The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 29-35)
Day 29. (TFC Another Day Of Bucking And Hauling Tree Branches & Running Out Of Steam Early In The Day)
Although I woke up rather early this morning I was pretty slow on getting started with working on stuff which is not all that surprising considering how much work that I did yesterday and then I had trouble falling asleep last night. Mostly I kept tossing and turning thinking about the fever that my boy dog was running and also thinking about how the hell I am going to get a decent shelter built before the cold weather arrives.
My boy dog seems to be responding well to the antibiotics and his fever finally passed today. The lump around his injuries also seems less swollen so hopefully after a few more days of antibiotics he will be mostly healed up and beyond the point where infection is a concern.
Once I got my morning routine finished I started back on bucking those logs with the circular saw again. The saw is holding up rather well but I might oil it again tomorrow because after all the heavy use the last few days it is starting to make that high pitched noise again. I really need to get some good silicone based lubricant to treat it with but for now I will just have to keep making do with what I have.
The work itself is rather tedious because the pine branches are rather sappy/sticky and hence the saw dust (as well as the sap) tends to get stuck all over me. I have been just wearing the same pants and shirt each time that I work on the project and they are both rapidly becoming a sticky mess.
Hauling all the branches uphill to there various piles has not been all that fun either and lately I have started trimming down all the sapling stumps (created before I came here) so that I am not tripping over them while dragging the branches around.
After today's efforts I am down to just one big pile of branches to be bucked and/or hauled and then I will just have the logs themselves left to deal with. I was able to section down a few of the logs today with the circular saw but the majority of it is definitely going to require the chainsaw to accomplish the task.
For the time being I am going to have to just keep plugging away at cleaning up all the felled trees until it's finished and then immediately move on to hauling building materials back into the woods and getting started on getting a shelter built. I have yet to decide on the exact location of the building but once all the logs are out of the way I will have a better idea of where I want to build it at.
Anyway it is getting late and I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow so I am going to get this edited/posted and call it a night. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 30. (TFC Visiting A Local Food Pantry And Thrift Store & Bucking The Last Of The Tree Branches)
I got up rather early this morning so that I could wrap up my morning routine before getting picked up to visit a local food pantry and a thrift store which is something that I have been looking forward to doing for the last few weeks.
The food pantry was rather interesting because it was a long line of cars and one by one they would back in and some folks would give each person signed up for the service a box of meat products, some bread, some eggs, a gallon of milk and a large box containing things like canned goods, coffee and even a bag of chocolate bars to name just a few things. The line was long and the paperwork was rather simple (I signed up while waiting in line) and the only real downside was having to sit in the vehicle for about an hour which honestly isn't that bad considering the quantity and the quality of the food provided.
Most of the food I gave to the household here at the homestead because it needed to be put in a freezer or refrigerated and I have zero problems with sharing the bounty especially since the folks here have been feeding me rather well these last twenty-nine days. It felt good to be able to contribute something back in that way and it's nice to know that I can potentially gorge out on the sausages and cheese that I got today without feeling like I am eating someone else's food. The folks here have made it very clear that they want to keep me well fed especially since I am doing so much work around here but it damn sure feels nice to 'bring something to the table' as well.
The little thrift store near the food pantry was pretty cool and although the place was small in size they had quite the selection of nice clothing to choose from. I have been lacking having many good short sleeve shirts for some time now so I am pretty stoked that I found three nice ones today as well as another pair of work pants. I probably should have picked out some more clothes today since everything in the store was on sale for a quarter but I decided to just go back next month with a better mental list of the clothes I need/want and do some 'intensive shopping.'
Once I got back to the homestead this afternoon and got everything sorted through and put away I immediately set to work bucking the remaining branches off those felled trees. It seems like that whole bucking process took a tremendous amount of time but I think that all total it took me about twenty to thirty hours of sawing and hauling by myself to get it done. I was reluctant to recruit any volunteers for that particular task because the pine sap is rather annoying to deal with and I didn't want to scare off any future help with such a dirty task as that.
All the branches that I stacked make for some pretty decent sized piles of material for both doing wattle and daub, berm building material and even a decent amount of firewood. Some of the branches were rotten so I put them in a separate pile of 'trash wood' to either burn or make some low grade bio-char with once we get some rain and the local burn ban is lifted.
Overall it was a rather productive day and I somehow managed to get what feels like a full day's work accomplished this afternoon and am pretty stoked that I am finally ready to start sectioning down all the felled trees into logs. I have been entertaining the idea of using some of the logs to build an outdoor wood storage/kiln with but we will see how that turns out because I really just need to get all the felled trees out of the way so I can get a shelter built and get the heck out of the tent because it was downright chilly this morning when I woke up.
Anyway I am going to wrap this up, do the editing/posting and call it a day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 31. (TFC Doing Lots Of Chainsaw Work, Stacking Logs For Firewood, & Finally Getting A Good Rainstorm)
I have been at the new place for a month now and although I am still camping in a tent I have definitely settled into a good routine of working while I can, taking naps when I need them, eating well, sleeping well and generally staying on an even keel as I plug along doing stuff each day. I am not as far along with getting a shelter built as I would like to be by now but everything always takes more time than I think it will and I have also accomplished a lot of other stuff along the way that is unrelated to my own personal setup so there is that to consider as well. Overall I am feeling good about my stay here and have (aside from the noseeums) been thoroughly enjoying it.
After doing my morning routine I retrieved the chainsaw, fuel and bar oil and after the usual problems with the saw's pull cord I got it running and set to work sectioning down the pine logs. Although I cut some of the pine as long pieces for berms (and to line the edges of trails) I also cut a bunch of the smaller sections into outdoor firewood. The large trunk sections I cut into logs approximately five feet long to be used for building some raised garden beds. There is still a portion of the largest pine tree left because currently that long piece of hemlock is resting on it and I still have yet to decide what lengths I am going to cut the hemlock to for use as building material.
Once all the pine cutting was finished I took the time to stack all the firewood logs out of the way in a place where I am considering constructing a wood shed or perhaps just a small lean-to to cover the firewood and protect it from the elements. Thankfully I cut all the pine firewood rather short (just to make hauling it easier) and thus didn't have to wrestle with big logs that were covered in sap. The little logs were sappy but at least I was able to mostly just get it on my gloves while carrying them to the wood pile and stacking them.
The last thing that I worked on was cutting up the beech tree and although I cut about half of it into small sections for firewood and the second (less knotty half) into eight and sixteen inch sections so that I can build steps with them for my shelter once I get it constructed. I did the same thing for the steps at the last place I lived and that worked really well so I figured it was worth doing it again. I wound up just stacking all the cut beech in front of the pine and hopefully it will keep the dogs from rubbing up against the stack of pine and getting sap in their fur.
Needless to say it was a very long day and although we haven't had much in the way of a heavy rain here for pretty much the entire month a big rainstorm rolled in at the ass end of the day and dumped a good bit of rain which will hopefully knock some of the dust down.
Anyway I am going to wrap this up, do the editing/posting and call it a day because after all of today's activities I am fading fast towards sleep and achy to boot. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 32. (TFC Burning Trash Wood, Building A Large Raised Garden Bed, Moving A Big Hemlock Log With It's Fulcrum And Gravity, Learning A Little More German & Having A Fantastic Fucking Day!)
It was a long day that started quite a good time before sunrise but overall it was very productive and I am finally feeling like I am making good headway in regards to creating a shelter for myself and the dogs for the colder months. Today I realized just how much that I (and some helpers) have put into developing a site for me to build a little place of my own in. Mostly it amounts to just getting the brush (as well as the infringing trees) out of the way so I can have a good look at the terrain and thus determine exactly where I want to build at but finally (after today's endeavors) I can see exactly how I want to set things up for my own area.
I got busy rather early in the day setting up a burn area which was made pretty simple by utilizing some of the scrap metal that we cleaned up from the creek for use as a burn barrel in which I could easily burn the 'trash wood' from the felled tree project and generally get rid of a bunch of unwanted material as well as making some low grade bio-char. I am unsure how good the bio-char from pine trees is but I sure do have a lot of it after today. I actually got rid of ninety-five percent of the trash wood today so that in and of itself is awesome because it was previously taking up an area that is mostly flat where I want to start staging materials for my shelter at.
Look it is just really late at this point and I am totally exhausted but I want to convey that with a lot of help from some of my fellow homesteaders I was able to create a raised garden bed, clean up all the errant branches from the felled trees, get the hemlock logs positioned to build a wood shed with and burned off all (or most of) the trash wood which basically gets my chosen site ready for building at. Currently I am too exhausted to go into detail so suffice it to say that it was a fantastic day and I even learned more German than I knew yesterday! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 33. (TFC Axing Sapling Stumps, Looking At The Lay Of The Land, Grooming A Shelter Site & Getting Invaded By Flies)
Although I got up rather early this morning I made a slow start on doing stuff because I had not slept all that well. With the recent rain a bunch of flies have hatched and throughout the night they (as well as some really large ants) kept crawling on me and waking me up. I think the ants are just looking for somewhere dry to be but I don't know why all the flies are gathering in my tent especially since I don't have food in it or anything else that would really attract them. Either way it made for a fitful night's sleep after one heck of a long day of hard work.
A few days back I injured one of my knees while sectioning down those big logs with the chainsaw. It was such a lame way to get an injury that I didn't even bother mentioning it after it happened but basically while cutting on a log that was a few feet off the ground it unexpectedly shifted towards me and when I stepped back (with the saw still running and halfway through the log) my footing wasn't all that great and somehow I managed to injure my knee in the process. Like I said it was pretty lame as far as ways to injure myself go. Anyway yesterday I worked on a bunch of stuff with my knee aching and fortunately I had some helpers so things were made easier than they would have been and I didn't injure the knee further but this morning I awoke to it being stiff and sore so I decided to just take it easy today and let it heal up a bit.
I spent a good part of the day looking over the area where I am thinking about building at and trying to visualize how to set everything up in such a way that it is both functional and a good usage of the space available. Without doing a bunch of excavation work (or wasting already flat terrain) it is a bit of a challenge to figure out the placement of everything but I think that after a lot of looking, measuring and generally brooding about it today (and the last several weeks) I think I figured out how to do it.
Once I got all that figured out I measured out a twelve foot by twelve foot area, marked the corners with sticks and then raked all the leaves and twigs out of the way so that I would have a 'clean' site for building at without a bunch of stuff in the way. There were also lots of small rocks around the site so I picked them up as well and started stacking them on and around one of the recently felled pine tree stumps.
After all that I started axing out some of the sapling stumps in the new building site as well as around the camp itself. It was pretty tedious but I did manage to get the majority of the ones that I have been tripping over lately cut down below the level of the ground. There is definitely a bunch more of them scattered across the upper slope here but I will eventually get them all dealt with.
My knee started throbbing partway through the afternoon and I got really tired feeling so I got my cyclone fan setup in the tent to blow the flies away and settled in for a nap. Even with both fans going (I have already had a squirrel cage fan in the tent) the flies kept landing on me and waking me up so I wound up wrapping myself in a bed sheet, sticking my head directly in front of the fan and finally getting several hours of uninterrupted sleep and didn't wake up until just before dark.
Well that is about it for now and hopefully tomorrow my knee will be feeling better and these damned flies will have gone away!
Day 34. (TFC Cultivating A Better Path To The Camp, Transplanting Some Grass, Being Afflicted By A Sinus Infection & Letting My Knee Heal More By Not Over Working)
Breathing all the damn dust around here mixed with burning all that trash pine wood the other day has given me a rather nasty sinus infection which has resulted in me feeling both irritable and sort of miserable. Dealing with all the damn flies and noseeums as well as a sore knee is not making things all that enjoyable to say the least but I just keep telling myself 'it will all pass eventually.'
I got up rather early today even though I was feeling rather miserable with a stuffy head and got to work on finishing clearing a better path to the camp from the homestead proper. The other paths that I have been using are a bit of a pain in the ass because one is steep (but direct) and the other has a rather smooth transition of elevation but it is a very indirect route and not really convenient to use. A few weeks ago I had started another path but never really gave it the attention that it needed because it was quite the mess of haphazardly stacked brush, lots of rocks that needed to be moved from the path and a lot of thorny plants, wysteria and honeysuckle that made for quite the tangled mess.
At first I just used the loppers to cut back everything that I could and after moving all the sticks and rocks I used a garden rake to clear everything out of the way and smooth out some of the holes left by removing some of the rocks. I then got the lawnmower and 'bush hogged' the path itself as well as the entrance to it where a bunch of tall vegetation was growing. After all that I used the circular saw to cut back some of the tree branches (in the haphazard piles) that were sticking into the path. All in all the path came out rather well and now I just have to train myself to actually start using it instead of the other paths that I have been using.
As I have mentioned before there is not much in the way of ground cover growing on what I call the upper slope in the woods here. Mostly I think that between the pine trees and the lack of sunshine nothing (other than poison ivy) has been able to get established in the sandy soil. Since I have that big raised garden bed now I decided to see if I could perhaps get some grass growing in it (and lacking any grass seed) I went to the edge of the yard at the homestead proper and dug up two clumps of grass and transplanted them into the raised bed. I am thinking that if they survive for more than a few days I will go and dig up more and transplant them as well and hopefully create at least one grassy area so the dogs can eat it when their bellies ache. Currently they have to go to the homestead proper's yard to get grassy stuff to eat which is slightly beyond the range of where I want them to be going.
I didn't really do much else today because I am hesitant to strain my knee any further and I feel like total crud with this sinus infection so I spent the late afternoon hours napping which was not all that restful with the flies swarming all over inside the tent and it being too hot (even with the fans) to be covered up with a sheet like I did yesterday.
Well that is enough tedious phone typing for one evening and I am going to wrap this up, do the inevitable editing/posting, call it a day and hopefully feel better tomorrow. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 35. (Cutting Up More Firewood, Removing A Bunch Of Barb Wire & Still Battling A Sinus Infection)
I woke up early this morning to discover that although my gimped up knee was feeling better my sinus infection was still persisting and although it really didn't seem that bad early in the day by the afternoon it got steadily worse. Thankfully it is just in my sinuses and not in my lungs at all. I think that if it gets much worse (or just keeps lingering on) I might start taking some of my 'fish' amoxicillin and knock it out of my system altogether.
Anyway after pacing around a bit this morning trying to clear my head and figure out what to do with my day I decided to tackle two things that I have been avoiding recently which was to cut up a bunch of miscellaneous hardwood branches (many the byproduct and collateral damage from all the pine tree felling) into small pieces of kindling firewood and the other thing was to tackle more of the barb wire fence that borders the property here.
The firewood cutting went rather quickly with the circular saw but at this point I really should oil it again and perhaps get it a better blade because it is sounding rough and cutting slow after all the work that I have put it to of late. Nonetheless it did the job and I now have even more good kindling that needs to be dried out and properly seasoned. I don't really have plans to have a wood stove or anything but I figure it is better to just take the time to cut it all and stack it instead of letting it go to waste.
The barb wire removal task was one that I knew would be easier if I just didn't over think it and picked a place to start and just did not stop until I got up as much of it as I could which worked rather well because I pulled up something near three hundred feet of four row barb wire, got it coiled and stored away without too much difficulty. I did wind up getting several pricks on my hands from it but perusal working with it without gloves on is way faster because at least it doesn't get hung up on the gloves constantly. It is by far not one of my favorite activities but I sure am proficient at doing it rapidly with minimal injury.
My afternoon nap didn't go all that well because the flies were just out of control and even the fans were not keeping them at bay and between them and my sinuses going crazy I slept rather fitfully. I did sleep though which was nice because when I woke I felt a little better overall and not so fuzzy headed as I was feeling before laying down.
Anyway I am getting sleepy so I am going to wrap this up and do all the stuff that it takes to actually share it. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
https://steemit.com/writing/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-1-7
The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 8-14)
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-8-14
The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 15-21)
https://steemit.com/diy/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-15-21
The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 22-28)
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-22-28
Not sure what has changed in the algorithms since HF20, but you seem to have fallen from my feed. So glad an introduction post reminded me to check you out.
The new homestead site looks and sounds great! Will have to do some catch up reading to see how you found it etc..
Anyway great post and happy to see that things have moved forward for you!
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