A Hot Water Success Story, Taking Two Days Off, Weirdo Pressure Treated Fungi & Chainsawing China Berry

  The last several days the weather has been super nice and I have thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine and the warm evenings. The moon has been so bright that I did not even need a flashlight to see whilst walking around outdoors at night. Between the moon, all the visible stars and the sounds of the wildlife becoming active with the approaching springtime I have found myself soaking it all in each evening and relaxing in such a way that leaves my mind feeling both soothed and calmed. Not that my mind has been all that un-calm or anything but there is just something wonderful about actively engaging in stilling all my thoughts and exploring my peace of mind not in some exercise of mental masturbation but to just relax and see what bubbles up from the stillness.

  In other words the last several days have been really wonderful and I even took two consecutive days off from working in a row. Admittedly on the second day I did a bunch of minor tasks that I had earmarked to do 'when I had a day off' but overall it was a much needed break from the heavy physical exertion that I had done over a seven day period before it. Thankfully during that intense work stint I paced myself really well and incurred no injuries beyond the usual scrapes and sore muscles and given the amount of stuff that got done that is really saying something.

  So, last Friday was the end of the one week of work and by the time it was getting dark outside I was baling water from my outdoor tub, scrubbing it down, rinsing it out and then hauling it over on the big cart from the base camp site (where I had left it) to just downhill of the deck inside the dog yard at the shelter site. I would not usually be doing such work that late in the day but just before sunset we had finished hooking up the rest of the PEX tubing and had tested the new water lines that lead inside the dog yard. It was a two person job to get the two coiled PEX lines under the fence and I do not think that I could of done it alone especially since I had tried it twice alone and failed to do it each time. Since we ran the hot and cold water in half inch tubing the volume and the pressure is not super high but it is plenty to do everything that I need to do and when I run the lines a little further downhill I can get stronger water pressure if I need it for something. We may later add a booster pump to help with the water pressure but honestly it works good enough as it is for me.

  Anyway, I eventually got the tub setup and filled it with hot water by the light of the moon. I did not even have to hurry to get in the tub or anything because the water was so hot that it did not cool before the tub could get filled which is what happened a lot when I was using my small on-demand camping propane water heater. I wound up soaking in the tub for nearly an hour and by the time that I was done the water was still quite warm. That one hot bath made all the previous week's work well worth it and I am super stoked that hot baths (and hot water) is now an option at the new shelter site. Having easily available hot water 'on tap' is still rather novel to me but in the last four days I have only used it twice and both times it was for taking a bath in my outdoor tub.

  Today was a rather long day of working outside and aside from a brief heavy downpour of rain early this morning the weather was quite nice. Early in the day I sorted through a pile of building materials and got them all properly ricked so that they can dry out and hopefully kill the fungus that is growing on (and in) them. I was hoping to scavenge some materials to build a chicken coop with out of that pile of lumber but upon closer inspection I realized that it was all water-logged, had lots of black mold and the aforementioned fungus growing on it and that drying it out first would be a much more prudent course of action. The fungus itself is pretty weird because it seems to thrive in wet pressure treated wood which is something that I have never actually seen before. It is not just that it coats the wood in white fuzzy mycelia but it even sprouts these brown capped white gilled mushrooms that sometimes have stalks and sometimes grow in what appears to be a shelf-like fashion. It could of course be two different types of mushroom altogether that simply look very similar but either or they make for quite the infestation.

  On a different note. Near the main entrance to the property there are a bunch of China Berry (melia azedarach) trees that were infringing upon the driveway and since I had previously noticed that they had been cut back I inquired about cutting them back more. Given that they are an invasive species and pretty much outcompete everything else I was happy that I got permission to cut them back more. Long story short I spent a little over an hour cutting back those trees today with my fancy new cordless chainsaw and although I did not cut down all of them I sure made some good progress and got most of them. There are still several big tree stumps remaining and since that species of tree will shoot out new growth from not just the stumps but also from its roots I doubt that my efforts today did much in the way of eradicating it. I doubt that anything short of getting some heavy equipment to pull the stumps and roots up with (or poisoning the stumps) is going to kill off that stand of trees and I will just have to keep routinely cutting it all back before it can produce more seeds and spread itself any further around the property. As with most invasive trees/plants that get themselves established in an area they are hell to get removed once they do.

  I guess that it was a day for chainsaw work because I wound up cutting back some more branches that were growing into the roads, a few small trees (and stumps) around the base camp area and I also felled a roughly thirteen meter yellow pine tree that was leaning over the road and whose other fork I had already cut down a few weeks ago. Basically it was a split based tree with one fork that was dead (the one I cut down a few weeks ago) and another that only had branches growing on one side of it which made it pretty sketchy given how much it was leaning over the road and towards the dog yard. I knew that if I cut it just right with the chainsaw that I could fell it diagonally across the road and that it would land exactly where the new freeze-proof hydrant is to be installed... and it sure did land exactly where I thought that it would! I am glad that the hydrant has yet to be installed because otherwise I would have had to tie off to the tree and pull it away from everything before felling it which of course is always a pain in the butt to do.

  I managed to get the pine tree bucked and sectioned up into long logs before running out of charged batteries for the chainsaw so I just drug it all out of the road and set the batteries to charging. Those batteries work really good for what they do as long as I keep from overheating them while running the saw but whoa does it take a long time to get them fully charged again. All things considered though the best solution is to just get more batteries and be able to rotate them out if they get hot or get depleted during a cutting project. The chainsaw also seems to use the bar oil rather conservatively so that is good but I have to remind myself to check it because it can run dry long before the battery needs recharging.

  Well, I should just get to wrapping this up because although I squeezed in a late day nap... I am fading fast and still need to get this all edited and posted tonight. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The new outdoor tub setup!

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-99-102