Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1107)
Hello Everyone!
Sugar limits, Fairly cold weather, An RTFM GPT, Multistage composting, Cabin cleaning & The mite dance!
Alright, I am here once again not all that long after the sunset... so I am doing good on my timing. My nightly espresso is still 'brewing away' inside the little stove-top espresso maker I use... so... everything is 'right in my world' as the saying goes.
Sometime back, I mentioned how I have been putting ice cream in my nightly espresso... and after many months of doing it now... I think that I need to start curbing my sugar intake again. It was nice while it lasted but getting too much sugar in my diet tends to screw with my overall focus... and the 'sugar crashes' tend to make me want to sleep... or simply zone out way too much.
To be clear there I do not have a heck of a lot of sugar in my diet to start with... besides what is in the preserved foods that I eat... and the small amount that I have added via the ice cream (and some occasional chocolate) is not that much in the grand scheme of things. Sadly it does not take having 'all that much' of the stuff in my diet for me to start noticing the difference.
Anyways, the weather cleared up considerably and although it remained chilly... the clouds went away and it was bright and sunny the entire day. Which was a very nice turn of events after how it was yesterday! It might not have ever gotten truly 'warm' throughout the day... but at least it was not until late in the afternoon that the temperature started to really plunge.
For much of the morning I found myself piddling around on the computer doing a mix of reading stuff on Hive, catching up on some of the news... and of course tinkering with some more custom GPT models. Although I made a few new custom models I particularly like the RTFM one that I made... just because I have always loved that acronym.
Around noon I was feeling burned out on the computer stuff so I got outdoors... and got the dog waste cleaned up from the dog yard since I had not done it the day before when it was raining. I am unsure if I ever mentioned it... but lately I have been staging it near the waste buckets (on the ground) for a few days at a time... so that the chickens will break it all up before I haul it to the compost.
It adds another step to the process but it is worth noting that I cover the temporary pile with soil from the topsoil trap... and the chickens do a fantastic job at breaking the waste apart rather quickly. The system has been working out so well... that I have been trying to figure out ways to make it a bit better by having the waste in a wooden box (with wheels) that I can haul off and dump once the chickens finish their work.
Once I was done with all that jazz I gave my old dog a 'shower' and swapped out the bedding under the bed for her. Since I already had both my rugs in play I got the dirtier of the two hung up on the fence... and washed out so hopefully it gets fully dry by the time the other rug (or current bedding) needs washing.
While I had the rug out of the way I also thoroughly scrubbed the cabin floor... and especially so under the bed where it is difficult to scrub without laying on the floor itself. I think that with all those floor scrubbings that I have been doing... that I have started to get a better handle on the mites and hopefully I can continue that trend.
I also used the last of that ten percent sulfur ointment to keep up the treatments for that one dog and although I need to order more soon... that stuff has been working fantastically in conjunction with those other treatments. I still think that the 'daily brushings' help a whole lot but out of everything... the most noticeable difference occurs after applying the sulfur ointment.
Although I am not 'out of the weeds' with it quite yet the dog has grown back most of the hair it had lost, is scratching itself less and overall just seems happier. Back when I was first reading up on dealing with mites I was like 'alright it looks like a tough one' and whoa was I right about that! One of the things that stood out when I was first learning about it was the 'two steps forward one step back' nature of dealing with them and I gotta say that turned out to be absolutely true.
To get back on track here... I spent the bulk of the afternoon outdoors doing one thing after another... and I was even able to get the majority of the leaves raked up from around the chicken coop. Apparently while I was not paying attention the 'mocker nut' tree (above the coop) had shed a bunch of its leaves and had made quite the mess of the area.
I almost got over involved with the raking but the plunging temperature drove me back indoors a little sooner than I had planned for. At lease I got in several hours of good physical activity today so no complaints there... but I do need to start breaking away from my morning routines much sooner... because the days seem like they are going by way too fast... and I just have to buckle down and get more done each day.
Well, on that note... I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time.
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Thanks for another interesting post, you really do have a gift for making everyday life and chores seem like an adventure. Enjoy reading about your experiences😄
You are quite welcome and I am glad that you enjoyed it. Yup, you nailed it there... I often joke that I 'make the ordinary seem interesting' which I can only blame on practicing so much.
I hope your strawberry plants are doing awesome! 🤠
Should I say that this is a whole lot of activities you have done in just a day or the manner you have written this made it look like that.
Did you take the whole day working?
I am equally concerned about my sugar intake even though I have never payed any close attention to this to see how it makes me react.
It did not seem like much activity at the time but it sure was.
Nah, it was just half of a day working.
Yeah, the thing with sugar is it just taste so good!
How is your old dog doing? I do not think you could use this on dogs but my dad used to put 7 dust on the chickens to kill mites and keep them away.
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She is hanging in there. Seven dust is toxic for pets. I use diatomaceous earth to dust them and the environment they are in. Works good on the chickens and in their coop as well. The chickens do not have a problem with the mites. The affected dog is just old and has a compromised immune system and cannot self-regulate the natural amount of mites she has. All dogs have mites to one extent or another but if they cannot self-regulate the population then the population explodes.
I did not know this about mites, I know when Dustin came with his dog she had ear mites and the other dog got them, it took many treatments to get rid of them. I am glad to hear your old dog is still doing well.
She is still hanging in there and the last few days has taken to going outside on her own. Yesterday she 'jumped up' (which was slow but fast for her) ran out the door and halfway across the yard before I could catch up to her.