just left the post that I had been working on standing in its hole without finishing filling the hole and compacting the soil around the post. Since there was no rain being forecast or anything I did not think that it was all that big of a deal but whoa did it nag at me the rest of the day and eventually I was like: What is the big deal with that unfinished task! You will obviously finish it tomorrow so just chill out and quit over-thinking stuff!
Once I got back to base camp I un-kenneled the dogs and dove into eating the egg foo yung (and an egg roll) with real gusto which shortly thereafter resulted in an intense food comma and me unintentionally falling asleep with the dogs all nuzzled up against me. As a side note, as much as I dislike having to kennel the dogs like that they have for their part done really well at it and do not even seem to mind it at all which is a relief because at least they do not seem to think that they are being punished or any horseshit like that. Given that I gave them every chance not to wind up needing to be kenneled I understand why at a new site they would want to 'get out' of wherever I put them just to come find me so that they can do their job which is a heck of a lot better of a reason for 'escaping' than to merely run off. Like I have said many times before the tendency of the dogs is to maintain the perimeter of a place (mostly by routinely marking said perimeter with their waste and scent) but ultimately they have everything that they could need or want located where we 'live' and are content to stay close by and enjoy being spoiled by me!
I got side-tracked there a bit. Back to the food comma part of my day. I usually know when I am going to fall asleep but I just zonked the heck out and three hours later when I abruptly awoke I looked at the clock and straight up panicked that it said six o'clock because I erroneously thought that it was six in the morning and that somehow I had missed feeding the dogs and chickens, slept all evening and most significantly I had failed to turn off the water pump and drain the water system before it froze! All the stuff that ran through my head in those few moments was intense because it all amounted to some perceived 'failure' on my part and as a result lots of stuff was broken from the freezing temperatures... which thankfully all turned out to be untrue but hell the mind is a tricky damn landscape and just imagining all that damage was quite enough for me!
In the end I had plenty of time to feed the dogs and chickens and many hours before I would need to deal with the water scenario and of course I took care of all that stuff without much ado. In hindsight I felt kind of lame waking in a panic because when I looked at the clock and noticed it said that it was six I also simultaneously noticed just how bright it was outside (I am in a tent after all) and it has yet to be that bright at six in the morning and all that I had to do to avoid the 'panic' was to trust what my senses were telling me and (like the old saying goes) put the pieces together! Of course I was still half awake/asleep and understandably a bit confused given that I had not intended to fall asleep in the first place... so in the end I just chuckled about it all, took the proverbial deep breath and shook it all off!
Well, it is getting late in the morning and all this writing is cutting into the brief window that I have to get in a bit of gaming before I start working outdoors... so ta ta for now! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night and I will assuredly do the same.
This is some of that hard packed clay that I have been having to dig through for the fence post installation!
The beginning of the western fence line!
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-21
