Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: Hi I am Jacob.

TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 109!

Warmer Days Slower Ways, A Dodgy Tree, An Island Of Corn, Bench Making & Tires In The Sand

The weather stayed nice enough throughout the day and I found myself not needing a sweater or even a warm hat while being in the shade which has often been the case of late. I mean it was a spectacular day and there just are not adequate words to describe what it is truly like to transition from the colder seasons to the warmer ones. I will not be missing the cold weather but I will miss the relative absence of bugs and snakes as the days grow hotter and nature shrugs off its winter stillness. Aside from the warmth and all the pollen, the other big indicator that spring is nearly here is the amount of birds and small game that I have been hearing and seeing around the woods and I have repeatedly found myself stopping whatever I am doing just to observe the wildlife.

Not long after the sun was fully up I gathered up the cordless chainsaw, the flower pot with my silage corn seed in it and a trowel and hiked off to find a sunny spot to plant in. I brought the saw with me because I was at first thinking to fell a few pine trees to open up a sunny spot that I had been watching the last few days and thinking about planting corn in. Upon closer inspection of the area I realized that the area not only gets too much water runoff but also there is not much in the way of topsoil and I would have to plant the kernels in solid red clay which probably would not work out all that well.

Since I already had the saw with me I wound up felling a big rotten pine tree in the communal area and whoa was it a bit of a mess. The tree itself was about sixteen meters tall and big enough around that my sixteen inch chainsaw bar barely spanned its girth. Being so rotten it was a sketchy tree to fell, especially given how tall it was and how many branches it still had attached to it at the top. If you are not familiar with such trees it is common that when chainsawing at the bottom for the middle and/or top of the tree to wobble and even sheer off... and sometimes at multiple places at one time. Basically any time that I have to fell such trees I rehearse my escape route a few times before beginning the cutting and do my best to listen for any upper portions of the tree cracking as I cut on it.

That particular tree felling turned into a wee bit of a cluster fuck because after doing the relief cut and while doing the back cut, the stump below the cuts broke and cocked itself in such a way that it made the upper portion of the tree that was about ninety-eight percent being finished cut through to fall in the absolute opposite direction that I was felling it in. Of course I had chosen to do the back cut at an angle also and when the tree shifted it pinched down on the bar of the chainsaw and immediately brought all cutting to an end. Thinking quickly I undid the tool-less shroud for the bar and chain and removed the main body of the saw from the bar and chain that was stuck in the tree and carried it far away from the now super precarious scenario so that it would not get damaged. Here is where things get even sketchier because I had a real mess on my hands and there was a bare six inch strip of quarter inch thick wood holding the entire tree in place... balanced on a rotten and buckled stump!

I do not recommend anyone doing the following and in hindsight I should have not done it and should have used something longer... but I retrieved a shovel from near the tree felling area (being careful to get nowhere near the tree when getting the shovel) and used it to gently push on the tree from the side that I thought that I was least likely to have anything fall on me from. It took several firm pushes with the shovel to get the tree to start swaying and right when it began to look like it was going to topple I ran like hell away from it all. Once it had crashed down across the road I sighed a massive sigh of relief and deeply cringed when I saw that the tree had sheered itself off at the ground and my cuts were not why (or where) it fell from. In other words I probably could have pushed it over with the shovel to start with! On the bright side the bar and chain were fine and I was glad that the bar had remained straight because I then had to buck the tree and clean up all the mess it had created. Once again I was not disappointed in the performance of the cordless chainsaw and in that particular case the tool-less bar and chain removal was incredibly handy.

Eventually, I did get to planting some corn in an island between a few of the roads here and using the saw to trim back some unwanted growth in the area as well as a few small stumps that were in one of the roads. I had been eyeing that little island for some improvements for a while now but I had not considered planting a bunch of corn in it. I think that all total I planted around nine small rows of corn in the island towards its center and depending on how well the corn grows there I might go back and just fill the whole island with the stuff. I keep picturing the island as a sort of 'feature' to the place in the form of a garden plot but we will see what it becomes over time. For now I will be stoked if the frigging corn does well there and will call it good enough!

Later in the day, I took some time to mill another one of those China Berry logs and although the chainsaw made fast work of it and my cut was nice and plumb... a bunch of the log turned out to be pithy enough to make both pieces useless for benches. So, instead of using them I decided to make a bench with the cutoff slab section from the bench that I made the day before. Once again I focused on doing it 'fast and rugged' but this time I spent a little more time mating up the legs to the bottom of the seat portion to lend it some added stability. It is a skinny bench and all but it sure came out pretty cool looking and I am excited to see what it looks like once I de-bark the rest of it.

I also spent some time de-barking the rest of the seat on the bench that I made the day before and now only the legs have bark remaining on them. Since the wood of both benches seemed to be still quite wet (green) I set the benches in a sunny spot to help dry them faster. It would probably be best to paint/seal the ends of them and store them in the shop tent to prevent checking and cracking but meh they are after all just hacked together benches with no real expectation for them to last more than a season outdoors.

Anyway, it was a busy day and unless I want to spend all day writing I should not get started detailing all of it here. I did however get air put in all the tires around here that needed it including the bike that the fellow that recently moved away from here left behind because he did not want it anymore. I do not think that I mentioned it but I have taken to riding that bike around for the last week or so and I gotta say the cardio has been rather nice and whoa does it save me a lot of time when I need to get to another portion of the property. I get so tired of walking sometimes and although I enjoy slowly ambling around... I also can really enjoy the exhilaration of moving rapidly. I am not to the point where I am taking up cycling as a hobby or anything but each time that I take a ride I get a little more excited about it. Perhaps the novelty will wear off sooner or later but for now I am just going to enjoy it and try not to pop too many wheelies or start jumping more things than I already am while riding the bike.

Well, I should get this all wrapped up so that I can get on with my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

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.

Nearly four 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 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.