Hello Everyone!
Back to habit building, Cleaning up the camping area, The rainwater scenario, A new compost mound & Learning about silkies!
Alright, I am going to try to ease myself back into writing more routinely again and see if I can start setting aside some time each day for doing so. It will assuredly be 'hit or miss' as I get into a new routine... but it sure beats languishing in some sort of perpetual anxiety over either not writing at all, writing too little, or writing and not publishing it.
With the change in the weather, I have been doing a lot of stuff outdoors that has been nagging at me for quite some time now... and just 'being in motion' so much has gotten my 'mental gears' turning in regards to my farm building efforts. Largely, I think that I have been 'floundering along' in that regard... but then again... I cannot help but look around the place and see how far it has already come along!
It is not like everything has been 'smooth sailing' here... and although I am accustomed to facing all sorts of challenges... this entire 'adventure' has been downright taxing in a number of ways simultaneously. Of course, I have adapted as need be to 'remain afloat' but doing so has proven to be (more often than not) a delicate dance of avoiding becoming overly neurotic.
A good example of that, is dealing with the drinking water scenario... and how when I cannot afford to get drinking water delivered (or visit the spring) I fallback on drinking rainwater... knowing full well that it is always a dodgy endeavor. Sure, doing that infrequently is not all that big of a deal (as far as my anxiety goes) but doing it for days and weeks on end... is way more 'risk taking' than I am actually comfortable with.
Perhaps, if my oral health were better the anxiety would not be so extreme... because most of it revolves around giving myself an infection... and of course having to deal with the resulting fever, discomfort etcetera. On the flip-side, I have at least gotten really keen on noticing the early signs of both the infections and the fevers... which means that I can both take action and tell myself: Hey, you are running a fever so maybe rethink everything that you have been thinking.
Anyways, the best way for me to truly deal with the water scenario, is to get some kind of intensive filtration system setup... along with some large scale storage. Throughout the winter, I mainly relied on five gallon buckets to both collect and store the drinking water in... but a few days ago I began filling that fifty gallon barrel that I have previously used for that purpose.
As it turns out, there is way too much pollen in the air right now... because although I managed to fill most of the barrel during a heavy rain storm... the water immediately got saturated with pollen. Since there is no screen over the top of the barrel, I also found a bunch of small flower buds that had gotten hit by a late freeze and were knocked off the trees during some stormy weather.
All that water has still come in handy, because I have been using it as utility water... but now I need to empty the barrel, scrub it out and maybe not use it again until there is less pollen in the air. One good thing about the five gallon buckets, is that they are super easy to manage... and in the end I might wind up bringing the barrel indoors and solely using it for storage that I fill via the buckets.
On a related note, the rainwater collection system that I setup on 'day three' is still going strong and that water has come in handy a lot. A few days ago, I even filled its gravity-fed system again (for the first time since the winter began) and got the outdoor shower setup in such a way that rinsing off in it during the hotter months will be nice.
The only major changes that I made to the shower setup, was to pull up all the irrigation tubing that I had previously deployed to the foot of the hill and repurposed it to be used in the coil (of tubing) that sits in the sun directly uphill of the shower. The other thing that I did to improve the shower, was to use a bunch of long sticks to form a tripod structure... and I then wrapped the tripod with pieces of vapor barrier material to create some privacy and more importantly to block the wind.
While I was working in that area, I also cleaned up my old camp by taking down the tent, picking up a bunch of micro trash created by the rats... and beginning the deconstruction of the mattress that I had stored in the tent. All that is left of the mattress at this point, is the metal (spring steel) framework itself and reducing it down to its smaller parts does not look all that difficult.
I am a bit torn on what to do with all the spring steel, given how handy that it is... and I keep thinking that I should save it to put in concrete, save it to make stuff with it... or throw it away altogether. The other option that I have been considering, is cutting the frame into four pieces... so that it is easy to store it somewhere until I make up mind about it all!
Overall, I am just glad that I finally got that entire camping area into better shape... and that it is no longer the eyesore that it had become. Beyond that though, it was also nice to just get the area in order, get a bunch of firewood stacked in the little greenhouse, rake up a heck of a lot of leaves... and fill in all the holes where the temporary dog yard was setup at.
Going forward, I am unsure what exactly that I am going to do in that area besides having the compost mounds there (and using it as a collection point for firewood and such) but it at least looks nice now. The area is also much more functional because it is easier to navigate around the trellises, there is lots of storage area under the tarp... and I now have the option to setup more containers (in more places) to catch rainwater coming off the tarp.
Currently, I have the tarp slung in such a way that it fills the barrel that I mentioned earlier... but the rest of the tarp is shedding water directly uphill of itself. The reason I did that, is because once I got the tent and ground tarp pulled up... I found the entire area beneath them was riddled with rat tunnels... and I want to use the runoff water to 'wash' the ground given how fouled by the rodents it probably is.
After that area gets 'washed' enough, I am thinking about adding some more trellises to it... and planting a bunch of shade tolerant grass to help breakdown the soil and act as erosion control. If I can manage to enclose that whole area to keep the chickens out... I might be able to use it to start other plants in... but between the tarp and the trellises it is heavily shaded and perhaps only suited for a sprouting/seedling area.
I have yet to remove all the cedar dead-fall that lines the back portion of that area... but once it is gone a wee bit more sunlight will reach the area and maybe even dry it up some. At this point I am debating how much work to do towards changing the ground there... because there are a lot of worms in the soil... and it looks pretty fertile... which makes me wonder if making it a worm farm would be a better usage of it.
On a different note, most of the black locust that I have in flower pots seem to have survived the winter... but none of the ones that I transplanted on the hillside last year seem to have made it. I think that the rabbits got to the ones on the hillside... so if I plant more there this year... I am going to need to protect them with some fencing.
As for all the ones in the flower pots go, I need to get them up off the ground somehow... so that the rabbits do not forage on them... before they can put on too much more growth. Thus far, my best plan is to build a tall 'table' in a sunny area near the studio, put all the saplings on it (until they get much taller) and then plant them elsewhere.
Okay, I never finished this entry the other day... and wound up working outdoors getting more of the old camp sorted out... by raking up a bunch of leaves and piling them on the new compost mound. I also added one more triangle 'wall' at the entrance to my outdoor shower setup... so that it will block even more of the wind... and add a wee bit of additional privacy.
Since the weather turned cold again yesterday, I did not get nearly as much done as I was trying to get done... because although it was nice and sunny out... the wind was icy cold. It even got cold enough last night, that I setup a second dog crate indoors for the roosters (so that they would be cozy) because silkies are apparently not all that cold-hardy.
I had no idea that they (the silkies) were so different than other chickens... but I should have figured as much by how different they look! Their feet are super neat also... and not anything like what I have seen on a bird before... but I (and one of the roosters) quickly learned that their feet are prone to getting tangled in chicken wire due to their shape.
For the most part, I have still have a lot to learn about those kinds of birds... but from what I have learned so far... I mainly need to take extra care with keeping them warm and dry due to how their feathers are structured. It is really difficult to describe but basically their feathers are a bit more like fur... and they tend to hold moisture more than other chicken feathers.
No matter how much 'extra care' the little critters might require... I think that their sheer 'cuteness' makes it well worth keeping them around... even if their 'hood' (the feathers on their head and around their face) makes them sub-par when it comes to being good guardians against predators. All that aside, they are voracious foragers and the 'hood' seems to give them a sort of 'tunnel vision' that makes them really good at spotting things to eat.
Well, I should get to wrapping this entry up and see if I can get it all edited and posted before I can slack on doing it. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.
