The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 142-149)

Day 142 & 143. (TFC Prepping For Another Cold Snap, Researching Vortex Hydro-Electric Setups & Hunkering Down In The Shelter)

It has been a rather mellow few days without much to really write about but hell that has never really stopped me from writing about something before and I better not put off typing something up or else I will miss out on getting this posted because I will undoubtedly fall asleep.

Over the last few days the weather went from being quite damp and overcast to being bright and cold. Thankfully the winds have not been all that bad today which is nice because the few gusts that I did feel chilled me to the frigging bone even with a jacket on.

The weather is going to gradually get colder over the next several days and perhaps get into the single digits by early next week so we are in for quite the cold snap.

Tonight it is going to get down below freezing so I did all my usual prep work as far as water (and routine chores) go before it got too late in the day. I did all that stuff in a bit of a hurry though because the temperature outside seemed to be steadily plunging ever since the early afternoon.

As it turns out doubling some of these daily posts up recently has been a nice change of pace especially considering I have been writing and posting one or more times a day every day for three years! I guess that doubling up some of these posts is the closest thing to a 'break' that I have given myself and whoa have I needed it! Don't worry though I promise I won't let it become a major habit and will be getting back to the daily thing sooner or later.

Anyway. I have been thoroughly enjoying my winter downtime and still absolutely stoked at how warm the shelter stays inside. It really is the coziest setup that I have had for myself in a very long time and you could undoubtedly say that I have been 'luxuriating' in it and feeling incredibly grateful for having built it.

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

My cozy little shelter just after sunset.

Day 144 & 145. (TFC A Few More Slow Days Hunkered Down In The Shelter & Pretty Much Not Doing Anything Worthwhile)

The weather the last few days has pretty much continued it's nose dive and although it was primarily just cold yesterday, today it has been both cold and raining which is not really all that surprising considering the size of the storm currently moving across the country.

The dog yard has become quite the mucky mess with all the rain today because it never really had time to dry out since the last spell of bad weather.

I think that once there is a sunny day here I am going to use the last of the straw that I have left to spread around the entrance to the shelter and perhaps a little of it along the path leading to the dog yard gate.

All things considered (especially with how wet the winter has been) the dog yard is holding up rather well as far as the muck goes. Had I not laid down all the straw that I have it would undoubtedly be quite the mess at this point. That old adage about 'an ounce of prevention being worth more than a pound of cure' seems to be holding true...at least in regards to the muck.

Anyway I was walking around a little yesterday inspecting all the various spots that I spread grass seed and I have to say it is pretty damn cool seeing how well it is growing, even though it is doing it rather slowly which is not all that surprising given the time of year.

If I am really lucky with the grass I will perhaps have a nice 'lawn' by sometime next summer. I am still uncertain if it is established enough to withstand a prolonged drought (like the one that was happening when I first moved here) but hopefully by the time the spring arrives the grass will have grown in much thicker.

Well I do not really have much else to write about besides the weather and how the grass growing so I am going to wrap this up. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

The skies have been mostly gray lately.

Day 146 & 147. (TFC Getting Some Much Colder Weather, Working On A Book, Feeling Grateful For The Warmth Of The Shelter & Breaking Some Ice)

I was trying to get this all written before falling asleep last night but apparently I zonked out sometime shortly after eating dinner so I am up early this morning and getting it done while sipping on my first cup of espresso.

It has been a very chilly few days and although it did not get into the single digit temperatures it did get down into the teens. The snow has been falling erratically over the last twenty-four odd hours but it has failed to actually accumulate into anything substantial.

Just before dark yesterday I noticed that the rainwater in my outdoor bathtub had finally frozen over. At first I thought that it was just a thin layer of ice but it was actually much thicker and I had to use a small sledgehammer to break the ice up.

After getting the ice broken I used a five gallon bucket to bail the majority of the water out of the tub so that I could flip the tub itself over and prevent it from filling with water again.

I had actually meant to do all that before this cold snap arrived but somehow it kept slipping my mind. Doing it just before dark while it was freezing outside, windy and snowing left my hands rather chilly and was a good reminder not to frigging procrastinate doing stuff that needs done!

Although I do not use the tub this time of year I sure do use it a lot during the warmer months. Having hauled that 'bathtub' around with me for a number of years now it would have been a damn shame if my negligence had resulted in it getting broken by the expansion of the frozen water.

Anyway. I am slowly making progress on that book about my last adventure in life. Mainly I have been working on the 'Daily Posts' portion of it and now have almost the first year of posts all compiled into a single text document and have been slowly working through the process of editing the spelling. I am still going to have to proofread it all but I think that I will do that once I have all nine hundred and fifty-seven days of it compiled.

I am assuredly not looking forward to the proofreading (nor overall editing) but I keep telling myself 'one step at a time.' I have also been considering the pros and cons of breaking some of the longer individual posts into paragraphs (for the reader's sake) but a big part of me just wants to preserve the posts in the original form that I wrote them. In other words I have serious reservations about altering the original narrative in any way aside from fixing misspelled words and fixing obvious typos/errors. Either way though I still have a long way to go!

One thing that has become glaringly obvious while working through that first year of posts is that my writing style undergoes quite the evolution the further along it goes and the individual posts grow to be much longer as the journey progresses.

I am also debating about how much new stuff that I should actually write to 'fill in the gaps' of my journey and also express some of the things that I have realized since it ended. As far as that last bit goes I have written out some of those 'realizations' but I really feel like it is a massive can of worms that could bog me down and distract me from my primary goal of getting all the Daily Posts compiled, edited and mayhaps even polished.

The documenting and archival process I have been involved in the last three years makes my head spin a good bit because I continue to generate more content in various forms of media and it often feels like it is all swirling around in my mind awaiting to be distilled into just a few simple words that will somehow magically sum it all up!

Well I better wrap this up and get to working on more 'compiling and editing' and try to put in as many hours as possible on the book project before I grow sleepy in my cozy little warm shelter. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Some of the ice I removed from my outdoor tub.

Day 148 149. (TFC A Couple Of Really Cold Days, Working On My Book & Staying Hunkered Down In The Shelter)

That cold snap was pretty intense and it did not get up above freezing for several days in a row and it was a really good test of just how well my shelter would stay warm during an extended freeze.

For the most part the shelter stayed nice and toasty except for yesterday evening when the small piece of insulation that I have blocking the exhaust fan port got blown out in the wee hours of the morning and it got super frigging cold inside because the draft between the window in the door and the open port was rather strong.

On a different note I have been steadily plugging away at compiling and editing all my Daily Posts for that book and am gradually getting closer to having them all properly arranged in a single text file. It is a rather tedious task to say the least but I am now seventy-five percent finished with that phase of things. There is assuredly a lot of editing still to do as well but I am feeling pretty good about the overall progress thus far.

Doing all that book related stuff has not left me feeling very inclined at the end of the day to do any writing so my apologies if it seems like I am neglecting my duties here. Please bear with me and know that I will get back to my daily routine hopefully by the end of the month.

Honestly I have my doubts about this book endeavor being worthwhile but I am absolutely committed to seeing it through to the end one way or another. Thus far the Daily Posts alone are totaling somewhere around a hundred and thirty-nine thousand words and I am getting into the final stretch of them where I start writing really long posts so there is no telling what the final 'word count' will turn out to be.

Anyway I am going to keep this short and sweet. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

It was a chilly winter day but not quite so overcast.

Thanks for reading!

Here is an article that I wrote the other day that includes a downloadable text to voice audio introduction of the first fifty-seven days of the book (rough draft) that I have been working on about my last journey at That Old Farm.https://steempeak.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/audio-introduction-to-my-new-book-in-progress-titled-957-days-by-jacob-peacock

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That Is All For Now!