Adventures In Homesteading (Day 52-53)

about 2 months ago

Hello Everyone!

Double day entries, Stepping back, Viewing impact, One heck of a rain event, So much water & The trusty potato apple diet!

Alright, I missed my writing routine yesterday because a big thunderstorm was rolling in... and I needed to keep the dogs calm during all the ruckus. I could have done the writing earlier on in the day... but since it was a 'lazy day' I took several nice long naps instead.

By and large I walked around a bunch... and looked everything over that I have been working on lately... to get a better understanding of the 'larger picture' plus the breadth and scope of their impact. After all the recent progress... and just how much surface water that I will be dealing with (throughout the course of the year) it was good to spend time assessing (and to some degree mitigating) said impact.

During all the hiking around, I also checked most of the 'exploratory holes' in the gulches... but did not see anything new aside from the areas being more squishy to walk in. Last night it poured more rain than it has during my entire stay here... and whoa a lot could have changed... because that single rain event got everything filled with water including the gravity-fed system.

This morning I awoke to find all the main spring site holes full of water... and there was even a good amount in the deepest part of the cellar hole. That kind of rain event is the kind that I have been needing... and one of the first things that I am going to do today is go explore all the places that I have done any kind of exploratory digging to see what it all looks like.

At the moment there is far too much water everywhere to do any digging today... but while the water is here... I can go around and gauge how deep each pool is and at what depth (below grade) that it is pooling. After awakening this morning to seeing so much water left from just a few overnight thunderstorms... I really want to start focusing on finding places (in the gulches) to create large shallow pools to hold the water on site longer.

Anyways, all that water related stuff has been at the forefront of my mind... and now that I am beginning to have a better understanding of the place... I can hopefully begin truly dialing the water scenario in for irrigation purposes. Not that I think that I will ever need to irrigate anything here... because the place is like a giant damp sponge... even during all the recent drought conditions.

As far as harnessing that water goes... it is a slow process and some aspects of it are going to require resources that are outside my reach to acquire at the moment. In short, I have stayed focused on 'putting in the grunt work' where I know there is water... and applying what I know about 'water management systems' in general to the rest of the place.

To be clear, the land itself handles water wonderfully well... and other than a few errant shallow gulches that send surface water runoff where I do not want it... there is not much that needs addressing. That said though, I did notice that after all the heavy rain the downhill side of the new earthen bridge is shedding water out of the gulch... so I best finish that project soon and fix that runoff issue before it causes any real problems.

On a different note, I have begun eating a much simpler diet again... and this one is the old 'staple' of apples and potatoes steamed together then lightly fried... but instead of using olive oil on it all (after it is cooked) I have been using grape seed oil. The difference is pretty amazing... and with just a small amount of peanut butter added in... it really takes away the blandness of the potatoes.

Honestly, I am at the 'I am going to eat it if it is food' stage of things... and have been packing as much food into me each day (without breaking my rationing routine) as I can... in order to keep up with all the labor I have been doing. As I have said before it is not even necessarily the 'work' itself wearing me out (and giving me a workout) as much as it is the terrain.

Thankfully, I have adapted to it all to some degree... and it is not quite as challenging to get around as it once was... and whenever I need somewhere flat to stand I just go stand on the tiny log 'platform' beside the bar. When I was building that berm below that 'platform' I was rather stoked to see that in the end I will be able to use the logs (of the platform) as a guide when I add more backfill along the berm to create a larger flat spot.

Well, I am going to wrap this up and go see 'what is what' out in the world. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.