Adventures In Homesteading (Day 182)

Hello Everyone!

A pleasant chat, The steadily dropping temperature, Bottling up some rainwater, Draining the water system & Whoa it is going to get chilly!

Alright, I was almost on time with my writing routine this evening... but wound up getting caught up in doing some correspondence with an old friend. I was actually trying to avoid getting over-involved with our chat... but one thing kept leading to another... and it is not like I have a plethora of close friends to talk to or anything!

Today was at least a small improvement on my productivity (aside from my usual relief work) because with the impending cold snap... it forced me to get a bunch of stuff done before it arrives. Which of course is this evening... and I gotta tell you... that the temperature was steadily dropping all day long and I had a heck of a time not cringing just thinking about it getting here!

As I have said before I needed to get my rainwater bottled up... and although I did not get all of it dealt with... I did manage to get about twenty gallons (or 75.7 liters) of it bottled. I would have gotten more of it bottled up... but my frigging hands were freezing from dunking the jugs into the barrel... and I ran out of room in the tent to store anymore of it.

I also moved my propane stove into the tent (against my better judgment) and I think that by using some reflectix to form a wall between it and the tent... I have mitigated at least some of the hazards. I did a test run with it earlier before sunset (by boiling a kettle of water and then making espresso) and everything seemed fine... plus it sure generated a heck of a lot of heat so that was nice.

Another thing that I did was get all the gravity-fed water lines drained... and I also drained the main barrel (that acts as a holding tank) into the barrel that I have in the big hole just below the rain catchment system that acts as the overflow. My outdoor tub that sits between the rain catch and the overflow barrel is still full of water... so I am hoping that it does not break the tub... but I just could not figure out what to do with that water and I did not want to waste it.

Anyways, as an extra measure against the deadly temperatures... I also dug out my cheap sleeping bag and my two other blankets that I had in the storage tent... just in case I cannot keep the tent warm enough to sleep comfortably. All day long I have been having flashbacks of my first 'adventure' (that I documented) and how frigging miserable it was dealing with the cold sans adequate shelter... so yeah some of my extra steps had a lot to do with that.

Well, I am way past my posting time... and am going to call this entry good enough. I hope that everyone is doing well.