Hello Everyone!
A sleepy day, Pond thoughts, One thing leads to another & Doing whatever I can to prepare!
I awoke this morning long before sunrise at a few minutes after five-thirty which is better than yesterday when I awoke long after the sun had already risen. The longer this 'getting my sleep cycle back on track' goes on for the more I am inclined to do my utmost to not fall out of the habit again. At least I am gradually getting there and hopefully over the coming weeks I can settle into waking before the sun, napping in the afternoon and falling asleep early in the evening.
Yesterday I was not all that productive and spent much of the day napping even though the weather was not all that bad and I could have gotten something done had I not been feeling so wiped out. At the time it did not seem like I had done all that much during the week but I guess that it all added up because whoa I was not just lethargic feeling but also had a dull ache in most of my muscles. Which is both fine and expected given that I have been transitioning from one mode to another for the entire month... but I figured that I could get at least one more day of work in before it all caught up to me.
Anyway, there are a bunch of things bubbling around in my mind this morning and since I did not work on any projects to write about I am going to have to lean into one of those things and see what emerges. Bolstering the wildlife and getting more setup for water harvesting and food production has still been taking up a lot of my thinking of late and while the little things that I have done are neat... I really want to 'focus pocus' on one or two projects and have something to really show for my efforts.
The watering-hole experiments seem to be going well and I have noticed a dramatic uptick in how many wildlife tracks that I see in those areas so even though those were minor endeavors they are already working. In hindsight I should have been working towards making a pond for quite some time now even though in a way I have been by studying the terrain, water runoff and whatnot like I detailed in an entry a few days ago... but the more I think about just how much life a two meter wide by one meter deep pond can support the more I wonder if maybe I should have moved a little faster towards that goal!
Most of the time making such changes does not go well with impatience but the times are rather damn peculiar and might call for speedier action than what I am accustomed to. Which of course can be a really mixed bag if I botch something because I fail to notice an intrical 'piece of the puzzle' or in this case a component of the immediate environment.
Even now when I am eyeing that big hole for use as a fish (or duck) pond I need to take into account that there is a road nearby and while I doubt its hard-pack could be disturbed by moisture... I have to consider the proximity of the roadbed to the plume of the pond and what (if anything) the long-term saturation would cause. Along the same line of thought I have to also look at all the large trees in the immediate area to see if said ground saturation could soften the soil around the root systems thus compromise the tree's ability to remain upright during high winds.
Stuff like that is just better to figure out before investing a bunch of time and effort into creating a pond. To be clear here the size of the 'pond' that I have in mind is super tiny and an actual pond is defined as: "a body of water less than zero point five acres (one hundred and fifty square meters) or less than twenty feet (six meters) in depth". So, even by pond standards what I am thinking to create is rather small and I guess it is what most folks would call a 'garden pond' or even a 'water feature' but I cannot help calling it a pond!
My point there being that I doubt that I will need to worry overly much about water saturation and ground infiltration beyond a meter or two away from the body of water itself. Especially if I use a good pond liner in it and keep it from overflowing in an uncontrolled way. I have already been picturing inserting multi-level overflow pipes through the downhill side of the pond to prevent any unchecked overflow and if all goes well they will start a series of tiny waterfalls to help aerate the water on its way down into the meadow and whatever pools, ponds, watering-holes or garden beds wind up being located there.
It probably all seems sort of random to those who have not kept up with my previous one thousand eight hundred and forty-two days of entries but there is a whole lot of observation, methodology and planning going on with stuff like that little pond (and altering the meadow in general) and I cannot stress to folks enough to have a good understanding of things before they ever start making alterations.
My main goal there is to harness the existing water in that area of the meadow because it is well-shaded, consistent even during drought and drought-like conditions and I can easily enhance the water retention and usability via small alterations to the existing natural system without a ton of impact and disruption. The more I have revealed of the terrain the more I can see where heavy machinery was used in the area and some of its impact actually hinders the natural flow of the water. So, there is already going to be a slight amount of mitigation involved to 'correct' things a bit.
Its funny how on that one day (I am unsure which one) a little hike lead me to discovering that big rusty pipe which in turn lead to eventually finding (after many similar hikes) that tiny area that held water even when it had not rained in quite some time. I also found the big hole along the way and discovered several rusty treasures so all in all stumbling across it has been quite rewarding thus far!
During this phase of things I just need to keep revealing the terrain by clearing/transplanting the brush and get over there during some heavy rain events and physically watch how, where, why and at what volume the runoff water flows at. Without doing that last bit first I could easily botch the entire thing and have a real mess on my hands because its probably the most fundamental part of water management to do: Observation!
The morning is dragging on here and its not nearly warm enough outdoors to get out in it and be comfortable so I am once again more than likely going to spend the morning writing. Heck, I have already spent several hours on it so I may as well keep doing it. Switching up my writing time has been awesome even if I find myself typing out much longer entries than when I was writing in the late afternoon and evening. Just getting my mental gears turning that early in the day seems to help also because I always feel motivated (to one degree or another) to do stuff by the time things warm up outdoors.
Sometimes I have to ask myself what the heck I am doing with my life and how much of my potential am I actually utilizing and furthermore what are the barriers that are getting in the way... and I seldom have an answer! That line of thinking creates a marvelous chain of events though because I do start really asking myself the questions at hand and answering them with as much candor as I can muster.
At this juncture it is safe to say that I am figuring out what I do not know and knowing what the heck I am trying to figure out. While that all makes it sound simple it really is not because I am trying to cover a lot of bases (okay maybe all of them) and I do not feel like time is necessarily on my side to do them. With time not on my side I damn sure am not going to hurry but I cannot afford to dally either.
With everything I have learned in just the previous four or five years of really dedicating myself full-time to a homesteading lifestyle its important that I recognize that most of the 'newbie' mistakes are well behind me and I actually have a wealth of information that I can consult on various topics and things that I have actually done. Its not a perfect 'data set' being all mixed in with the journaling as it is but searching through it is not all that difficult of a task given how most of it is written to the Hive blockchain.
What I have been thinking of doing is maybe using a combination of my personal archive and the already published material to make a database of the projects that I have done, the materials used, the fasteners or whatever hardware and so forth and so on. I am thinking to sort of mine it all for the details and relevant data that could help me with future projects and planning. It could also help others and maybe act as a sort of 'homesteading survival guide' which could be handy given that I have done most stuff with little or more often no finances.
The thing with any sort of 'guide' like that is that each homestead is different, every land is different, every situation unique and there just is no way to account for them all let alone the personality (or personalities) involved. So maybe something more along the lines of a 'homesteading reference manual' would be a more accurate way to describe what I am picturing. Like I have said before it would help me a lot just with part and model numbers and being able to know all the voltages of various devices and numerous other things like tool condition and routine maintenance related stuff.
It might seem like a lot of effort but being able to (as an example) pull up the size of a specific bolt and know what wrench to take could save me a lot of time. There are plenty of applications there that would surely simplify my life (and record keeping) so it makes a lot of sense that I would feel inclined to work on such a project let alone compile the hard data for it. Thankfully I have most of it and it would just take sitting down and sifting through it all and somehow making things link-able to one degree or another. An offline database would be ideal but it might be simpler to make an online one first and go from there.
I got off on a tangent there and in no way do I want to take that particular endeavor on at the moment. For now its clunky but I do often find what I am looking for between my online and offline archives and creating a reference framework has been an idea that I have been kicking around for a pretty long time now. The grid is cool and all but I am not all that certain that I want to find myself depending on it for either my electricity or information.
There are a bunch of things right now that I am trying to create redundancies for and obviously beyond water and electricity projects... I am making soil, growing worms, composting everything I can and generally trying to bolster my food growing capacity and capability... and meanwhile doing whatever I can to bolster the wildlife and native growing food stuffs. In other words I find myself doing everything that I can to insulate my life (and what it takes to maintain it) from fluctuations in the outside world and reduce my overall dependency on it.
Do not get me wrong I am going to continue to depend on it for as long as I can but I do foresee a point where scarcity will kick in and I will be thankful for all the steps that I took while I could take them. Its happened before and just like that recent three month stint of not visiting a store... it goes to show that just a little stocking up can go a long way. Perhaps I can keep that routine up and stretch it into visiting a store twice a year. That would be (for me) the ultimate frigging supply run schedule but I would have to vastly expand my storage capabilities to pull it off!
Anyway, the sky is looking very overcast, it is still quite frigid and now there is a wind advisory so today is not shaping up to be all that fair of one. The next few days are going to be worse and I may have to resign myself to not getting much done. Yesterday all I did was nap and I am still feeling wiped out which makes me think that taking a few days off in a row is not entirely a bad thing.
During this series of entries I have always chuckled at the title and been thankful that there is no 'Post-' at the beginning of it which should sort of go without saying but there you have it and while the times are apocalyptic and there is not much to chuckle about... I have to dose it all with humor for the sake of my own sanity.
That said the times are peculiar and I would like to stave off the 'post-apocalyptic' either entirely or for as long as humanly possible given my state of readiness and preparation. Currently I have a lot to work with as far as available materials go in stores so I may want to begin investing in materials more and look at what I would need long term for general maintenance purposes. The ability (if need be) to go fully grid-less keeps nagging at me also but that has been a slow process thus far.
Alright, it is now early evening and I need to get this all edited and posted. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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