Adventures In Homesteading (Day 186)

14 days ago

Hello Everyone!

The meandering writing routine, A warm setup, It is chilly before dawn, The never ending relief work, A rejected offer & Military tent time!

Alright, I am on the same writing schedule as I was yesterday which yup means that I am running behind on my timing yet again. I knew that it was probably a bad idea to push my start time back a few days ago and I guess that two days in a row sort of proves that but hey at least I am staying within an hour of my original goal so I am not feeling too worked up about it.

Last night (and throughout the day today) my camping tent continued to impress me with just how warm that it has stayed during the cold weather. I have still yet to see how it all holds up during a high wind event but thus far it has handled multiple twenty-two-ish Fahrenheit (roughly -5.5 Celsius) degree nights with the day time temperatures not getting all that high above freezing.

I am also doing pretty good with not having to run the propane heater overly much or having to bundle up in my insulated jumpsuit (and other warm layers) to be able to sleep comfortably. It does tend to be a bit chilly in the morning when I wake up before dawn (without having had the heater on all night) but as I have stated before it only takes a few minutes to warm the place up.

A big part of that rapid 'early morning warm up' is due to having the stove in the tent with me now and observing my long time practice of boiling water and making espresso as quickly as I humanly can after waking. It actually gets so warm inside the tent during that time that I have to turn the heater off altogether because if it and the stove are on at the same time it gets way too hot in here.

Anyways, today was another long tedious day of doing relief work for the WNC DZ and I gotta say that there is just no end in site with it and with the plummeting temperatures (and dodgy relief groups) I have also begun having to focus more on the East Tennessee DZ as well. Apparently no matter how much I have tried to spread awareness that folks there are struggling also they just have not gotten the kind of support that they need.

On a different note, the buyer for my land declined yesterday (after some pretty shoddy communications on their part) which means that I am definitely stuck here for the foreseeable future. At this point I am just going to have to dig in here and hunker down the best that I can for what will undoubtedly be a very long winter.

My latest plan is to acquire a large military surplus 'kitchen' tent that has a separate room inside of which will alleviate me from having to heat the entire indoor space. I am really unsure whether I have enough flat terrain for it in my current camping area without felling some trees but at this point I will make the space for it if need be.

At least with the bigger tent I will have more room to move around freely and will finally be able to stand fully erect when indoors which yeah is a big advantage over my current setup. I am also looking forward to having more indoor storage space so that I can get some of my belongings out of the cheap camping tent that I have them in before the snow can crush it.

All in all, I tend to try avoid looking too 'militant' with my setups but given the scenario that I find myself in and that I need a base of operations to do relief work from I find the military tent idea quite fitting and to some extent even charming. Depending on how much roomier the tent turns out to be I might even get a wood stove for it and just fence the stove area off to keep the dogs away from it.

Well, on that particular note I am going to call this entry good enough and get on with the editing and posting portion of my evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and all that feel good jazz. Ta ta for now.