Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1286)

6 months ago

Hello Everyone!

Peculiar dreams, Dismantling the temporary dog yard, Keeping the laundry dry & A sudden storm rolls in!

Alright, I am running two minutes behind schedule with my writing routine this evening... which I guess is close enough to being 'on time' for it to not really matter. If I had not needed to figure out the number of the current day... I probably would have 'slid in under the mark' so to speak... but alas I was just unsure if the day that I thought that it was, was the correct one.

Last night I fell asleep around the same time as I have been lately... and thankfully all the 'tossing and turning' beforehand was not as bad as it has been on other nights. At least the rest that I managed to get was a good one... even if it was filled with a bunch of wacky dreams where I was 'living' in several different places all at once... whilst constantly traveling and trying to make it to my 'real' home.

When I awoke not all that long after dawn I was rather happy that the dream had ended... because even for me it was rather confusing. Of course, the very first thing that I did was go check on Esmarelda (the ill hen) and although I was relieved to see that she was still alive... her condition has remained the same.

Anyways, I did not spend much time doing stuff online this morning and got outdoors in short order... so that I could continue making the most of my time with the packing process. As a side note I keep saying 'the packing process' or something similar... but really it is more like a never ending cycle of removing rodent waste, dust, dirt and grime from stuff... and then setting it aside to be packed later!

Since I have been dreading fishing the temporary dog yard fence out of the woods... and dealing with all the hassle that would entail... I decided to do it as soon as I could this morning. Which basically, amounted to being the second project of the day after taking apart that wooden frame (for a mobile chicken coop project) that I never finished.

Getting the temporary dog yard fence dismantled was quite the process... because I had to pull a bunch of vines off of it, cut a bunch of saplings and branches that had grown through the wire mesh... and cut all the zip-ties that bound the horizontal poles to the wire mesh. As tricky as it was though, I got the entire thing rolled up afterwards... and carried it uphill to the road where I have been washing things at lately.

Once I had it (and all the PVC poles) staged near the road... I moved the water hose out of the way and rolled the entire length of the fence out... right down the middle of the road. By doing that I was able to wash all the algae off the vertical PVC posts... attach some new zip-ties where they were needed... then easily flip the entire piece of fence over... so that I could wash the other side of the posts.

Of course I also scrubbed all the algae off the long horizontal poles... and jetted water through them in an effort to flush out any dirt, bugs and spiders that might have been inside of them. Although using that cloth glove as a wash cloth made the process rather fast... the alage was so thick that I also wound up having to scrub the poles down with a brush as well to get them truly clean.

After getting everything washed I began the tedious process of rolling up the fencing into the most compact form that I could get it... which honestly is never all that compact. In the past I think that I just bungee corded the entire roll together (or bound it with twine) but this time I used several zip-ties to hold the roll in place and called it good enough.

Admittedly, the fencing was quite the mess after getting it rolled up... because it had leaves, pine needles and dirt all over it from when it had been laying in the road. To get all that stuff out/off it I wound up setting up that plastic pallet (that I washed yesterday) on some wooden blocks... then standing the roll up on the pallet... and alternatively spraying it down with water and picking the leaves and such out of it by hand.

By that point in the day I was absolutely wiped out... but I did manage to get some more stuff washed off including a carboi that I had missed washing the other day. I also washed three more empty bleach jugs (for storing water in) and got their labels removed... so I now have even more water containers.

Late in the day the sky began rapidly growing dark... so I scrambled around and got all my socks and other laundry removed from where it has been hanging on the dog yard fence to dry. I also had to shove everything back into the shop tent, cover the wagon that I have the fasteners in (while their containers finish drying) and secure the door on the solar shack before the storm could blow in.

Basically, it was a bit of a mad dash to get all of that done... because although the radar had been clear earlier in the day... there was all of a sudden this massive storm barreling at the area. It was a bit freakish to watch it all build (and blow in that quickly) and no sooner did I begin making a beeline for the shelter than it flashed a streak of lightning... and cracked thunder so soon afterwards that it stood my hair on end!

Honestly, I was glad that the storm came... because I was so exhausted by then... that I simply wanted to lay down and take a nap even though I had been avoiding doing so for nigh on an hour or two by that point. What I did not anticipate is the storm raging on four nearly four hours... and although I got plenty of sleep... it also wasted the rest of my day because it did not blow over until just before sunset.

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.