Adventures In Homesteading (Day 35)

5 months ago

Hello Everyone!

The gunfire/explosion/fireworks holiday, A big storm rolls in, Collecting lots of rainwater, Sprinting downhill & Fixing that which is broken!

Alright, I am more or less on time with my writing routine... but was hoping to have gotten started a little earlier. If I had not zonked out for a nap during the last bout of rain... I surely would have been... but all things considered I probably needed the rest.

Thankfully, the second time that it rained today was not as intense as the first time... because whoa it was quite the thunderstorm that rolled in this afternoon. We sure needed the rain here given how dry and dusty (from the road) everything has been... and also it was just what I needed in order to see 'what is what' with all the sites that I have been exploring for water.

It was also good to be able to at long last capture a bunch of rainwater because not only did all the containers around my camping tent get filled... but also I got much more water into the 'sediment' tank for my rain catchment system than I have before. If it had rained as hard as it was raining for ten more minutes... the sediment tank would have gotten completely full... and began filling my gravity-fed system's tank... but I guess that I will just have to wait for more rain before that happens.

Yesterday was a beast of a long day... and although things mostly went well with the dogs and the fireworks, gunshots, explosions and such... there was a point late in the day when a close by neighbor went way over the top with shooting guns. It probably would not have been quite as bad if I had not had the music turned down low at the time... but in short my boy dog escaped and made a beeline for the people shooting... and my alpha dog got into a fight with the other dog... because she was trying to stop her from escaping as well.

Of course I sprinted down the hill to the dog yard to break the fight up (and put the dogs in a crate) which is when I saw my boy dog had already fled. After making sure the other dogs were fine... I frantically began hunting for him... and yup that meant sprinting off down the hill in the direction that I figured he had gone... which as noted... was straight towards the problem!

I found him coming out of the folks driveway and walking down the middle of the asphalt road... so I guess they made the wise choice of shooing him off instead of shooting him. It was really all my fault though... because they had been dealing with the fireworks really well... and no one had been shooting guns that day (which is why I had not crated them) and as soon as I heard the first gunshots I should have sprung into action.

On a related note, sprinting like that over all the uneven terrain was a really bad idea... because I awoke this morning to my left calf tensed up to the point that it was cramping and I was barely able to walk on it. Some of that might have had something to do with all the hiking that I did back and forth between the bar and the camp the last few days too... but I think that it was more the sudden running that did it.

Anyways, things did not start to wind down around here until a little after midnight... and it took me another hour or so to get everything put away. All of which means that I was up much later than my usual bedtime... and I assuredly had no qualms with sleeping in as late as I could this morning.

I dunno what I was planning on doing today... but when I saw that a big storm was on its way I did my best to get everything secured that might get blown around by the wind... and get all my rainwater collection containers in place before it arrived. Heck, I even backed the wagon up next to the tarp that covers the bar... so that its bed would get filled with water.

During the storm I actually managed to drift off to sleep for a time... and then when I woke up to it still drizzling rain I got dressed, grabbed one of my big umbrellas... and got outside so that I could hike around and see what the runoff was doing. There really was not much to see at that point... but while I was walking along the road I noticed that the friendly neighbor's drainage system (that borders the road) had failed at multiple locations.

Being the kind of person that I am... I hiked back to my place... got a trenching shovel... a regular shovel... and a garden rake... so that I could go and fix whatever was wrong. I am going to gloss over all the boring details... but essentially the runoff had left one of his channels (because it was clogged) then ran down the center of the road... and created a big pothole before flowing off the road again.

I have no idea how long that I spent working on all of that... but it must have been an hour or more of slogging up and down the road, shoveling muck... and trying to get things 'functional' without becoming over-involved with it all as I am prone to do. By the time that I was done... I not only fixed the big pothole but also got his entire drainage system functioning again... so hopefully it will handle the next storm better than it did this one.

Well, I was hoping to spell more out here but my little brain is pretty tired... and I want to fall asleep on time tonight. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ta ta for now.