Hello Everyone!
A brief introduction: 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.
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 328!
The Saga Of The Storage Snafu, A Box For The Roosting Chickens & Making A Protein Cake.
Although I woke up rather early today I felt pretty groggy because I was awake long into the evening. I at least slept rather soundly once I actually fell asleep but beforehand I was stuck in a more or less manic loop obsessing over how to solve my storage snafu. Mostly I was wracking my brain on how to accommodate/integrate an addition (room/building) for storage usage onto/into my current setup. I also kept crunching numbers and comparing various building material prices to see if I could somehow build said addition much cheaper than my initial estimate.
As much as I dislike 'cutting corners' with construction projects I am thinking that if I use three inch by four inch 'landscape timbers' for the floor, walls and perhaps the rafter framing I can save myself somewhere around three hundred dollars on the overall build. The landscape timbers are basically just pressure treated four inch by four inch by eight foot long posts but they are about a third of the price of a regular four by four post. The thing about using them for the framing is that I can do all the layout (spacing/spans) at two feet on center and still wind up with a very solid structure.
Oddly enough the other idea that I kept mulling over was utilizing a much smaller sized framing material (two inch by two inch lumber) and just building a simple eight foot by eight foot box covered in plywood or zip board. The downside to doing it that way is that it would not really be useful for anything other than storage and it would be a wee bit on the 'flimsy' side of things. Either of the two approaches are rather economical but the sturdier structure seems like the wiser investment because at least at some point I might be able to use it as an actual room instead of just for storage.
The entire storage snafu scenario is pretty annoying for a number of reasons but mainly because instead of moving forward with my plans for constructing my kitchen I find myself changing gears entirely and having to focus on something that I do not really want to do to begin with. I have a limited time to figure out a storage solution which has me feeling like I am off on some frigging 'side quest' and am thoroughly stumped on exactly how to complete it.
It is difficult to explain all the dynamics involved with how I have my shelter setup currently but suffice it to say that an 'extra' storage room/building/addition was not a part of my plans at all. The saying about 'pounding a square through a round hole' comes to mind which is usually an indicator for me to try a different approach but in this instance I just keep hammering away at it hoping that my brain will present a solution.
Even though I keep stressing over the storage thing it is not like I have the resources to do the work currently which amounts to an entire other layer of stress over how the hell I am going to come up with the money to pull it off in the first place. Honestly 'thinking in circles' on the subject day in and day out is not exactly helping my overall mood and just leaves me feeling unsettled, agitated and with an inability to truly focus my attention on other things that also need doing.
Anyway, one of those other things that has been nagging at me for several days has been to build, make or install some sort of box in the chicken coop for the chickens to roost in so today I cleaned out an old plastic tote and installed it in the coop. I originally tried to fasten it onto a log where all the the chickens have been roosting but I could not quite accommodate it atop the log because the A-frame wall/roof kept the tote from sliding back far enough on the log. I wound up installing the tote in the rear of the coop but thus far the chickens have just ignored it and are roosting in their usual spot. In the end I may have to scavenge up some plywood and build a triangular shaped box to fit atop the log where they like to roost. That particular roosting spot worked really well when the chickens were much smaller but now they seem very crowded when they roost there together which will just stress the hens out when they eventually start laying eggs.
I did not really do much else today besides bake one of those 'protein cakes' that I occasionally enjoy making. I always marvel at how a little flour, water, peanut butter, whey protein mix and some brown sugar can make such a tasty little 'cake' and why the hell I do not do it more often given how damn simple it is to mix together and 'bake' on the stove in a frying pan. My food scenario (and supply) is not all that awesome of late and really I should be cooking those cakes much more often to help make sure that I get more of the vitamins, minerals and protein that I need.
Although I feel hungry all the damn time at least I eat something each day and it is not like skimping by on minimal food is something altogether new to me. Do not get me wrong because I damn sure do not enjoy feeling hungry most of the time but that 'hunger' does not impact me nearly as much as it did when I was younger and lacked the discipline and albeit endurance/fortitude to withstand what hunger does to the mind.
Well, this is another one of those late in the evening posts and I can already feel myself itching to wrap it up do the unavoidable editing and get it all posted. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night/moment and perhaps I will do the same.
Thanks for reading!
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