Day 790. These daily posts sure have taken on a life of their own and often consume a big chunk of my day not just in the tedious phone typing of them but also in the editing and posting aspects of sharing them. Today I want to recap how all this got started and perhaps clarify some things for folks.
In the beginning I was looking for a new property caretaker (land steward) gig and not having much luck I (for a brief time) actually contemplated trying to 'fit in' to 'normal society' which I have never actually been good at and I often think of as me trying to hammer a square through a round hole. I had tried this 'fitting in' several times before and it always lead me upon an unwavering path of dissatisfaction, depression and a sense of hopelessness for ever fulfilling whatever potential for living a 'good life' along with the inevitable creative expression that I knew I was capable of accomplishing given the opportunity to do so.
In other words I had pretty much given up on finding a place to live and do my land stewardship thing at when someone offered me the chance to stay on a property of theirs that had been largely unused for a generation (or more) and was an old farm gone fallow, overgrown and like most places left unattended had acquired a variety of folks visiting it and doing whatever the hell they wanted to do from poaching, to thieving, to partying, to dumping trash, to numerous other nefarious things that in my view just amounts to 'bad human behavior'. The place also lacked any sort of infrastructure in regards to electricity, water, or any real shelter beyond an old shack that was filled with trash and that some coyotes had made into their den for the winter. In other words the place was a far cry from being any sort of 'paradise' or even a place that was at least functional in one way or another. Seriously it was just one big fucking mess with zero conveniences and an abundance of danger but thankfully dealing with those three things on a property were nothing new to me. When me, my four dogs and minimal gear got dropped off here just before dark on that cold winter day the enormity of the challenge before me hit me like the proverbial sledgehammer but faced with the options of freezing to death, starving, becoming a victim of the local ne'er-do-wells, or any number of potential catastrophes...has a way of motivating a person (myself in this case) to rise to the occasion and although I dislike the term...survive.
I had very little money at the time and I only had that money because folks had donated it to me. I did not know anyone in the immediate area. I did not have a vehicle. I had about a month supply of food and two weeks worth of water. I also had very minimal tools and gear. What I did have was my wits. When I began it was not some 'adventure' or anything like that and as I was fond of saying in those early days 'there is no fucking safety net this is just my life'. I decided to document the entire process by making videos each day and sharing my experiences with my friends and although I am still making the videos the technological hurdles of uploading them makes it difficult at best given my limited power, intermittent cellular connectivity, limited data plan and the difficulty of sufficient online storage for the eight hundred odd videos I have made thus far. In the beginning I was delusional to think that I could make and upload the videos each day given the situation that I found myself in. So I make the videos and share them as I can but along the way there were also these text based daily posts that I can (not exactly easily) share but are much easier than uploading a three hundred megabyte video every day over a dodgy internet connection.
Writing these posts each day has been good for me in a number of ways and although the things I talk about in them vary widely they all share a single common thread...they are my thoughts, my story and my own perspectives and opinions. Sure living 'off grid' and working on building a 'homestead' are part of my lifestyle choices but that does not mean that I want to talk ad infinitum about just those things and to be blunt those things alone are not my single interest in life. Most of what I have done since my arrival here on that first cold winter day has been me doing the things that I already knew how to do based on living similarly to this for nearly two decades. Sure I have learned stuff along the way and gotten to do things that I had previously only dreamed of before like building spring water gravity fed water systems from scratch and utilizing solar power but really there is not a whole lot different going on for me in how I live now compared to how I have lived before.
The glaring difference between how I have previously lived and how I live now is that I have chosen to publicly share my life through these posts, through the videos, through pictures, through podcasts, through fiction and somehow along the way that sharing has helped me overcome some pretty big damn hurdles (both internal and external ones) so that is nice but at the end of the day I am just a person that is doing the best they can with the tools at my disposal. Out of it all I hope that what I give back has been worth the contributions that folks have made, I hope that folks have learned stuff, been amused, been proud of my accomplishments and know that I am incredibly thankful/grateful for each and every one of you for shining your inner light in my direction.
Anyway on a different note the 'new' water barrel that I attached to the utility water system worked out awesomely other than it creating a bit of an 'air lock' (suction) on my drinking water holding tank. So now my drinking water holding tank needs a supplemental air port added to it because the flow rate at the end of the water line has been restricted to about half of what it was previously. It was an 'unintended side effect' but thankfully one that can be easily mitigated. The downside is that I will need to remove all the leaves that are insulating the tank against freezing, disconnect the tank, drain it, drill a new hole in it and install a fitting with a screen cap in such a way that it can draw air without rain water or other foreign matter being able to enter the tank. On the other hand I could just leave everything the way it is and cope with the low flow rate with some good old fashioned patience especially since I only use that water for filling water jugs. The new utility water system on the other hand has plenty of water pressure along with a rather large holding capacity so if I actually need a lot of water quickly it would absolutely be more than sufficient. I should probably just flush/clean the utility system out really well and use it for drinking water also because both systems have the same source of crystal clear spring water but I like having them as two systems because the drinking water one is so small it is easy to clean and maintain with minimal downtime.
Well I have rambled on here enough and two hours of typing this all out means I have probably rambled more than usual. Yal be well and I will undoubtedly do the same.
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