The Fantastica Chronicles Day 423!
The Solar Dilemma Deepens, The Strategic Thinking Loop, Compost Fed Chickens Or Not & A Lawnmower Spews To Life
I awoke rather early in the morning around four o'clock but wound up drifting back off to sleep until almost six before waking up again, letting the dogs outside and brewing my morning espresso. Somehow I managed to wrap up all my daily writing, editing and posting by an hour and a half before noon which was a wee bit earlier than when I have been getting it done of late so I used the 'extra' time to do some minor correspondence, read up on the news and try to wrap my head around the profitability of staking ADA on the Cardano network and the advantages of staking with a pool or operating my own staking pool. As far as I can tell (in regards to staking) the simplest approach is to utilize an existing staking pool because operating my own is outside of my immediate technical skills even though I could probably fumble through the staking pool setup and eventually get it operational... but when it comes down to it I would much rather just keep it simple and not have yet another drain on my data plan.
All that jazz aside, it turned out to be a rather sunny day and that coat of polyurethane that I recently applied to the broken glass in that solar panel was finally able to dry up all the way and although I considered applying a second coat I decided to hold off on doing so because the weather forecasters were calling for it to be raining a lot over the next few days. I considered trying to move the panel into the greenhouse onto some sawhorses before giving it a second coat of polyurethane but after hanging all that laundry in the greenhouse there just is not enough room for it. I also considered using the panel 'as is' with the single coat of polyurethane, letting that coat eventually breakdown from the sun's UV and then doing the whole process of cleaning it off again and next time just buying/using the expensive epoxy to seal the panel so that I will not have to do it once a year.
I spent the better part of two hours watching where the sunlight shines in the dog yard, on the chicken coop and shelter roofs. I also took a bunch of measurements to determine what materials that I would need to make a mounting rack and basically 'scratching my head' over where and how to install not just that panel but the other panels as well. I had a lot of ideas on where/how to install them but upon closer inspection I disregarded most of them as bad ideas for one reason or another. Perhaps I am just fooling myself into thinking that I can get the solar panels configured in such a way that they will be safe from falling tree branches, get enough direct sun to be useful and not get partially shaded by the long shadows of the trees here in the woods... but I have not given up yet!
When I was first setting things up in the shelter area I had planned on installing the panels on the greenhouse which although not ideal through much of the year would work rather well during the winter months. After a lot of consideration I decided against doing so because it would make the panels visible from far away and given the current scenario playing out in this country my instincts tell me that might not be all that wise and could perhaps make me a target if the grid goes down for an extended period of time. As much as I try not to make those sorts of decisions based on fear or paranoia... there you have it and I assuredly have made the decision based on those factors even though it is more out of 'safety' and 'peace of mind' than an actual fear response. I might be splitting hairs there but basically if I put the panels on the greenhouse I would constantly worry about them being stolen and the wee bit of electricity that I would generate is not going to outweigh the damned anxiety/stress that doing so would undoubtedly create in me.
Having seen firsthand what true desperation does to folks I understand the potential for problems in situations of 'scarcity' and it seems like I have spent almost this entire year with that kind of scenario in mind as I am setting things up around the shelter area. In other words I just cannot shake the 'gut feeling' (instinct) that I need to be smart about my situation and need to always be looking at the strategic advantages and disadvantages of how I have everything setup. This sort of thinking is nothing new to me or anything and I have often lived rather peacefully in some pretty bizarre places because of my tactics and strategic thinking but all things considered those were 'different times' than the one that I find myself in now and for the most part it was simple to identify the obvious threat vectors but in these times I just have to assume that I cannot anticipate the direction(s) that problems could occur from and find myself more often than not viewing all directions as potentially problematic. Furthermore I tend to view all my thoughtful strategies, preventative measures and 'barriers to problems' as woefully inadequate which probably sounds strange but what doing so does is force my senses (and thoughts) to pay attention to my surroundings and not feel too damn cozy with some false sense of security no matter its allure. In other words my own personal road to vigilance is not a linear journey, nor a trajectory but a simple constant alertness and inspection of the world around me.
Mostly I bend that awareness of my surroundings to noticing the natural cycles of the immediate flora and fauna as well as the human impact (especially my own) on the environment and every aspect of its relations from 'one thing to another' and in doing so I notice a hell of a lot of beautiful stuff so it is not like I am just scanning the world around me for threats and thus psychologically vomiting my fears all over the damned place in some neurotic attempt to 'stay safe' on a giant rock that is spinning at a thousand miles per hour (1609.34 kilometers per hour) whilst hurtling at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour (107826.05 kilometers per hour) through debris-filled space, circling a massive nuclear fusion explosion that we affectionately call the sun... because if that is not a threat to my well-being then why should I make anything else be... and I should mayhaps just find contentment in enjoying the ride, remain focused on the beauty of it all and control the one damn thing in this world that I can actually control which is my attitude.
All that jazz aside, I yet again raked up a bunch of the leaves from the dog yard and added them to the compost mound and now that I have done that several times I noticed that unless the leaves decompose really fast I may have to make the downhill side of the compost even taller by adding more chicken wire to it. The other option is of course to just make another compost mound for the chickens. I have mentioned doing so numerous times over the last few weeks but have still been rather damn indecisive on exactly where to put it and ultimately unsure if I want another compost to deal with in the first place. I am really not fond of making more work for myself as far as daily chores go but I am assuredly leaning towards making another compost to have to tend just because of the potential to feed the chickens with it. The part that I keep coming around to in my thinking is how to maximize the potential for worms in the mound whilst giving the chickens easy access to the worms throughout the year without the need for them to do a whole bunch of digging or me having to roll the compost each day. One way or another I should make up my mind soon and build something (or not) while there are abundant leaves on the ground to create the bulk of the necessary compostable matter for the size of the compost I am picturing that will sustain the chickens with food.
Anyway, late in the afternoon I finally cleaned the carburetor and the spark-plug on my self-propelled mulching lawnmower and whoa was it a mess! The carburetor bowl was pretty fouled with gunk (and even some bugs) and the needle of the carburetor had a visible layer of gunk all over it. The spark plug was coated in oil but lots of wire brushing and sanding of it with sandpaper later... I got it all cleaned up and looking like it would arc correctly. Of course almost all the seals for the carburetor and its parts are in desperate need of replacement but somehow they all held when I re-assembled everything. Before attempting to start the lawnmower I noticed that there was some oil dripping from the muffler and figured it was from working on the mower for about an hour on uneven ground with the muffler angled downhill and the oil reservoir uphill while I did the repairs. I figured that the worst that could happen was that it would spray a little mist of oil so when I went to start it I got it out of the pathway and aimed the muffler at a wood pile that could absorb the potentially small 'mist' of oil.
What really happened once the lawnmower started (after about six pulls on its pull-cord) was that it belched out and continued to belch out a bunch of oil over the period of about two and a half minutes whilst bellowing a thick plume of white smoke! By then it was of course too late to do anything aside from let it do what it was doing or turn it off so I let it spray everything into one area and although the mist did reach the wood pile a bunch of liquid oil completely coated the grass and leaves in front of the woodpile. Long story short... I had a mess to clean up afterwards but the mower was operational, quit bellowing smoke (and spitting oil) and I was able to do some much needed mowing around the shelter area, along the trails and throughout the new black locust grove where a bunch of damned mimosa trees have sprouted and are out-competing a lot of the smaller vegetation.
From what I could get mowed of the grove it is looking really nice and it is amazing to see just how well the undergrowth has become established after all the efforts that were put into it last year. I really think that mulching the leaves into the ground with the lawnmower repeatedly last year had a massive impact upon things and I think that part of that is due to how the leaves smother everything out and make the next years growth have to really struggle to penetrate the leaf layer after the winter. Then there is the whole challenge of just how much that hillside is shaded and all the water from rain and snow melt that runs across its surface throughout the year and to have it be vibrant is just going to take some routine maintenance each year by either mulching the leaves in place with a lawnmower or raking the majority of them up and removing them altogether. There is always a trade off with that sort of thing but one thing is for sure and that is the area went from a rather barren, acidic, erosion prone slope to a beautiful grove of mostly native plants, trees and fungi which was after all the goal.
Well, I should get to wrapping this up but it is worth mentioning that I wound up having to have a fire just to dispose of all the oily leaves created by the lawnmower repair fiasco and since it got a bit windy outside I had to tend it a lot closer than I usually do but I did get the mess all cleaned up and burnt off so that I did not have a fire hazard on my hands yet alone any real environmental impact even though I did burn a good bit of oil in the process. All things considered really dry leaves make for one hell of an oil absorbent and having a bunch of them on hand made cleaning up the mess rather simple and whoa did they burn fast!
Alright, I have really rambled on this morning and better get on with the editing and whatnot so that I can truly start my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night or something like that.
Just a wee fire!
Thanks for reading!
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.
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That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-423
