Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 475)
Hello Everyone!
Unexpected weather changes, Small scale successes, When to de-bark, A deck's utility, Jasmine stakes & The big scoop!
I am up rather early this morning and still waiting on my espresso to brew before I can make a proper start to the day. The weather went a bit sideways and it is currently raining. Which is totally unexpected to see given the forecast said 'a one percent chance' when I fell asleep but now says forty percent! I dunno why the weather changed so fast but with all the fog and cloud cover it looks like it will remain here awhile.
Anyway, I am not feeling a hundred percent 'with it' this morning but I am gradually waking up and trying to make a new plan for the day since my old one got skewed by the change in weather. As long as the conditions do not continue to deteriorate perhaps I can get a bunch of that brush burned, get those leaves hauled to the compost and get more laundry washed.
Making use of 'all the time' that I have available has been one of those things that I have been trying to get into a better habit with now that the seasons are changing. I often wonder if I am perhaps pushing myself a bit too hard to get as much done as possible but then when I check the news cycle I am like: Whoa I need to get more done!
Not that I panic over it all or anything but yeah I feel the need to be as ready as possible and generally have things in order to make life a bit easier and have somewhat of a buffer between me and scarcity. Just doing stuff to allay my anxiety over an uncertain future sure goes a long way. Doing things like bolstering the wildlife, growing potatoes, tending the fruit trees and pretty much anything remotely food or water related... seem to be the kinds of tasks that put my mind at ease the most.
Honestly, I can only do what I can do each day and I really do my best to avoid dwelling on the 'future' overly much or getting myself too worked up about it all. While it would be nice to have large gardens to manage or bulk water storage to maintain I am very content to have much smaller versions of those kinds of things while I work towards the larger goals.
In other words having small scale successes are important too and it is good not to overlook the value of them. A good example is all those various (small) potato patches that I made (and/or the ones in pots) which any single one by itself does not amount to much but collectively... now that is a different matter entirely.
Time has shown me again and again that I get a lot of peace of mind knowing that I have at least a few dozen potatoes safely stored in the ground and even if I do not eat them they are going to give me 'mental food' in the form of food security even if it amounts to only a week or so worth of a food supply. It is hard to explain it but just creating the 'option' of food does wonders for my peace of mind in that regard.
I have yet to transplant any briers or prickly pear cacti into sunnier areas but I have not forgotten about it either. That might actually be a good project to squeeze in at some point soon before things begin warming up more. Doing the transplanting in early spring seems to work pretty well for the cacti and the ones that I did last year seem to have done good even though I might move them again this year to an even sunnier spot.
On a different note. When I do the remainder of that brush clearing I am going to harvest a bunch of small oak poles and since I want to de-bark them I may wait another week or two before felling them so that the 'sap is flowing' and the bark is thus easier to remove. Basically when the tree is entering its growth phase for the year the bark is 'loose' and makes it profoundly easier to de-bark with a draw-knife or other appropriate tool.
One really awesome thing that I am looking forward to is being able to work on the flat surface of the deck inside the dog yard. I would not want to do all my de-barking and 'rough milling' work on top of it but it will make an awesome place to do any kind of assembly work. Honestly, I do not know exactly what I am going to build with the poles but I do want to at least experiment with making a few sculptures and maybe some panels for a tent type structure or chicken coop.
Aside from all that the deck will be handy for any number of things and when it is time to install the metal on the buildings I plan to use it to my full advantage for all my staging. measuring and cutting needs. Having that one big flat (open) surface to work on is a game changer in regards to making the metal work easier as well as any painting that I might want to do.
Of course taking precautions to not drop a bunch of jagged metal shavings or get paint splashed everywhere will be required but overall that is not all that difficult to do. As much as I groaned about losing the canvas tent's storage space... having the deck free is a way better use of the space. I guess that I could call it an 'unintended consequence' and one that I would have thought of had I not let myself get so annoyed over having to reshuffle my storage scenario yet again.
Alright, it is now just a few minutes after sunset and I better get back to writing on this entry. Having woken from a very long nap less than an hour ago I at least do not have to worry about being fatigued so that is a nice change from my usual nightly writing sessions. Sleeping most of the afternoon away was not my plan for the day but whoa I sure needed it and it has left me feeling way less sore than when I first awoke today.
Once it stopped raining I went on a hike and got to see how the meadow was doing since I last mowed it. I gotta say it is looking rather well and everywhere that I mowed now has lots of grass growing in quite thickly. It is not even a 'close comparison' between the mowed and un-mowed areas as far as the vegetation goes so I made a mental note to mow it around the same time each year going forward.
As far as the water in the meadow goes... it was rather dry and not even those two big pools of it were present anymore. Neither of the two watering-holes that I dug in the area had any water in them either but the larger of the two still looked very damp so that is promising. I am still curious whether that hole has water a little further down below the surface but I have yet to get back over there with the shovel and do anymore exploratory digging.
After the hike I had a bit of an 'aha' moment and retrieved that piece of fencing that I had around one of the cacti that I transplanted into the pine forest garden last year. Basically that piece of fencing was already the shape that I needed to create that 'scoop' that I mentioned in my last entry. All that it took was to use a slightly curvy oak pole woven in and out of the mesh of the fencing to create a handle and my new tool was complete.
The new scoop worked amazingly well and all that I had to do was lay it in front of a leaf pile and then rake as much into it as I could. At first I considered scooping the leaves into the wagon but once I realized that I could fit like a quarter of the pile into it at once... I just carried each scoop down to the compost mound and spread them directly onto it. Which was really nice because I could avoid hauling the heavy wagon up and down the hill and of course it made the actual spreading of the eaves super fast and easy.
I also used the scoop to actually scoop up a bunch of leaves instead of using a rake but that seemed to work best when the pile was really large and I could shove the scoop into it. With the smaller piles it was definitely much easier to rake them into the scoop instead but I figure either way it makes dealing with the leaves (and potentially pine needles) much easier. In short when it comes to handy tools I am pretty stoked about making that one!
One of the other things that I did today was to finally clean up some of the mess that I created when I took that big wooden spool apart. I had been waiting until it rained some (to wash it all off) and since that finally happened I felt like it was best not to procrastinate it any longer. Before I was thinking about burning it all in a burn barrel or somewhere that the nails and staples could be collected afterwards... but now I think hauling it to a dumpster would be a better idea just so I do not have to worry about the fasteners.
Anyway, while I was hiking around I had the idea that maybe all I need to do for the yellow jasmine is to go to places it is already growing and drive in a vertical stake for the vines to grow on. The stakes would only need to be a meter or two long and since I have some poles that size I might turn a few into stakes over the coming days and get them installed in some of the thicker patches of the vines.
Mainly I want to do that in the areas where the persimmon and cherry trees are growing in an effort to keep the vines from growing onto the trees but I also want to do it in a few places where a little extra privacy screening would not hurt. I have also been tossing around the idea of making a circle of said stakes and creating a sort of 'enclosed' area with the vine growth just because it would be a neat feature to string up a hammock in the middle of.
Okay, I have rambled on enough for one day and am going to call this entry good enough and get on with the editing. I only have a few more days of fair weather so hopefully I can get to sleep early tonight and make an early start tomorrow working on more projects before getting cooped up indoors again. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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This is so true! We also had a weather change today, it is snowing at the moment but Sunday's are rest days here in Serbia so it doesn't affect us that much, haha.
I hope spring weather will come soon for both of us! :)
Good timing for the snow being on a rest day. Sounds like a good day for coffee drinks and books!
Yup, that spring weather is on its way soon! :)