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.

[End Introduction]

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 17!

A Weird Sleep Cycle, Another Biochar Making Fire, Cutting Down Stumps & Napping During The Rain

My sleep cycle was so weird after waking up at midnight yesterday that I am not even going to detail it all here and even this morning is a bit off because I did not wake up fully until a little after seven. Part of waking up at a much later hour is that I slept a lot late in the day yesterday and after waking a little after nightfall I wound playing my favorite video game until the wee hours of the morning before finally zonking out again. It was fun getting in a little gaming time but I doubt that I will be able to do too much of it over the coming weeks unless there are a bunch of rainy days here or something because I have to stay focused on developing the new shelter site, finishing the dog yard fence and building the new cabin. Binge gaming the way that I tend to like doing just would not be conducive to all of that but since the online ladder reset (for the game) happened last night I thought that it would be fun (and maybe even relaxing) to play some as long as it did not lead to me binging out on it.

I made it over to the new shelter site early in the morning and although it was not all that cold outside it was very overcast and the way the clouds were roiling it looked like it would rain at any moment. I made a quick decision against digging any holes for the fence posts and decided to instead clean up all the debris from the previous day's tree felling endeavors and get it all burned off in a fire and turn some of it into biochar. For whatever reason (probably because of how damp things were) the fire was slow to get burning hot but eventually I added a bunch of dry pine branches to it and that seemed to work well enough. I did not build nearly as large of a fire as I had last week but it was a pretty good sized one and it burned through all the tree debris after only a few hours.

Since I still had a bunch of tree debris that needed bucked down I used the electric chainsaw to do so and drug the smaller sections directly to the fire and tossed them onto it instead of just piling it up and having to move it all a second time later. I also wound up trimming back a bunch of branches on some living trees that were too close (or in the way) of the northern fence line where I left all those partially bucked logs at the day before. That entire fence line was also strewn with a bunch of small sticks and vines so I did my best to get them all out of the way also so that I will not be tripping over them when I begin digging holes and installing fence posts along that section of the new fence.

Once all that jazz was done, I took the time to go around the upper (western) portion of the new shelter site and cut down all the stumps that were there as low to the ground as I possibly could with the electric chainsaw. When I first started clearing the area I had done so mainly with a pull-saw and in doing so I had left a bunch of small stumps because well... its a pull-saw and I can only cut so close to the ground with it and had decided to just come back later and cut everything lower via mechanical means. I really dislike having tiny stumps like that around a site that I am working on because I often picture myself tripping and falling on them but the reality of it is that my extension cords get snagged on them and they make carrying stuff around the site dangerous especially with the thick layer of leaves on the ground that camouflage the little buggers! All in all the stump removal went rather smoothly and I was not at all shy about running the chainsaw blade into the dirt to cut them off as low as possible because hell I would rather have to sharpen the blade again than trip over the remnant of a stump!

I will undoubtedly comb over the entire site meter by meter to make sure that I got all those little stumps but for now I am happy with just getting the portion of it that gets the most foot traffic cleared of them. There are of course several larger stumps that will require the gas chainsaw to remove them but I have yet to feel inclined to fiddle with getting the chainsaw running properly again after the last time that I used it. The owner of the saw mentioned that they had removed the carburetor several times before (to clean it) and that perhaps it is just time for a new carburetor so hopefully that happens soon and I can get those bigger stumps removed before I start installing the wire fencing but really aside from getting in the way (being an inconvenience) I can do everything that I need to do with the fence without removing the remaining larger stumps. Honestly I just like not having stumps around not just for safety reasons but also because they look so hideous!

Anyway, by rather early in the afternoon I was already feeling worn out (and it was looking even more like it was about to pour rain) so I let the fire burn down low before extinguishing it with water, put away all my tools and made my way back to base camp where I ate a big lunch and promptly fell asleep for nearly six hours straight! For the last half hour or so that I was at the shelter site I kept thinking that I should just lay down near the fire somewhere and take a nap and although I was incredibly tempted to do just that I did not look forward to sleeping on the ground and perhaps waking up with it raining on me. Since the base camp is a pretty good distance from the new shelter site I think that I might just setup a hammock at the shelter site just so that I can take brief naps and do not have to trudge all the way back to the tent to sleep when I get tired like that.

Well, it did not seem like all that productive of a day but not long after I got back to the base camp (and before falling asleep) the rain began and during my long nap I awoke several times to it absolutely pouring rain outside so I guess the day would have been a bust one way or another even if I had not been so tired from waking up so early in the morning. Hopefully I can get my sleep cycle worked out and will stop waking up ridiculously early like that which has more or less been the norm for me over the last few weeks. I know that part of it is that I am physically wearing myself out each day by working so hard, part of it is that I do like getting an early start to my day so that I can accommodate time for doing all the writing each morning and the other part of it all is that I am just frigging excited about the new place and all the projects involved. Of course I also want to quit living in a tent as soon as possible so there is that!

Alright, I am just going to keep this one short and sweet so that I can get on with my day and see what all I can accomplish. It is quite chilly this morning and looking like there might be more rain on the way so who knows how the day will turn out. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night!

Twas a cloudy day indeed!

Just a wee fire!

Thanks for reading!

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.