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 31!

Dog Anxiety, Fencing Done Well The Hard Way & A Moody Day Indeed

I slept in a little this morning and did not wake up fully until around eight o'clock so I will once again not have a whole lot of time to spend writing this morning. I am not in all that great of a mood today because first thing this morning all three of my smaller dogs ran off as soon as I let them out of the tent which is something that has been becoming more and more problematic of late and mostly has to do with them being kenneled during the daytime and lacking any sort of fence around the base camp they now want to maintain what they perceive as their territory. As far as all that stuff goes it is a fucking mess and makes me neurotic with anxiety about them every time that it happens because their is a busy road nearby not to mention other dogs. As much as it is going to be a pain in the butt I am thinking that I will just have to start walking them on a leash one at a time in the morning (which is when it tends to happen the most) and put the other dogs in their kennels while I do so. The real solution is of course to finish the new dog yard fence and do whatever it takes to relocate to that area even if that means moving the tent over there.

As far as the new dog yard goes I got in several hours of work on it and since it was finally quite sunny (and mostly warm) I brought the dogs with me and kept them in the temporary PVC dog yard while I was working in the area. The task at hand for the day was to get one small section of mesh fencing installed along the southern fence line between the gate there and its downhill corner. I figured that starting with a small section of fence like that was a good idea because I have never installed a fence like this one and assuredly never done so on the side of a hill. The process was frigging all out tedious and surprisingly dirty because the galvanized metal fencing material was well-oiled and since I had to cut the wire back (to make long single horizontal strands that tie back on themselves after they get wrapped around the corner and gate posts) so I could not use my bulky gloves and keep my hands clean. The oil made holding the set of cutting pliers tricky at best (because they became slippery) and honestly within the first ten minutes of doing it I was absolutely over it!

It was not just as simple as making a few snips, removing the vertical pieces and then pulling loose the wrapped cross sections that bind the vertical and horizontal wires together. What I had to do was grab each cross section by one of its end points and twist it with the tips of the pliers so that it would loosen and then slide freely off the end of the remaining horizontal wire. The fencing material being so well built did not help in that instance of things and although I have racked my brain on ways to strip the horizontal wires faster I have yet to come up with anything and think that I just have to resign myself to the fact that it is going to be a long time-consuming (and extremely tedious) process that I will have to do at every gate and corner post. I will have to get some pictures of what I am talking about here because I know that my description is not really all that adequate but I just do not know how to describe it any better.

Once I got all the wire stripped back (and threw all the scraps in the wagon) I retrieved some lumber, the come-along (hand powered winch), a short tow strap and that piece of metal cable with the two hooks on it that I found out in the woods while hiking a few weeks ago. I then used the lumber to sandwich the end of the mesh fencing between and fastened the lumber together with some six inch landscape screws which all made for a bit of a heavy setup but it worked rather well for pulling on the fencing material with. Basically I attached the strap and come-along to the center of the sandwiched lumber and then attached the cable to a tree located uphill (that was more or less in line with the rest of the fence line) and after standing the fencing material up and securing it at the downhill end I then cranked on the come-along to stretch the fencing material. I wound up having to do that procedure three times because the first time I fastened the fencing in the wrong place and could not pull it taut enough, the second time it tore free when I pulled on it and the third time it all actually worked okay except that since I was pulling it uphill the bottom of the boards dug into the ground because of the change in the terrain. If it all sounds like a frigging pain in the ass it assuredly was and not long after beginning the process I realized why doing that sort of fencing installation is not a one person job!

By the end of the day I was feeling quite moody and more than a little discouraged but I knew going into that phase of the fencing project that I was facing a pretty steep learning curve and that I was probably going to get frustrated along the way if things did not go smoothly... which they did not do! Thankfully I do not mind learning new things and have a tendency to want to do things well but ugh was it a painful damn process in this particular instance and hopefully I can do the rest of the mesh fencing installation without as much hassle and not bugger up the job along the way. I doubt that any of it will be easy to do but if I do not have another day like that I will be very grateful.

By the end of it I sort of just wanted to scream because once I let the come-along off (after securing the fencing to the gate post) a portion of the top section of fencing was sagging and it took me the better part of a half hour to realize that if I just tightened the strainer (that I installed the day before) on the corner 'H' brace that it would tighten the fencing up and it sure did except that it then caused another sag to occur near the gate. The big problem there is that I ran out of strainer wire the other day and have not installed the strainer for that particular gate so it only has its 'H' brace for support but hopefully when I get its strainer installed I will be able to remove the sag. In the grand scheme of things it is not all that bad of a sag and is only near the top of the fence so there is that but I really want this new fence to come out as close to perfect as possible.

Well, it is a cold morning here and I need to round these dogs up and get the water system turned back on since I drained it before it froze last night so I better just wrap this up and 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.