Adventures In Homesteading (Day 20)

Hello Everyone!

Nice only in the shade, Dispassionate dreams, Collecting wood, A dodgy cedar, Caution at the spring sites & More bandwidth achieved!

Alright, I am squeezing in doing my writing routine right around the same time that I did it yesterday... during the blistering hot portion of late afternoon... when there is only the slightest of breezes to help cool things down. In the shade of the trees it is actually a rather nice temperature (even during this part of the day) but whoa anywhere in direct sun is scorching.

If it were not for the fan that I have in my camping tent (and the one in my writing tent) spending any time in either one of them past noon would be uncomfortable but not necessarily super hot. Neither of them get very 'hot' per say... but they get this heated humid 'feel' to them... that I can only describe as stifling hot.

Anyways, I went to sleep before sunset last night after gorging myself on a bunch of food... and kicking my boots off... which yup was the exact sequence of events before I fell fast asleep. Lately, I have been having a bunch of intense dreams... but oddly enough during it all I am super dispassionate... and downright dismissive of allowing any strife to sway me.

Not long after sunrise I brewed up some extra strong espresso... and began hiking around looking for more cedar logs (and branches) that I can use in construction... or for making more sculptures with. The area around the water tent has become the designated 'collection zone' for all the cedar... and at this point I have enough of it that I have been considering building an artsy looking chicken coop with it.

The largest piece of cedar that I got has a big hook to it (where a branch comes out of it) and I keep thinking that it would make one heck of a nice outdoor bar... if I can find the space to build one at. Just today I noticed that a large part of one of the potential areas for building at... has a massive cedar above it whose bottom meter of truck has extensive heart rot... and a strong enough wind might cause its trunk to splinter into pieces.

After looking that tree over a good bit... I decided that given its condition, it leaning up hill and its proximity to the power lines... that it is the kind of tree best left to a professional. There are just too many things that can go wrong with it... even if I tethered the tree... and did all the cutting in a slow (nearly surgical) way... with full protective gear... and a spotter... because it is just that dodgy.

That realization made me start thinking about building inside one of the gulches again (away from the big cedar) and during my investigations for a site... I found two more areas worth digging in for water. I only dug one of them out so far... because the second one is a minor one and looks more like a place where the only water is surface water... but the other one proved to be very moist when I probed it with my rock bar.

It is kind of a side note... but each time that I do one of those exploratory digs I am not stepping uphill of them... nor am I building the berms uphill of them like I usually do. The reason for those things is that the ground is so soft that any weight put on it can cause things to shift under ground... like moving a stone or closing a gap where water once flowed... and in this instance... I want all the surface water that I can get... both pooling and absorbing into the area to moisten the ground.

Looking at the weather forecast it seems like there will not be a whole lot of rain for nearly two weeks... and the drought-like conditions are expected to continue. My big plan is to have as many test holes and pools created before the rains arrive as I can... so that when it does occur I will have a really good understanding of all the various areas and how they handle water.

Earlier today, I was thinking that I am super lucky to have this dry time to do all the digging... because otherwise it would all be a slippery mucky wet mess... and require a lot more exertion to boot. Do not hold me to it... but my goal is to create some kind of large pool (or pond) over the next few weeks... so that on the off chance that we get a tremendous amount of rain... I will have somewhere to store it besides just my grass garden and the gravity fed system's holding tanks.

On a different note, it has felt good being back on Hive... and although I have not had much time for reading, watching and engaging all that much... I can hopefully change that now that I got my cellular data connection dialed in better. I will not bore you with the details... but I at long last will be able to stop USB tethering my computer... and start using a networking cable instead (from a wifi extender) and whoa I get like twice the bandwidth now.

I wish that I could get the rest of the setup as dialed in as I have gotten my little writing tent... because aside from it lacking a chair (or even a cushion) to sit on... it has been working out pretty good. The climb in and out of the place is still a bear each time (and requires me taking my boots off) but hey it is not the worst 'office' that I have ever had!

Well, I think that is all the words that I have in me for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ta ta for now.