The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 22-28)

Day 22. (TFC Bucking Trees With A Circular Saw, Observing More Sunlight Getting Into The Woods, Stacking Wattle Material & Generally Tackling Yesterday's Mess Created By Felling Trees)

The dreams that I was having this morning were rather damn bizarre and although they were rather engaging I was really glad to fully wake up and shake them off before my espresso was finished brewing.

First thing this morning after my usual chitchat with some of my fellow homesteaders I dug out my final unused long extension cord as well as a beat up old circular saw that someone gave me a few years back. I was concerned that I would need to replace the cord on the saw but I guess that all the electrical tape on it is doing it's job because the cord worked well enough. The blade on the other hand was severely bent and wobbled like crazy so I had to swap it out for one of my heavily used blades that although is missing a few teeth is at least straight and even somewhat sharp or just sharp enough for my purposes.

After yesterday's dangerous operation of using the chainsaw without the flywheel cover I decided to just use a circular saw to buck (remove) the limbs on some of the trees that were felled yesterday. The semi-dull blade and the bearings in the saw's arbor made for some high pitch grating sounds as I cut away the limbs and although it was only mildly annoying if it was even slightly louder it would have been quite nerve wracking to say the least. Occasionally the saw would bind or bog out altogether but it definitely did the job as long as I paid close attention to what I was sawing and avoided getting the blade pinched by the limbs. That last part was tricky because there were several trees dropped onto each other and of course some of the branches had pressure on them from the other trees, the ground or both.

From early this morning and throughout the entire day I watched the sun shining in the new clearing created in the woods where all the trees were previously felled. There is definitely plenty of sun getting into the woods now (at least this time of year) for a rather large garden but not quite enough sun in any single spot throughout the day for solar. The area of the woods where my camp is located gets more sun early in the day as well which is nice because this morning was the first time that I awoke and the woods were not gloomy feeling.

My big objective for the day was to clean up as much of the mess created by yesterday's tree felling as possible and although the trees were felled in such a way to make the cleanup rather easy it is still a lot of material to not just cleanup but also to figure out what the hell to do with it all!

Some of the felled tree material I started a second kindling pile with and some of it I stacked for use in some future wattle and daub projects that one of the folks here wants to do. Since a few of the trees felled yesterday were mid-sized Eastern hemlocks (which I think will make excellent wattle) I took care to stack them together after de-limbing them and used some pine branches on the bottom of the stack to keep them off the ground.

I made pretty good progress overall with cleaning up the mess but it is definitely far from complete and at some point I am going to have to use a chainsaw to buck the larger limbs and to cut up the actual trunks themselves. I still haven't decided on what to do with all the big tree trunk material but I am thinking that at least most of the hemlock would make some nice building materials if I can figure out how to store it out of the weather so it can cure.

Well I am getting sleepy and need to wrap this up, do the editing/posting and call it a night.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The circular saw that I used to buck the felled trees.

Day 23. (TFC Making Progress On The Cold Water Spring, Cleaning Up More Of The Mess Created By Felling Those Trees & Taking A Really Long Nap At The End Of The Day)

I got off to a rather slow start this morning in part because it was a bit chilly and since there is currently a burn ban here (because it is so dry) my morning fire of burning trash wood was not an option and I just wanted to stay warm under the blanket with the dogs. The other part of getting a slow start was that I am definitely feeling the effects of all my recent toiling away on the projects going on here. Even though it was only a little after eight in the morning I still think that is too late for me to be sleeping in with all the stuff that I need to accomplish before the weather turns truly cold.

Since I had mostly taken a break from working on the cold water spring for a few days I decided to dive back into it today and see how much further along I could get with finishing off that secondary drainage channel, cleaning the silt and muck out of the spring's pool and perhaps getting a rough capture in place.

First I got the secondary drainage channel cleared of rocks and dug it out at an adequate angle to create the slope necessary for water to drain from the spring's pool. Although I wound up doing much of the work with my bare hands I did eventually use the maddox to make sure that the slope remained as consistent as possible.

Once the channel was prepared I focused on digging out the spring's pool and using my trenching shovel to dig out it's bottom as well as to dig out under the rocks which create multiple overhangs around the pool. I basically got the entire pool and the sides of the pool free of silt, muck and small rocks as well as increasing it's overall depth by a few inches. By the time I completed that phase of things I realized the pool itself definitely holds a lot more water than I initially thought that it would.

At that point the main pool and the channel were separated by a secondary pool (to keep water from flowing into the primary pool) so I decided to experiment a little and dug out the secondary pool and likewise under the rocks that overhang a portion of it. I was equally surprised at how much water that pool holds and decided to just incorporate that pool into things as well instead of just using it temporarily during the capture process.

What I wound up doing was laying a piece of four inch ABS pipe in the channel and building a small dam at the low end of the second pool which left about an inch of the pipe sticking into the pool which could act as both drainage and as a sleeve for the two inch tubing that I ran through the secondary pool and into the primary pool. After that I then built up the dam between the primary and secondary pool and encased the two inch tubing within it and a few feet of the two inch tubing protruding into the center of the primary pool.

Below my original channel I had to dig a shallow channel and move a bunch of mid-sized rocks to accommodate the two inch tubing but after snaking around some rocks that I couldn't move I got it situated in such a way that it drains water from the primary spring water pool. Before installing the two inch tubing I forgot to clean the muck out of it so it was mostly blocked but at least some water was getting through which was all I really wanted to accomplish. Tomorrow I will use a piece of one inch irrigation tubing to slide back and forth inside the two inch tubing and clear the muck out and see just how much flow I get without all the muck in the way.

I know that I am making it all seem like a simple process but it took me several hours and by the time I had reached a good stopping point with it for the day I had gotten water and muck all over me and was feeling like if I had to move one more big rock I would need to just call it a day and take a nap so I gathered up the tools and went and ate some lunch.

Somehow I mustered the wherewithal to keep working for the day and continued on cleaning up the limbs that I bucked off those trees yesterday. Mostly I dealt with stacking a bunch of white pine branches together but I also made another stack of smaller hemlock branches to be used as wattle. Hiking uphill with the branches wore me out rather rapidly but I at least got in two solid hours cleaning up all the felled tree mess. Shortly thereafter I fell asleep and took the deepest nap that I have had in quite some time.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The two inch tubing installed in the pool of the cold water spring.

Day 24. (TFC Working Exclusively On The Cold Water Spring System All Day & Finally Getting The Gravity Fed Water Close Enough To The Homestead Proper To Be Useful)

Today was one of those days that I got up rather early and immediately began working on stuff (after making two pots of espresso) instead of chitchatting the morning away with my fellow homesteaders.

I have recently been putting a lot of brain power into getting the spring water from the cold water spring uphill and since the only way to really see if my ideas will work is via direct action I took action...lots and lots of action!

First I got my longest piece of one inch irrigation tubing and connected it to my shortest piece of one inch tubing that I then connected to the reducing adapter at the end of the two inch tubing coming from the cold water spring pool that I setup yesterday. Since I was just testing elevations and wanting to fill the irrigation tubing with water I ran it down the creek as far as it would go and then hooked my final (medium length) piece of one inch tubing to the end of it and angled it gradually up the bank of the creek at a gentle angle until I reached the top of the bank where I used a one inch to three quarter inch reducing adapter and continued from there with a fifty foot section of three quarter inch tubing which I had to run slightly uphill before it reached an area near the homestead proper where there is a flat shelf of land surrounded by large boulders. By the time the water got to that particular point it was coming out in a rather steady trickle but I couldn't lift it off the ground because the flow would abruptly stop.

I had gotten the water nearly three hundred and twenty feet from the spring head and nearly thirteen feet higher than the intake at the spring pool but just barely so. Mainly that entire phase of things (which took the majority of the day) was entirely an experiment just to see if I could get the water uphill to the top of the creek bank. It was wholly temporary because one good storm and the creek would undoubtedly wash all my irrigation tubing away and probably break some of it in the process.

After all that I took a short break and reviewed the elevations along the creek bank and gave the temporary system some time to make sure it would keep running and not stop functioning from air bubbles in the line or sucking the spring pool dry. Neither of those things occurred and after showing the temporary system to one of my fellow homesteaders I decided to attempt to run the irrigation tubing outside of the creek and along it's bank.

Thankfully I got two helpers for that particular phase of things and was able to re-run all the irrigation tubing rather easily along the bank of the creek. The only thing that I wound up having to change was to lower the point (by about three feet) on the slope where the one inch tubing turns into the three quarter inch tubing so that it could overcome the last bit of steep bank and flow out at the exit point in the aforementioned boulder area.

Where the water exits the tubing worked better with the new setup and the water flows even without the tubing laying on the ground but since we could only keep it flowing until about a foot and half above the ground we decided to partially bury a five gallon bucket and place an elbow fitting and a short piece of irrigation tubing on the water supply line, submerge the end of the tubing (after the elbow) into the bucket and fill the bucket from it's bottom. This worked out rather well to fill the bucket so we placed one of my twelve volt water pumps into the bucket and did a test with it to see how much closer to the homestead's yard we could pump the water. Since the pump isn't very strong and the water had to climb further uphill we were only able to pump the water roughly twelve more feet and along the way we discovered that the volume of water filling the bucket is equal to the amount of the water which we were pumping from the bucket so that is pretty cool in and of itself.

That entire gravity fed water system and that particular spring capture is still in it's early preliminary stages but so far things are coming along rather nicely but it sure has taken a heck of a lot of labor and brain power to get it to where it is. Just having a decent spring water system up and running (regardless of how preliminary it is) makes me sigh a big sigh of relief because at least now there is usable water available here if the grid power quits operating and water cannot be pumped up from the well.

Anyway I am absolutely exhausted at this point and just want to unwind for the evening and get to bed early so that I can get up early and have another productive day tomorrow.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The spring water filling the bucket with the pump in it.

Day 25. (TFC Sleeping In After A Late Night Of Doing Computer Repair, Setting Up A Barrel As A Water Holding Tank, Testing Elevations To Try To Get Spring Water Closer To The Homestead Proper & Waking Up Agitated From A Late Afternoon Nap To Having Noseeums Biting Me On My Eyelids)

I probably should have just taken a break from doing stuff altogether today after staying up really late last night doing some computer repair on one of the computers here at the homestead. I am also feeling rather wiped out from all my recent activities and my inability to actually just take a few days off, relax and let my body recover.

First thing this morning upon waking I got back to working on that computer again and getting it all updated. Unfortunately even after all the updates I found out that the older operating system that I installed on it doesn't support the newest version of a web browser that is required for streaming from some specific websites so I started downloading a newer version of the operating system and called it quits on that project until the download completes. Since the satellite internet here is currently throttled the download is going really slow but hopefully it will finish some time soon so that I can finish that project early this evening.

After all that I went to that area with the boulders where I got the spring water ran to yesterday and was delighted to see that the water was still flowing well and that there was not much (hardly any) silt in the bucket that the water had been running into since the previous day.

After carrying a barrel, irrigation tubing and some other supplies to the area I got the barrel plumbed in to be filled with the spring water and ran a fifty foot section of irrigation tubing from the barrel and down one of the trails that lead into the boulder area. I had to try several different locations for the tubing before I found a decent elevation where the water would drain from the barrel rather well and eventually I found the best spot and was a bit disappointed by the low amount of volume coming from the tubing. For now at least the barrel is acting as a good holding tank but I am going to have to figure out how to get the water from there and into the homestead proper itself.

Since all that water related stuff required a good bit of hiking I was feeling pretty tired afterwards so I decided to take a nap and figured that some rest would do me well and perhaps when I woke that download would be finished and I could dive back into that computer project but instead I slept only a brief time and awoke to the noseeums biting me on my eyelids and feeling rather agitated overall. Those little buggers have turned what could be a very relaxing time for me over the last several weeks into one that isn't all that enjoyable during the hours just after dawn and just before dusk when they are active.

Well. I don't have much else to report for today so I am going to wrap this up, do the inevitable editing/posting and go check in on that download.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The barrel that I setup to be filled with spring water from the cold water spring.

Day 26. (TFC Taking A Day Off To Rest Recover And Recalibrate, Sticking My Hand In A Dog Fight Before I Could Even Make My Morning Espresso, Discovering That The Water Line From The Barrel Was Overcoming It's Initial Head & Investigating A Mysterious Rock Pile)

In the wee hours of the morning I kept getting woke up by the dogs barking at what sounded like a rather large single coyote raising a racket in the woods nearby making a howling/yipping sound that seemed to me to indicate that it was either challenging something or trying to frighten something away or perhaps both. It didn't seem to be moving around much and seemed rather intent with whatever it was focused on.

When I finally did wake up on my own for the day I was like 'Oh yeah this is going to be a very relaxing day of me not doing any physically demanding stuff at all.' I had come to this decision late last night while laying in bed and realizing that pretty much every muscle in my body was sore and that even my brain was a bit exhausted from all the projects I have been working on lately. Suffice it to say I really just needed to pause for a day, heal up some and think about everything before launching headlong into several more weeks of activity without taking any days off.

So per usual I let the dogs out to do their morning business while I began the process of making my morning espresso. My stovetop espresso maker had a bunch of coffee residue built up in it so I gave it a good cleaning and by the time I was finished with that I had a peculiar feeling that something was amiss so I called for the dogs but only one of the three that were absent returned which isn't all that unusual because the other two often like going around and sniffing about at what was crawling around the woods at night. That feeling of amissness grew deeper though so I put the other dogs up and hiked down towards the creek where the game travel a lot and sometimes the dogs go in the morning. As I neared the creek I heard a ruckus and snatched up one of three walking sticks that I have along the creek path in case I run into trouble from some dogs from down the road that I have seen on this property several times and have even barked at me while I was working on stuff near the creek.

Anyway I snatched up one of the sticks and plunged down the slope in my house slippers and pajamas to see one of my two dogs fleeing back towards the camp while my other dog (my boy dog) was engaged with another dog in a fight in the center of the creek while another of the neighbor's dogs looked on from the creek bank. At first I couldn't see what was going on very clearly because several low hanging rhododendron branches were in the way but as I sloshed through the water (yelling at the dogs to break it up) and pushed the branches out of the way I saw that my dog had another dog by the side of the neck and was rag-dolling it back and forth against the rocks and half drowning it in the deep water to boot.

Before I finish spelling out what occurred I would like to say that both the dog my dog had by the neck and the dog watching from the bank were well off their property and I later learned that they have been problematic to other folks in the area and had attacked other folks' dogs in the past. They are blue heelers and hence work dogs which means that any responsible owner would keep them kenneled when they are not working them.

Anyway I used the walking stick to attempt to leverage the dogs apart (while constantly getting smacked by the rhododendron branches) which did not work and only resulted in me almost falling in the creek and losing both my house slippers off my feet in the process. I then gently but firmly whacked my dog a few times with the stick to try to get him to let go of the other dog to no avail. The entire time all of this is going on I am yelling at my dog to let the other dog go but the look he gave me was basically 'fuck that daddy!' Since I'm not an asshole and no matter what had occurred to start the fight (which was probably that the dog being trounced did something aggressive to my boy dog or his sister) I don't want to see animals hurt. So I took a chance and did something that I have been taught my whole life not to fucking do and reached out and grabbed my dog by the collar while keeping the stick vertical with it planted firmly in the creek bed between me and both dogs. I had to wrench on the collar a few times before my dog actually let go but thankfully I didn't get bit by either dog in the process and the other dog immediately fled towards it's home. Also thankfully my dog wasn't interested in pursuing the other dog and I walked him back to the camp without further incident after gathering my house slippers from the creek. The only injury I found on my dog was what looked like a scratch near one of his paws which he probably got from a rock in the creek. I hope the other dog is okay and that perhaps it and that neighbor's other dogs just stay away so that nothing like that happens again. I keep thinking how fucked up that scenario would have been if my whole dog pack had been there or if the neighbor's dog that just watched from the creek bank had joined in the fray.

Needless to say my supposedly 'relaxing' day was off to one hell of a rough start and my little adventure in the creek left me wet, with an adrenaline dump and with more than one muscle feeling pulled and aching like crazy especially in my back from where I almost fell and had to catch myself before I crashed into the rocks.

After informing a few of my fellow homesteaders what had occurred and that if the neighbor showed up they would know why I went back to the camp and finally made my espresso although I probably didn't need it at that point considering all the damn adrenaline in my system. By then I felt even more determined to just take the day off because hell that was enough excitement and activity for one day!

At some point in the afternoon I decided to take a look at the water barrel that I setup the day before and see how things were looking. I had leaned the output water line from the barrel up against a tree/sapling the day before higher than the head (height of the water in the barrel) just because I wanted the barrel to stay full so that the next time that I worked on that water system I wouldn't have to refill the barrel and was rather surprised to see that there was water flowing out the end of the water line and that the barrel was still full. I didn't think there was a long enough run of water line coming from the barrel over enough of an elevation drop to create the velocity/siphon effect but apparently there was which made me think of my favorite new saying 'I do not question the holographic nature of the universe' which is something I keep saying/thinking every time I see something that I can't explain the 'why' of. Anyway seeing that water flowing gave me the idea to hookup a garden hose to the end of the water line and run it out along the path into the boulder area and towards the homestead proper's yard just to see if perhaps by tomorrow morning there would be water flowing from it.

I took several hikes around the property today just sort of looking over all the various projects that I have going on and along the way I saw what I think was the same box turtle that I rescued from the creek the other day. I also gave a closer look to a mysterious pile of stones/rocks here that were obviously placed with great care for some unknown reason. The rock pile is hollow on the inside, circular in shape with a tapering inward top and was obviously built for a reason but I have yet to figure out what it might be. My first inclination was that it is was either a well or a spring site that got rocked over but I can't get a good enough look inside of it to see if there is a well shaft below it and dare not stick my arm in there this time of year when the snakes are active. Eventually I want to run water into the center of it but first I need to get water close enough to it to do that.

Well that is about it for now. I did do a bunch of mundane domestic stuff today like laundry and hauling water but for the most part I successfully kept myself from working which was a feat in and of itself!

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The mysterious rock pile.

Day 27. (TFC Constructing A Raised Bed Garden Plot, Doing Some Minor Tinkering With The Gravity Fed Water System, Getting My Laundry Caught Up & Taking One Heck Of A Long Nap)

I got off to a rather slow start this morning and immediately upon getting out of bed noticed some new aches in several of my back muscles which I can only surmise were a result of when I almost fell while breaking up that dog fight in the creek yesterday morning so I decided to just take it easy today and not to dive back into any projects like I was planning on doing.

Since I wanted to accomplish something today I decided to make a little garden plot near where I am thinking to build my shelter and also block off the only section of barb wire left on the upper slope of the woods. The barb wire is stretched super taut between some tree stumps left from when I recently felled those trees and although I probably could have removed it I just like how it looks there and kept waiting for some sort of inspiration to strike me on what to do with the area if anything at all. Well this morning inspiration did strike me so I rolled three big logs around until I got them where I wanted them downhill of the tree stumps and chocked them in place with some rocks as well as some of the wedges created when I felled the trees. I also added the other black locust sculpture that I brought with me from the last place I lived and installed it at the center of the garden plot which also happens to be the center of the barb wire which hopefully will keep the dogs from ever running into or under it. I am thinking that the barb wire will also act as a trellis for things that I eventually grow in the garden which might be a while because at first I am thinking to just use it to compost stuff in and hence creating some soil.

The last few days I have been working on getting my laundry all caught up which is made incredibly easy by using an actual washing machine instead of doing everything by hand which I did at the last place for the better part of three years. Since I have been so busy here of late my dirty laundry had really been stacking up and I have mostly just been hanging it on my dog yard fence once the clothes get too dirty to wear and yesterday I realized that I had almost half the dog yard fence covered with dirty clothes and should do something about it.

Since the clothesline here is near that boulder area where I have the spring water ran to I decided to check in on it while I was nearby. My experiment with the garden hose (that I started yesterday) did not work so I unhooked it and after moving the irrigation tubing coming from the water barrel around a bit I used some forked sticks to prop the end of the tubing up off the ground a few feet which was as high as I could get it before the water stopped flowing. I tried to find the spot that I had it a few days ago where it had overcome it's head but failed to do so. I probably should have just left it there the other day (before I did the garden hose experiment) and placed a second barrel under it but I can probably tinker around with it some more and find that spot again but because I did not want to get over involved with it today I just called it 'good enough' and decided to come back to it later.

Late in the afternoon I decided to take a short nap but once I fell asleep I fell deeply asleep and slept for almost four hours straight which was really nice because I awoke feeling very rested and better than I have felt in weeks. Even my back pain had subsided so I went around collecting some rocks to further chock the logs around my new garden plot. It was six o'clock by then and I was pleasantly surprised to see a bright ray of sunshine somehow making it's way through all the trees and shining brightly on the center of my new garden plot. I took it as a good omen and it brought quite the smile to my face.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night. Happy Equinox!

Not the best picture but this is the garden bed I created.

Day 28. (TFC Bucking Logs And Hauling Branches All Day & Pretty Much Not Doing Anything Else)

I slept in a little late once again this morning which is not all that big of a deal but I really need to get back to falling asleep early and rising long before the sun. Part of this shift in my sleep cycle is due to eating dinner with my fellow homesteaders late in the evening which generally happens around the time that I usually want to (and prefer to) be falling asleep. Since my financial situation is basically nonexistent at the moment I pretty much have to eat what/when I can and fortunately the folks here want to feed me so I don't have any complaints there at all but I sure would like to be getting to sleep much earlier in the evening than I have been especially since I need to be making the most of my days getting a shelter built before the cold weather arrives.

Today I decided to focus solely on getting the trees that were felled bucked and getting all the limbs hauled away. I spent the better part of seven hours on it but still have not completely finished the bucking/hauling phase of things not to mention that after that part is finished I will still need to section all the logs down and do something with them as well.

The old circular saw that I have been using to buck the logs with was squealing a lot (as I mentioned last week) so today I decided to try to mitigate that a bit by oiling the shaft and arbor on it which I did this morning and it absolutely worked so at least I didn't have to have that sound grating on my nerves all day while running the saw.

Since one of the trees that I felled was a hardwood (a beech tree) I took the time to section up the branches from it into firewood and made quite a nice little pile of it that will assuredly come in handy as the weather turns colder especially if I am still in the tent and find myself needing to make an outdoor fire in the morning and the evening to warm myself with and even if I do get a building built before then I do not want to waste such good firewood.

Late last night I was petting my boy dog and noticed a big lump on the side of his neck and after closer investigation I found several tooth holes so I guess that dog that he got into a fight with bit him at some point before I arrived on the scene which would go a long way towards explaining why he didn't want to let go of the dog when I was trying to break the fight up. I had of course looked him over really well after the fight but somehow missed his wounds which isn't all that surprising considering that there was no visible blood or anything. I am going to start him on a round of antibiotics tonight as a preventive measure just to stave off any infection.

Anyway that is about it for now and I am going to wrap this up, do the editing/posting and call it a productive day.

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

It might not look like much progress but it sure took a lot of time and energy to get this far.

Thanks for reading!

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