Adventures In Homesteading (Day 172)

Hello Everyone!

A note on my last entry, The abandoned shelter project, Wasted effort, Wrapping my tent in plastic & Plenty of rainwater!

Alright, it has been one heck of a few months... and although I spelled out what has been going on for me in the post that I made yesterday... I did not share it in the homesteading community because I felt that it was entirely too personal... and most of it had nothing to do with that topic. If you would like to view that post it can be found here but please keep in mind that it is quite long and a doozy of a read to boot.

As far as things here at my place are going... I have not made any progress aside from taking some time a few days back to wrap my entire camping tent with some black polyethylene six mil 'plastic' to help keep both the rain (and the wind) out... and to keep the heat in now that the temperatures have been getting much colder. Overall, I just want to sell this place and find somewhere with better neighbors... and much more seclusion/privacy than this place can provide so I am unsure how many more projects that I will endeavor upon in the meantime.

Back before hurricane Helene hit... and I started doing relief work for the WNC DZ (Western North Carolina Disaster Zone)... I had been working on harvesting poplar trees, de-barking them and getting them stored away to dry... so that I could use them to build a winter shelter. I had also been working on building a roof over my coffee bar and constructing a timber drying rack... but alas I dropped that project altogether to do said relief work.

Most of that effort was a complete waste of time... because the harvested timber all got rained on due to the rain coming down sideways on and off for the nearly seven day period of it raining during that timeframe. For those who do not know it... once timber like that gets wet it is pretty useless afterwards for building purposes... but it can still be used to make indoor furniture and such.

I am still pretty bummed about it all... but there is not anything that I can do about it at this point... and since the sap has already hardened in the living trees (due to the colder temperatures) I will not be harvesting more of them for now. All of which means that I will more than likely be spending the winter in the same crappy tent that I have been camped in for the previous five odd months.

The bright side of getting so much rain for such a long period of time is that I was able to capture fifty gallons of water off the tarp that covers my camping tent... and have been using it as my soul source of drinking water ever since. I also filled another fifty gallon barrel from the overflow of my rain catchment system... and have been using it for water for the dogs.

I know that rainwater really should be filtered and properly treated before consuming it... but all that I did (for my personal water) is add some bleach to the barrel... and have been boiling it before using it each time. Heck, I care so little about it being clean that I have even been directly submerging a gallon jug into it (to fill the jug) and am not even concerned about adding contaminants to it via the outside of the jug being dirty.

Well, I think that is about where I am going to stop this entry... because I can feel myself growing inclined to 'rant and rave' about all my recent grief and trauma... and get way off topic. I hope that everyone is doing well and all that feel good jazz that makes life something worth living.