Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1082)

Hello Everyone!

An upcoming time shift at a bad time, Weird connectivity issues, The vermin hunt goes awry & My first passion fruit!

Alright, it is a few minutes before sunset and I am finally starting the writing portion of my day... during the time that I have been 'aiming for' over the last several weeks. Ha! Having just written that I am having the realization... that now that I am at long last dialing in this particular routine... the time will be changing this weekend for 'daylight savings' time. Talk about bad timing!

There is probably some deeper lesson to be learned from that but I best not delve too far into that topic lest I get way off track. Suffice it to say that I am not a fan of the 'clocks changing' and I have yet to see an argument for doing so that makes any kind of sense. Why anyone would think that disrupting folks sleep cycle twice a year by changing the time either forward (or backwards) by an hour... as being a good idea... completely eludes me.

Last night I had a hard time getting to bed early (so that I could be up by dawn) because something weird was going on with my internet connection and everything that I tried to do online took forever to achieve. I still have no real clue as to what was going on... but for some reason my cellular repeater kept faulting and even once I finally got it to operate normally (by turning the gain down) the available bandwidth was marginal at best.

The only thing that I can surmise about that difficulty (with the repeater) is that something was going on with the grid power and it was either out of phase... or it was having trouble maintaining a consistent voltage. All of which is not all that far outside the realm of possibilities given that it was the first freeze of the year and many folks in this region use electrical devices for heating their homes and/or businesses... but even that seems to be 'a stretch' as far as causes go.

Anyways, I did eventually get to sleep sometime after midnight and although I awoke before dawn... I could not quite convince myself to get out of bed until I drifted back off, awoke, drifted back off and awoke a few more times. I think that I made it out the door a little after eight o'clock and whoa was I 'laser focused' on running the dogs on the vermin before the day warmed up!

A few days ago I mentioned maybe fencing off the area around the lumber pile where most of the vermin seem to be hiding and I am really glad that I did not bother with doing that. To explain what happened a bit, once I removed the tarp and the dogs were 'working the pile' I immediately noticed a lack of vermin even though there were nearly twice as many nests as the last time that I had looked.

All of which made me pretty suspicious that maybe a snake had moved into the pile. After using a shovel to gently leverage the piles apart I saw that at the very middle of the pile (at ground level) there was one of those two meter long Eastern Black Kingsnakes coiled up... and as I have remarked upon before... the heat from the wood (and the greenhouse effect of the tarp) had kept it from 'going to sleep' during the freezing temperatures.

Once I saw what kind of snake that it was I 'backed off' from running the dogs on the pile and decided against unstacking the lumber (like I had planned on doing) because I neither wanted to disturb nor inadvertently harm the snake. Given that they are my first line of defense against the venomous snakes in the area the last thing that I want to do is 'drive it off' or even worse... accidentally harm it.

So considering all of that... I immediately switched gears to focusing our rodent hunting efforts on the shop tent. Which I gotta admit was less than stellar because I only saw one very large female rat... and it got away because between me and three dogs all trying to maneuver around all the stuff that I have crammed in the tent... it was a total 'cluster-cuss' to put it mildly. As a side note I left a baited trap in there so maybe tomorrow morning I will find a dead rat!

Although the temperatures are going to get down to freezing again tonight I am not going to run the dogs on the vermin again tomorrow morning... even though I probably should. Instead, I think that I am going to try to pull everything out of the shop tent and get it organized better... so that if I do wind up running them in there again over the coming weeks... that for one it will not be a cluster-cuss... and for two... the vermin will not have anywhere to hide.

On a different note, one of those three passion fruits finally dropped from its vine today and I even got lucky enough to notice it before the chickens did! I dunno if it was the cold snap that made that happen or if it actually got ripe enough to fall on its own... but I am pretty excited about it either way.

Hopefully the seeds in it are mature enough for planting them next spring but I have no idea to tell one way or another if that is the case. I have yet to slice it up (or attempt eating it) and I am thinking that since it is mostly still green with only hints of yellow... that I should leave it sitting on my 'kitchen' counter for a few days to see what happens.

Well, I was hoping to spell a few more things out here but I best wrap this entry up before the hour grows much later and the fatigue kicks in. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time.