The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 393)
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.
The Fantastica Chronicles Day 393!
Two-Legged Critters Are Always Problematic, Compost Musings & Rambling About Writing Each Day
It is rather late (or maybe early) to be writing this at almost three in the morning but I may as well do it now and get it done. The day was a bit of a wonky one so bear with me. After waking up a bit late in the morning I held off on doing anything outdoors (aside from my usual chores) because the weather forecasters were calling for more rain. It did not actually rain though and was indeed quite the sunny day besides a few times when the sky grew cloudy so I probably could have gotten more done had I just ignored the weather forecast altogether.
During the afternoon the dogs got riled up a bit because some folks were fishing in the creek that borders the property here and although they were basically trespassing whilst doing it the folks that manage the property where I live do not mind because they are just some kids from down the road and of course it is a hell of a lot better that they are doing some fishing than a lot of other things they could be doing. Shit like that is always dodgy in my opinion because although I understand the desire to maintain good relations with neighboring folks and all... at the same time they are trespassing and if they actually catch any fish then they are basically stealing the fish. That is just my perspective though and as a caretaker I have learned to just turn over my observations to the land owners or their representative(s) and 'wash my hands' of the matter because ultimately it is their choice on how to deal (or not deal) with such things.
It was not the first time that folks had been fishing in that creek of late and both times the dogs alerted on them rather quickly and drew my attention to the matter. The last time that it happened I called the dogs off of them because I realized they were just kids, deduced where they had come from and that they probably were not doing any harm. This time though they were a lot noisier and I just let the dogs keep barking at them because the last thing that I want to do is desensitize the dogs to alerting to folks doing stuff in that area which given the state of affairs in this country could prove disastrous to me (and the other folks here on the homestead) in the long run. So I just let them bark and do the job that they have been trained and conditioned to do over the last many years which is to alert and keep alerting until I ask them to stop.
Here is the 'rub' though because at one point one of the older kids tried to shush the dogs and for me that crosses an entirely different line and one that to be blunt is a line I will never be okay with folks crossing. So, instead of calling the dogs off I just kept quietly asking them 'whats that noise' which is a cue that I give them to become alert and start (or continue) barking because I damn sure am not going to tolerate folks trying to shush my dogs especially folks that I do not even know and have willfully gone onto other folks' property no matter how benign their activities are. Also just because folks have fishing poles in their hands that does not mean they are just fishing and they could also be scouting or looking for places to hunt or a slew of other things. In this case I doubt that they were doing anything besides what they appeared to be doing but if I have learned one thing in life it is that things just are not always what they appear to be and folks can be some tricky damn critters.
The barking eventually drove the folks further up the creek and off this property but not before I creeped up on them and got a good look at them. I originally had no intention of doing such a thing but after the attempted 'sushing' of the dogs by one of them and then shortly after that me observing one of them climbing the bank on the opposite side of the creek and apparently peering up into the woods at the area I stay in to see the dogs or whatever they were looking at... I was like well I better get a look just in case I need to know what they look like. I say I 'creeped' up on them but all I did was walk down the trail and peer down the creek and of course I went unseen and un-noticed.
Just to be clear here I understand the value of letting kids be kids in the woods and maintaining good relations with neighboring folks but at the same time I like boundaries and think that it is important to maintain said boundaries. Since I had previously been told that it was 'alright' that they were exploring the creek and fishing (I am paraphrasing that) then I just maintain awareness of that and keep an ear out in case one of them slips and falls or gets hurt or something and needs help but 'sushing' the dogs is an entirely different thing altogether and I do not give a damn what other folks think about it because the dogs are my responsibility and no one else's and it will be a cold day in hell before that ever changes for me. That may sound a bit combative but it is merely a fact and anyone who has work dogs can absolutely understand it without the need for an explanation.
On a different note, I eventually decided that the day was pretty much a bust as far as working on projects goes and gathered up a bunch of firewood and had a nice fire to make more ashes for my compost mound. As far as the ashes go though I have been thinking of maybe changing the way that I do the entire composting method (of encasing the mound) because the chickens really do love eating bugs and worms off of the mound and if I do my usual encasing method it would severely limit how many critters that the chickens can actually get to to eat. I am a bit torn between making a second compost just for the chickens and re-engineering my current compost altogether. I like that I am getting so much out of the dog waste compost (between the dirt, the worms and something for the chickens to eat) but I have to weigh that against potentially having an explosion in the fly population (if I do not seal the mound with ashes and clay) which is not something I am all that into because of the contagion vector that the flies represent. The chickens also make for good 'maggot control' so that is something for me to consider as well and honestly since I have been letting them out each day and rummaging through the compost I have noticed a massive decrease in the fly population but that could also be in part due to the fly bag trap that I have near the compost.
Anyway, a little after dark I was feeling rather exhausted so I went to sleep and decided to just write all this out after I woke up. I thought that I would perhaps just take a nap or something but after roughly seven hours of sleep I woke up from some mildly bizarre dream and decided after not being able to fall fully back asleep to just get up and if not start my day then at least get everything written out and sort of clear it from my mind. You would think that after four years or so of writing each day (aside from a few infrequent lapses) that I would quit fucking dreading doing it but I often actually enjoy the writing process and just dread the editing afterwards and yet I still continually confuse the dread that I feel for the latter being for the former.
Overall I pretty much equate writing each day right up there with drinking espresso, taking a shit, eating food and sleeping but hell I still do not take it all that seriously because after all I am merely chronicling my days and if folks learn something along the way (or are even merely just entertained) I guess that is enough for me. Do not get me wrong because the pennies per hour that I make doing it sure add up but hell it is hard to be all that ambitious about it when it is just pennies. It is undoubtedly more than I used to make writing when I just wrote in longhand but it also comes at one hell of a cost to my privacy and free time. Honestly without the 'therapeutic value' that I find in doing it all I would have quit doing it long ago and reverted back to filling journals with words and storing them away in totes and hoping that someday (probably after I am long dead) someone might find them and be like holy fuck what a treasure trove!
Well, I have rambled on enough for one morning and it is now four o'clock so I should just wrap this up, do the editing and get started on my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night or something like that.
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.
A little over three 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 the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.
I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.
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.
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