Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 103-104)

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 103-104!

Erosion Control, Grass Seeding, Cordless Saw Versus Yellow Pine, Scarified Black Locust Seeds & Musings On The Present

The weather has grown chilly in the evenings once again but the days have been pleasantly warm. It also poured rain yesterday morning and although I forgot to check the rainfall total it looked like a few inches had fallen. The rain was actually right on time because over the previous several days I had been spreading a bunch of grass seed around various parts of the property and was hoping for some good rainfall to help get the seeds to germinate and especially so in a few erosion prone areas where I had spread the seeds and then raked some leaves and pine needles over them.

It is always a tricky process to get grass established in erosion prone areas without the use of landscape fabric/screen to help hold the soil in place but hopefully my efforts will work and the grass will take hold. I also planted about thirty black locust seeds along the top edge of a heavily eroded (and elevated) area to help with potentially combating the erosion for the long-term but honestly I am unsure of how viable the seeds were since I have had them in storage for a few years now. If they do grow it will be interesting to see how they do in the soil here and whether my experiment of directly planting them (instead of starting them in pots) works out... or not.

Once things dried up outdoors after the heavy rain, I went ahead and cut up that yellow pine tree that I had felled the day before. There were some nice straight sections in the main trunk of the tree but lacking a way to mill it I just cut it up for outdoor firewood and stacked it nearby along with all the other portions of the tree that I sectioned down. I was once again quite impressed by the cordless electric chainsaw's ability to saw everything up and even though I used the smaller of its two batteries that one battery was enough to do the task at hand. When I was cutting the smaller branches I did notice that a lot of pine needles were getting sucked into the housing which covers the chain and between them and the sappy saw dust I wound up having to remove the plastic housing several times and cleaning it all out.

It is not that the stuff getting stuck in the housing impedes the saw from running but it does interfere with the bar oil both getting to the chain and staying on the chain. Basically the housing gets so stuffed that it is like a rag wiping the oil from the chain with each rotation and the new oil pools around its outlet and is blocked from getting to the chain by all the compacted debris. As minorly irritating as it is I would say that it is far from being a 'deal breaker' when it comes to using the cordless chainsaw. I still get a tingle of excitement every time that I use the thing and watch it oh so quietly cut through anything that I set its whirring chain to!

I never finished writing this yesterday so here I am at four thirty the next morning writing some more as I soak in the stillness of the morning. It has been hit or miss of late with waking up this early in the day but so far I think that I have done it a total of three times this week. On the other mornings I have begun my day at around seven which is still relatively early and much better than the nine or ten that I was getting up at. Granted the change of weather has been helpful on that front but mostly I just got out of the habit of it much like I got out of the habit of writing each day... by simply not doing it. For a while there I was also staying up late at night binge watching stuff which assuredly was not contributing to a stable sleep pattern and ultimately it was just an indulgence in being entertained in such a way that it did not require much thinking on my part.

Overall it has been a weird winter spent doing lots of stuff and not taking much in the way of 'downtime' so I am happy to have made it through this far without going off the rails in any discernible way. The work itself has been enjoyable even though some of it was quite arduous and I have done really well at pacing myself and keeping my morale up which are probably the two key things that make everything else possible without any kind of strife along the way. Sure there are always going to be injuries, mistakes and difficulties but I am at least mitigating them from dominating my internal landscape. Living the sort of isolated lifestyle that I do for so long now I have definitely 'worked through my shit' thoroughly enough that I know what I am in for with it and what my patterns tend to be but beyond that I simply like to view each day as something new to spread my curiosity over and see what emerges from there.

Lets see here. So, I finally sat down with a file and a pile of black locust seeds and went through the tedious process of scarifying both sides of each individual seed. Having done both the scarification and boiling water methods for breaking the 'impenetrable seed coat' that protects them so that they can then germinate before... of the two methods I have had much more success with the scarification method as far as how many seeds actually germinate but the boiling water method is a much faster process. I have yet to experiment with acid washing the seeds to remove the hard coat but I think that would be the method to do if I ever had to prepare thousands (or any mass quantity) of seeds.

Anyway, I planted some of the seeds in good potting soil in three large flower pots and the rest of them I planted inside the dog yard. The seeds in the dog yard are actually planted inside of some cherry tree stumps whose centers have rotted out and were already filled with dirt forming a natural flower pot. Mainly I used those stumps because it was a convenient place to plant the seeds where the dogs (and chickens) would not disturb them but I also want to see if the black locust trees will break the cherry stumps apart below the ground as they grow.

I better not get too side-tracked talking about black locust but the more I think about the soil conditions here, the amount of sunlight and the places where some erosion control would be nice... the more I think about seriously farming some trees. The region that I am in is assuredly a bit south of the tree's native habitat but considering where it has acclimated to in other parts of the world (like the Mediterranean) I think that it will do just fine here. There seems to be some evidence of the shifting climate accommodating the tree to be grown in more southern climates but given the tree's hardiness it would not surprise me if it has merely adapted itself to do so. Whatever the reasons are it gives me hope that my experiment of growing them here will go well and I can continue towards my goal of one day farming them on a large scale. Considering it is only the first week of March and I have roughly sixty seeds planted I guess that I am off to a good start for the year.

On a different note, I got my monthly supply run in the other day by going out to a few stores which has become the best way for me to afford getting all the stuff that I want and need. The whole online grocery ordering thing is cool and all if it includes access to fresh fruits and vegetables and comparative prices to the stores but being in rural areas that just is not how it has worked out for me. Thankfully the area that I am living in has some sensible folks because during my store visit I noticed that the mass majority of folks were masked and observing social distancing. Like I have said before going from the isolation of the woods and into civilization once a month is enough for me and weird enough as it is and that was before the current pandemic... and now it is downright bizarre feeling. On the flip-side of that though, I always have a deep appreciation for the woods upon my return to them and even more so of late given how awesome my scenario is.

My current setup here has been working rather well and I am pretty stoked that I have a cozy place to sleep, some conveniently located hot and cold water, a stout dog yard with excellent gates, a decent sized chicken yard, adequate storage and a nice pseudo-shop to work out of and play my music from. All in all I feel like the progress made here thus far has been rather solid and if I just keep plugging along pacing myself then I can really get down to business and shape this place into what it can become. Since I have been getting myself setup here I have had to focus on that stuff (getting setup) a lot but I have also been doing a lot for the place along the way whilst trying to keep my mind's eye on both the smaller and larger goals for the property.

All of which is always a tricky prospect but given the good communication practices of the folks involved and their own years spent as caretakers... doing all the stuff that needs to be done is just a matter of prioritization and the 'nuts and bolts' of the project as far as tools, materials and the planning/timing goes. In other words having good management practices matters and is proportional to not just productivity but also to what is possible. As far as all that jazz goes it is safe to say that I have been enjoying the process and the sense that me and the other folks are all more or less on the same page with the long-term goals as far as setting the place up for camping, homesteading, farming with a retreat like environment that does not contain much in the way of stress. I feel confident that we will get there one step at a time but for now I wish that I had more worker bees to help lighten the load along the way and if that is my only complaint then I am doing just fine indeed.

Well, I should get to wrapping this up now that the sun is coming up and perhaps get it posted before doing some light-duty work for the day because I pulled a back muscle hauling all my groceries on the cart the other evening to the camp. In the future I think that I would be better off hauling my month of supplies in two or three loads instead of one super heavy one. Live and learn I guess but that was an avoidable accident and I am still cringing over it two days later. Alright, I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

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The very first grass shoots growing in the dog yard!

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The yellow pine tree that I sectioned down with the cordless chainsaw.

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I accidentally discovered that strawberries make a very nice stain on unsealed deck boards!

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.

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That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!

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