Day 821 (Daily Post)
Day 821. As folks can imagine I have had a good bit on my mind the last few days since getting the news that I will need to find a new place to live. One comforting aspect to that is that I have time to find a place without a definitive deadline looming before me that would ultimately just stress me out and make the actual processes of packing down and finding a place fraught with anxiety. For myself not having that kind of looming pressure means I can not so much 'take my time' as it means I can 'be thorough and meticulous' with both processes.
Don't get me wrong I do not want to tarry here any longer than necessary but I don't want to rush into my next place nor make a poor decision about the next place altogether because ultimately I want to find a 'good fit' in the next place that can not only accommodate what I need (and what it needs from me as a caretaker) but something hopefully with some longevity. I am not partial to only working for or caretaking 'like minded' folks property because let's face it 'like minded' folks of my variety are pretty few and far between and while the skill sets that I bring to a scenario are not unique they are generally desired because folks need/want them in said scenario. Here at this place I encountered a situation where what was wanted/needed from me was minimal and largely I have had an open range to do the things that I saw fit to do and I think that my documentation of the things that I have done of my own volition speaks volumes in and of itself about not just the skills involved but my determination, willingness to work long hours without the 'carrot on the stick' of money and as someone pointed out months ago my 'doing things for their inherent value'.
I have improved the property as a whole and done the things along the way to 'help' the place the best I could and my own projects have been a close second to what I see as my primary purpose and function at this (any) property which is to simply 'take care of it' which unsurprisingly is where the word 'caretaking' comes from. I love a place, give it love and am incredibly proficient at genuinely understanding a property and what it needs from me to benefit it. Sure much of what I wind up doing is either preventative measures or 'damage control' for and from human impact even if it is just removing invasive plants, fixing roads, picking up trash, water management, forestry management, maintaining and improving infrastructure or a whole slew of other things that I more or less just do from habit.
As a caretaker I know my stuff and do the majority of it from sheer habit based on solid knowledge and decades of experience and while farming and homesteading are relatively new to me I am slowly getting those skills to become habits as well. I often say in regards to caretaking and in some regard to homesteading 'I am not trying to figure things out. I am doing what I already know to do and I just want to do it well.'
Please do not misconceive my confidence with arrogance in that regard because although I am perpetually learning there is much that I know how to do and do it well given the materials/tools/resources to do it and lacking those things I am fully capable of making the materials, building the tools and gathering the resources as needed.
Caretaking property and being a land steward is not just my job in life it is also my long established career and farming is a hobby. Homesteading (and building those skills) is and always has been a bi-product of being a caretaker because (other than a couple of exceptions where I actually lived with the land owners out of necessity) I often find myself in a situation where someone more or less points at an undeveloped piece of their property and says something like 'you can stay there'. In the past these areas often were limited to places that had water or electricity nearby and were seldom actually ideal but were practical.
I used to joke that my lifestyle could be summed up as 'living at the end of three hundred feet of extension cord' because in many scenarios that was basically what I was doing and would set myself up a perma-camp (permanent camping setup) or occasionally utilize an outbuilding or vehicle to live in while doing work around a property. Doing that gave me some seclusion and separation from the land owners but was almost always a very rugged or rustic living arrangement. Those years and places were great to learn the techniques of not just rustic (and low impact) living but a foundation to build my homesteading skills upon and to be blunt I built those skills so well that I no longer need the 'extension cord' for electricity nor even access to clean water because I can harvest it myself given a little rain or more to my liking an actual spring.
At many places I had to haul my water by hand and I often say 'if drinking water is less than a three mile hike to get then it is no biggie' and while that saying still holds true for me I have developed my water harvesting and storage skills to the point where 'hiking' for water is unnecessary.
So lately as I am sorting through and taking stock of things and I am pretty stoked to realize the extent to which I have become self sufficient and actually taking inventory of the building materials I have acquired (and the shed I have here that I built) there is both a sufficient amount of materials (and fasteners) to build my own building to live in and also create enough storage to store my gear in.
Realizing that I have all that covered was a big relief to me yesterday because it means all I actually need is a piece of land to move onto and I am all set to start fresh and be able to unpack what I am affectionately thinking of as my 'homestead in a box'.
I have also realized that after I find a place to move to and actually get moved to it I will have a wonderful opportunity to document setting everything up and showing what I start off with as far as materials and gear. During my stay at this place I have slowly cobbled everything together so setting it all up fresh will be a first for me. With this place I essentially started with some minimal camping gear and what I think of as my 'handyman kit' for tools and we all know what I accomplished with just starting off with the bare minimum. Think about what I can do starting off with everything I have and need because at this point I actually have it which is an amazingly 'liberating' feeling because I can start new on a remote piece of raw land and can eliminate eighty percent of the initial struggle to meet my basic needs from day one there. It also means that more opportunities may be available because what I need from a land owner is basically just the space (actual land) to caretake and a place for me to more or less occupy with my dogs.
The dogs of course limit my opportunities in some regards but the value of four well behaved, well trained (or trained well enough for their job) work dogs that have extensively lived in the wilderness and are proficient at deterring predators of all varieties and tend to only remove rodents like voles from a place...the value of such dogs is tremendous on a property and honestly the sort of folks that don't understand (nor are willing to learn) that value are not the sort of folks I would ever entertain working with/for.
The value of good dogs on a homestead (or even just a piece of land) predates modern civilization by thousands of years if not more. For my part the dogs as much as they are also to some degree 'pets' they are primarily just part of my 'toolbox' and their capabilities to act as tools (and companions) is highly honed. In other words the dogs equally have skills and use them well. Probably one of the greatest examples of those skills is how they tend to drive off very large coyote packs and then maintain the territory. It is pretty amazing just how intelligent and capable in general they are at doing their job and operating as a team and as far as watching a place goes they definitely make my job a heck of a lot less stressful and remove much of my workload in that regard.
Having lived this sort of lifestyle and done property caretaking for many years without dogs and having done the last five years with them all I can say is that I wish I had gotten them sooner and I will never do it again without them because I damn sure don't spend as much money per month on their food as I spend on my food because I simply want 'pets'. My dogs live the kind of life and do the functions that the dog/human symbiosis evolved around and calling them just 'pets' is inaccurate at best and sort of demeaning at worst. To quote one of my favorite authors 'We are round and we roll as one.'
Anyway all that stuff aside I am feeling not just optimistic about finding a new caretaking gig but also in really good shape for starting over from scratch, getting to document the process and ultimately having new experiences, continuing to learn, sharing my process and meeting new challenges to apply my skills to.
My outlook on the future is surprisingly 'zen' and after just a few days of processing the abrupt change to my future all I can say is that the depth of my inner peace has not been overly shaken and because of it I am realizing just how deep that peace actually is.
Anyway I better get this all edited and posted and get on with another day of sorting, organizing, packing, taking inventory and generally getting everything to the point where I can move it all and be prepared to just 'plug and play' it at a new location.
I hope that everyone is doing well and knows that I am making the best of things and focused on making the steps ahead of me as gracefully as possible. Ta ta for now.