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 46-49!

Finishing The Fencing Project, Busting Stumps, Plotting Relocation, A Muscle Pulled, Camping Fatigue & So Much Walking

It has been an incredibly busy few days and my sleep cycle has been a bit out of whack. I have not been waking up super early each morning so that I have enough time at the beginning of my day to do some writing but I have gotten incredible amount accomplished working on outdoor stuff. I have not had any problems sleeping or anything like that and have been getting my usual six hours of sleep each night but those six hours seem to keep happening between two and eight in the morning and by the time I get up the sun is out and I rapidly make my way outdoors so that I can begin working. By the time the evenings roll around I am usually more than a bit 'brain dead' for the day and all that I have wanted to do is watch some movies or idly play my favorite video game. Even this morning I should just be getting my gear on and heading over to the new shelter site to start working but I dislike going so long without doing much in the way of writing.

After being cooped up for several days in a row with all the rainy weather I dove back into working on the fencing project with real gusto and over the last several days days I managed to get the last section of fencing installed, finish off a bunch of odds and ends on the rest of the fence, bury the trench that houses the bottom of the fencing material, install the remaining strainers and generally wrap up everything to do with the fencing project except for the gates. The lumber for building the gates is still ricked inside the shop tent at the new shelter site drying out but hopefully by the end of the week it will all be dry enough to build the gates with and the entire fencing project will be complete. As much as the end result will be one heck of a stout fence... it has been a hell of an undertaking to get it all built!

There was a tremendous learning curve with all of that project but now I think that I am in pretty good shape to do other such fencing projects now that I know all the little 'tricks' involved with its installation. I am assuredly still well below the 'expert level' with fence installation but given that the two meter tall, ninety meter long fence came out rather well (even on the side of a hill) and is mostly taut to boot... I feel like any future fencing projects will go much smoother and more rapidly than this one did. The time that it took to get it to where it is now is rather deceptive because for the most part I have only been able to get in three to four hours a day working on it because of the cold weather which has made the project drag on for a little over a month now. Given the end result of having such a nice fence (and the peace of mind that it will bring in regards to the dogs) I do not mind it taking so long but whoa it takes two or three of those short days of work to get done what I can do in one day of warm weather work!

With that phase of things coming to a close I have been plotting my relocation to the new area so that I can start utilizing the dog yard as I build a shelter. There is not much in the way of 'flat spots' at the new site that are not either walkways or super close to where the shelter will be so one of the landowners suggested that I build a deck to put the tent on which I thought was an excellent idea because before I move the canvas camping tent from the base camp over there I will be able to use the deck to construct the gates on which will make that process a heck of a lot easier. The deck itself will just be screwed together so that it can be dismantled later and relocated to either be used as part of an outdoor kitchen or be a porch on the side of the new cabin. Its future purpose is still rather vague but the materials to build it should be arriving this week and I am going to try to get the deck constructed, the gates for the fence built (and installed), the tent (and my stuff in it) moved and setup atop the new deck by the end of the week.

Where to put the deck has been a bit of a 'head scratcher' because all the nice places for it are too close to where the cabin is to be constructed and the tent would undoubtedly be in the way of the construction process. I finally settled on an out of the way spot for the deck just north of where the cabin will be and of course I had a bunch of oak and cherry logs stored there that were in the way and I had to move them. I also had to move the PVC dog yard and after squishing it into more of an oval shape I got it out of the way and moved near the north gate where I am thinking to use it as a place to keep the chickens and perhaps building their coop inside of it. I am also thinking that for now I may need to kennel the dogs in the PVC fence while I carry building materials into the new site or otherwise need to have the main gate open for extended periods of time. There is enough fencing material left over that I could build either a small kennel inside the larger dog yard or a sally port on the main gate or south gate (to kennel the dogs in) but at this point I just want to move onto the next phase of things and am unsure about investing time into more fence work!

All that jazz aside. I am assuredly 'over' being in camping mode and although I have a cozy setup and am rather comfortable... it is after all camping and yeah I could do it forever if need be... I know that I have my limits with it and more or less get fed up with things not being the way that I want them in regards to having four walls, a solid roof over my head etcetera. It is the little things though that I miss from a long-term setup that really nag at me like having a nice compost mound, a dog yard, a fire pit and all the little things that make the difference between camping and actually living. I guess that it all comes down to quality of life and sure my quality of life is pretty damned high even by camping standards but I do want better for myself and know to not get too damn cozy (or complacent) living in a tent. As I have said before it is quite the mind game sometimes but just because I can make do living in almost anything it does not mean that I actually want to... so I do my best not to let myself 'settle' and use the angst of being 'unsettled' to keep me moving in a forward direction while I create something worth 'settling' into. As difficult as it can be to do sometimes I try my utmost to keep my eye on the end goals and just take everything along the way in stride because the path between point A (settling) and point B (being settled) is anything but straight and there is generally a lot of steps in between that just cannot be skipped over.

Thankfully I have adjusted to many new places (and living scenarios) over the years and am well practiced at everything involved and especially so when it comes to remaining mentally flexible and just being patient with not just the entire process but also with myself. That patience sure helps a lot when I am pacing myself but for the most part I just keep looking at whatever task that I am working on in the moment and try to just focus solely on it because otherwise things (projects, tasks, goals) can get entirely too overwhelming just in the details alone not to mention the actual inter-connectivity of it all in the 'big idea' kind of way. As much as I often just write about my own projects here developing a shelter site there are other larger projects in the works that also need my attention so the 'big idea' at the moment is to get my own setup rapidly dialed in so that I can use the remainder of the winter to focus on other tasks that will benefit the land itself and further the goals of the owners. Personally I would like to knock out the rest of the brush clearing for those camping spots while the snakes are still brumating for the winter but I would also like to get the horse fence finished and get at least one pasture of grass started. I guess that the bulk of the work ahead for me centers around creating spaces for humans and animals. One thing is for sure and that is that there is plenty of room for all sorts of critters here and plenty of nice flat spots to accommodate them given a little time and attention to creating trails, clearing brush, busting stumps and where desired installing fences.

I only have so much time and attention and the last few days most of that has gone into finishing the main gate posts by adding those six inch by six inch posts to the inside of the gate opening, finally busting out the tree stumps that were in the gate's walkway, busting up all the small stumps around the entire shelter site, removing that triple base tree from near the bar that I have been putting off doing for over a month now and building a threshold for the southern gate because of how steep the terrain's pitch change is in the gate opening. As far as that last bit goes I just used a leftover section of fence post to create the threshold and dug out the uphill side so that I could make it level before fastening it in place with some long landscape screws. The way that the threshold worked out has me considering doing it on the other gates as well and in the case of the main gate (whose posts are both slightly out of plumb) I could cut the threshold a little long and use it to force the posts to get plumbed up which they do not really need because the direction that they are out of plumb will help keep the hinge side of the gate from sagging. The entire main gate is a bit wonky and I have to trim the tops of both the six by six posts and the fence posts because none of them are at the same height and they are just an eyesore. It is at least a stout gateway though and by the time the gate is hung in it and all I am sure that even if it remains slightly out of plumb that it will not be as noticeable as it currently is.

Anyway, at some point over the last many days I inflamed an old injury to a muscle inside my left thigh and ugh has it made the last day incredibly uncomfortable. It has gotten to the point where even walking on it makes it flare up so I may have to just take the next several days off entirely, eat a sufficient amount of anti-inflammatory medicine and let it heal up again. Given the nature of that injury and my past experiences with it I know that as soon as I get the first 'twinge' of pain that I have to stop walking and carrying stuff (especially on inclines) but when that happened a few days ago I just went into 'light duty' mode but apparently that was not enough of a break for it. Of course it is all the cumulative effects of the physical stuff that I have been doing since my arrival here... but mostly it is the walking and whoa let me tell you I do a lot of it. Just walking back and forth between the base camp and the new shelter site each day (usually several times in a day) is a good bit of exercise not to mention that I often just wander off into the woods and start hiking around and looking at things. Basically I have to cut back on the walking and once I get the deck built and the living quarters tent moved to the new shelter site I will just be working there on the cabin so most of my walking will only be in that area and all this 'hiking back and forth' will come to an end.

Well, this will be a mess to edit but the day is crawling along here and I need to just wrap this up. 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.