Adventures In Homesteading (Day 15)
Hello Everyone!
Settling into routines, Easy paths, A giant brush wall, Firewood thoughts, Keeping the camping setup simple & There is a wild black raspberry plant!
Alright, it was a really nice day as far as the weather goes... other than it being borderline sweltering the few times that I got in the direct sun for too long. During the moving process I had already gotten a hefty amount of being in the sun for prolonged periods... and that trend continued to occur here at the new place as I set things up.
Overall, I have kept up with my health quite well... and eaten a tremendous amount of food along the way to replace all the calories that I have been burning off each day. Thankfully, I have been very successful at not getting caught up in any 'side quests' nor overworking myself for long (probably unsustainable) periods throughout the course of the day.
At this point in things I have my daily routines down, sleeping very well and have been keeping it simple as far as my actual camping area setup goes. I will not bore you with going over the drivel of the same setup... that I have documented doing before... with the only real change being the very steep... and uneven terrain which I can now navigate without much hassle at this point.
There are plenty of well established paths and game trails that make getting around the place not as hard as it could be... but whoa there are also so many gulches (and elevation changes) that its 'rough' at best! Without those trails though... it would have been beyond 'rough' setting everything up plus trying to get to know the place in general.
Early in the day today, I finally cut up that cedar tree... that the grating company left for me... and used its branches to create a very large brush wall (and privacy screen) between my camp and the road. It also has been making an awesome dust screen against the limestone road dust cloud... that gets kicked up every time some one drives by at more than a crawl.
My other intention with the brush wall is to use it as shade for my seedling and sapling sized black locust trees. It is a side note... but if my memory is correct... I now have fifty-two seeds planted and am working on getting more flower pots as soon as possible... so that I can continue planting.
Anyways, I keep finding myself ambling around the place continually looking things over... and trying to figure out how to move ahead with the immediate scenario that I am in. Summer is going to be happening fast... and I need to be moving towards preparing for the change in weather... long before the weather actually begins changing.
What form everything here takes is totally up in the air at the moment... and for 'starting off from scratch' this is not the most extreme scenario that I have found myself in... especially since I can get mail and deliveries. All of that aspect of things combined with a free public spring not far down the road... makes the place 'rugged' but doable if done right.
Water has been a constant focus for me these last few weeks... and with how hot it has been outside... all the animals are just gulping down way more water than they usually do even in the shade. It has just been this more or less constant baking heat (with very cool evenings) and the only meaningful rain being when it is some rather strong thunderstorm.
The slope of the property itself is exposed to the west (also called facing west) and it makes me wonder just how cold the winters will be under such conditions... because most of the storms come from that direction. No matter what I do over the coming days... I need to make sure that I stack up some emergency firewood in case things get colder for longer than what my heat sources can keep up with... or for any scenarios where the grid power goes down and electric heating is not an option.
Since many of the gullies have large brush piles already in them there is plenty of mostly dry kindling material (for many winters) but I want to have some wood with more substance available. There are a bunch of trees that had to be removed during the power pole installation... and my plans are to get some of it cut, split, stacked and covered long before fall arrives.
That firewood would also be mostly 'green' so I am picturing using it to smoke some fruit and mushrooms with... if I find anything edible here. I did happen to find a a wild black raspberry plant out in the woods (that had one ripe berry on it) so as soon as I saw it... I knew that finally... I can restart a new big patch of them like I had in my first series at that place in the mountains.
Okay I better wrap this up... and get it posted... because the sun has already set and it is growing quite dark outside. I hope that everyone is doing well... and yup I am making do just fine! Ta ta for now.
This write up sounds a lot more promising/positive than day 1 to 14.
Keep looking at the bright side of life and you will find and attract all kind of beautiful things ( I have to keep reminding myself of that too ).
Congratz on the move!✨
Mushroom 🍄 can grow anywhere if what attract them to grow is there my only challenging is that it doesn't stay long to decay if not harvested early.
I like the new name.
Are black locusts very bushy, you could plant them to keep the dust down or is there some other trees you can relocate to that area?
You sound much better today.
They are not very bushy. I had thought of using them and relocating other trees but for now it is a low priority.
It's sounding better each new post. Hoping and feeling that you can make this work.
Finally catching up on the reading 😁☕️☕️👻🏹🏹🔫