Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 526)

Hello Everyone!

A late night vermin hunt, A sleepy morning, Grape arbor status & Planting more potatoes and black locust!

I am getting off to a slow start this morning after once again having a difficult time falling asleep last night. At least I wound up getting plenty of rest and did not sleep the day away like I considered doing the first time that I awoke some time around dawn.

There are a number of things that I need to work on today before I meet up with a buddy later this afternoon to do some gaming so hopefully I can avoid spending much of my day in the text editor. Not that I mind it one way or another but it does get rather time consuming and yeah on days like yesterday I can really get over-involved in it to the point where I fail to notice just how much time is slipping by.

Anyway, late last night I was outside and heard something moving around behind a tarp covering one of the walls of the chicken coop. At first I was leery of it being a snake but after gently pulling the tarp back I found myself looking directly in the face of a big fat rat.

I swear it just stared at me like 'what the hell do you want' and did not even budge as I stared at it briefly before putting the tarp back in place. Not that I ever let it get in my way of dealing with the vermin... but it was a cute little critter and was looking super healthy which was probably a result of it eating so much of the chicken feed!

Well, I quietly walked away back to the cabin, opened the door, snapped my fingers for the dogs to come before proceeding back to the coop with the three youngest dogs right on my heels. To be clear here I am unsure if they knew what was going on at first but the moment that we got to the coop and I pointed (with the 'look in there' gesture) at the tarp they all got rather excited.

After easing the tarp off the wall of the coop I saw that the rat had moved a bit further up the wall and was sitting on the corner of the laying box. Even with the dogs there it just gave me that look again like why are you bothering me and showed no real fear whatsoever.

I guess that after all this time of pilfering the feed from the coop it had gotten a bit too brazen for its own good because it just sat there looking at me as I slowly picked up the walking stick that I keep near the coop and pushed it off the ledge of the laying box.

Honestly I had my doubts that the dogs would catch it given all the nearby obstacles, hiding places and of course the fence where it could run through to reach the safety beyond the dog yard. As it turned out I had nothing to worry about in that regard because my boy dog snatched the rat up almost as soon as it hit the ground!

Needless to say he was very proud of himself and began strutting around the dog yard with it making sure that me and the other dogs saw him. Of course I let him do that for a brief while before telling him to set it down for me. Which of course he did in short order before I scooped it up with a shovel and tossed it in the outdoor compost bucket to be dealt with once the sun was up.

It was all more excitement than we are accustomed to having at night but in all reality it was over in far less than a single minute and the dogs all seemed rather stoked that they (we) had finally gotten one of the rats stealing the chicken feed. I am sure that it is not the only one doing it and I think that I am just going to get in the habit of looking in the coop at night to see if I can spot them.

The other thing that I should do is look in that big lumber pile near the shop tent again to see if there have been any more vermin taking up residence in there. Maybe it is the black tarp covering (and the heat caused by it) during the colder months which has attracted them to that spot... or that it is just dry and a good vermin environment... but for whatever reason that is where I keep finding them!

Alright, it is much later in the afternoon now and I am once again writing during my nap time so bear with me here. So far today has been rather productive because I got some domestic duties done, went for a nice hike and got more potatoes and black locust planted.

I also spent a good bit of time looking over everything that I already have growing to see how it is fairing now that we have not had any rain for several days. Aside from the flower pots in the garden area I have not been routinely watering anything so I was pleased to see that it all seems to be doing rather well... or is at least still alive!

Even the black locust seeds that I planted in that experimental trench have sprouted and although they are not doing as well as the ones in the pots they do seem to be hanging in there. I did not count them but there looked to be about a half a dozen of them growing so if I am lucky perhaps I will get at least one good sapling out of it in the end.

I am unsure if I ever mentioned it but the grape vines on that arbor that I made are finally starting to put out leaves but in comparison to some other vines in the area they do not seem to be doing quite as well. They probably are not getting enough sunlight where they are and there is not much that I can do about it. So in short, they will either do well or not and only time will tell.

Well, it is now a few minutes after sunset and I better get this entry wrapped up. I did not wind up getting much else done today but I did actually fall a sleep for a brief time when I tried to take a nap so that is an improvement since my last several attempts have been utter failures in the napping department!

Okay, I am going to call this entry good enough and get on with the editing before it gets too much later. As a side note, wrapping these entries up right around sunset has proven to be working well because I can actually squeeze in a few hours of 'entertainment time' without battling fatigue.

So in short... I am glad that I made the choice to change things up! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.