The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 8-14)
Day 8. (TFC Taking Three Steps Backwards To Take One Step Forward, Felling A Tree And Making It Fall Where I Want It To Via Some Rope And A Come-Along, Curating A Steep Path To The Creek That Has A Handrail & Removing Dog Hobble From A Potential Spring Head)
Today was one of those days that I realized that I needed to take three steps back so that I could take one step forward and what I mean by that is that when I first setup my camp (albeit in a hurry) I failed to notice the tall black locust with the rotten spot and the heart rot causing shelf mushrooms (Phellinius Sp.) growing on it leaning over my camp (especially my tent) and then even after noticing it building my music bar and setting up my canopy tent in the tree's hazard zone...which ultimately made the majority of my camping area unusable for staging materials, building my pallet shed or doing pretty much anything else unless I was willing to do it in the hazard zone.
So first thing this morning I dismantled my music bar, moved my outdoor writing table, removed my giant WiFi antenna, took down my cellular signal booster antenna and pole, moved the pallets and everything else away from the problematic tree and decided that one way or another by the end of the day I would get the tree felled, bucked and ricked off the ground to start curing the usable parts for building material.
Since the tree was leaning uphill it was hard to gauge the height but I guessed it was somewhere between thirty to forty feet and it turned out to be around fifty five feet once it was felled. Anyway I needed to get a rope around it as high as possible so that I could use a come-along to pull it away from my tent (and solar shack) so I used a five hundred foot coil of waxed twine that I use for only three purposes which are pulling a rope onto widow maker branches so I can then pull them out of a tree, pulling a rope into a tree I am felling so I can guide it's trajectory when it falls and for pulling romex wire through conduit. Today's task for the waxed twine was to to get a piece of dynamic rope (not the type of rope I should use but it was the longest rope I had) up into the tree so I could loop it back on itself and sinch it off. I tied a hammer to the string (sometimes I like using a sand or water filled plastic bottle instead of a hammer) and after eyeballing where I wanted it to go I tossed the hammer underhanded and it actually went exactly where I aimed the very first time which was truly amazing because I don't think that has ever happened before. Then I removed the hammer from the twine, tied a loop in the rope, tied the twine to the rope and gently pulled the rope up into the tree. I say gently because the twine had been tossed over a stub of a rotten branch that was maybe six inches long and one inch thick and I didn't want to break the branch. Everything went well until the loop of the rope got hung on the branch and no amount of gentle tugging on the twine would get it to budge any further. I thought about lowering the rope and changing the loop to no loop but didn't want to risk breaking the branch so I pulled the twine to a small poplar tree about forty feet away, tied my hammer to it about six feet away from the poplar, pulled it taut and tied it off to the tree which essentially created a 'dangling weight' on the twine. I then went to the end of the rope on the other side of the black locust and gave it a good whipping motion that traveled up to the loop where it was stuck and the counter weight of the hammer pulled it downward (at the end of the 'whip') and thus over the branch. It was pretty damn clever and worked really well because I then untied the twine, placed the end of the rope through the loop and pulled it tight on itself thirty odd feet up the black locust tree.
After all that I added a section of heavy static rope to the end of the dynamic rope, wrapped another heavy static rope around a stout tree nearly eighty feet away from the black locust and put a come-along in between the ropes to tension them and pull the tree to where it could be safely felled away from my tent, dog yard and solar shack. All the prep work took me several hours but I got two folks to help me when the time came to actually chainsaw the black locust (one as a spotter and one to operate the come-along) and it literally took less than three minutes to actually fell the tree and it fell exactly where I wanted it to. Since the tree was covered in poison ivy I didn't spend much time bucking it (removing limbs) but I did section it into usable lengths for building materials and got it ricked off the ground and piled all the smaller limbs on top so that once all the poison ivy dries up I can section it up better and see which smaller branches are usable as tool handles, rails, stakes and walking sticks.
After all of that I reassembled my music bar, put the canopy tent back in place (staked it to the ground again) and basically put everything back except for my giant WiFi antenna and cellular signal booster because I have other plans for them now that I have the smaller WiFi antenna that works well in my tent.
Early in the day I also cleaned up a bunch more sticks from my ever growing 'yard' and did more pseudo bush hogging with my lawnmower. This time though I just made two big piles with the sticks and didn't break them up and add them to my kindling pile just because I was trying to conserve my calories for other projects throughout the day.
Like I have said before there is a large creek here and the bank to get down to it is rather steep but it is also overgrown and although there are several game trails leading to the creek there was also fallen barbwire fence at the top of the slope which made it even trickier to reach the creek. So I picked one of the paths (the steepest one actually) that leads to a nice wading place in the creek and decided to curate the path by removing the barbwire along it, removing all the saplings and branches obstructing the path, raking the path smooth and removing all the lose rocks which made it much more traversable but it was still quite steep so I used one of the pieces of black locust rail material that I brought with me from the last place and created a rail along the path to make it a bit safer.
I got a bit over involved with the path curation project and at the bottom of it where there is a nice big flat spot I started clearing out all the underbrush and created a really nice hangout area beside the creek. In the process of doing that last bit I realized that one of the potential springs is adjacent to that flat spot and I removed all the dog hobble (a cane-like dense underbrush that thrives in wetlands) from around the potential spring head. I almost dove into excavating and investigating the spring further but realized I had gone way off the original mission/project and should come back to the potential spring site later when I could give it my full attention.
Anyway it was a rather full day and I did actually accomplish some other stuff also but this post has already grown quite long. I didn't start my writing until very late this evening (well past my bedtime) because it was one of the folks at the homestead's birthday so I hung out with everyone and ate some very delicious cake made from scratch by a fellow that does work around the homestead and that I have been getting to know over the previous eight days.
Well that is about it for now and I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night and I will undoubtedly do the same.
Day 9. (TFC Taking An Early Morning Hike Up The Creek, Reviewing The Progress Thus Far With My Hosts & Capturing A Low Elevation Spring For Irrigation Purposes)
After being up late last night struggling to get enough WiFi to make my nightly post I slept in until nearly eight o'clock this morning which was not all that bad but all day it left me feeling a bit off kilter because I missed out on the early morning 'stillness' that I am so fond of.
Not long after getting myself roused from bed I went down to the creek and decided to follow it upstream to a spot that I had looked at on the maps and deduced that there was more than likely a really good spring in it's vicinity where two creeks come together. It was way off this particular property but an adjacent neighbor doesn't mind the folks here hiking their property so I just stayed to their side of the creek as I trekked upstream. I did slip and just about had a bad accident on the way which gave me a fright because no one knew I was up that way alone and my cellular service is basically nonexistent so it was a good reminder to be careful.
Eventually I got to the spot I was looking for and although I think that same neighbor owns it I am unsure but low and behold there was actually a really big well established spring there within thirty odd feet of where I thought there might be one just from looking at the maps! I counted my steps on the way back from the spring site and to pipe it to the yard of the homestead proper would take roughly one thousand and fifty feet of irrigation tubing which isn't all that bad of a run and considering the elevation change it would create quite the decent amount of water pressure.
After my creek hike I met up with my hosts here and we got to talk a little about all sorts of interesting things that mostly revolved around fungus and flora. Eventually they informed me that they would like to hike around with me and see the progress that I have made so far around the place and talk about some of the stuff that both they and I have in mind for the place. They were both quite impressed by how much 'yard' I have carved out of the woods thus far and also liked my tactic of smothering out the poison ivy by using the lawnmower to mulch everything that I have been mowing.
The woods part of the property has a gentle slope to it that terminates at the creek and the upper half of that slope (where I am camping) has mostly been taken over by large white pine trees and doesn't have much else in the way of trees growing on it. The second (what I think of as the bottom half) of the slope has a really good variety of trees growing on it but they are entirely too densely packed together for a healthy woodland so for a good bit of our hike we discussed which types of trees to thin out and which types to keep to help make the woodland healthier and more conducive to mushroom farming which is what the folks' big goal is for the homestead here.
It was really nice just walking around with them and receiving gratitude and even praise for the the stuff that I have done around here over the last nine days and honestly that sort of sincere recognition and encouragement is highly valuable to me and makes me feel really good about having made the move to here.
After all that stuff I dove into working on exploring that potential spring that I mentioned yesterday that is near the creek and at such a low elevation compared to the yard that I would have to pump it uphill for irrigation purposes but not all that far so one of my twelve volt pumps would work well for that. I am still unsure if it is an artesian fissure from the creek itself or if it is coming out of the hill but the water looked pretty clear so I went ahead and excavated it back until massive roots and rocks blocked further progress. I then dug out a pool for the water to collect in below it before eventually doing a preliminary capture on it with a three inch pipe. I have yet to find any clay here (which is necessary for a good capture the way I like doing them) so I just sealed the pipe in with mud, silt, twigs, leaves and lots of small stones before adding larger stones over it all to inhibit erosion. It worked out rather well and I will have to keep an eye on it over the coming days to see how it holds up.
The spring work was really a bit taxing on me because there were a lot of heavy stones that I had to move around and pry up out of the muck to do what I was trying to do and although I attempted to run some irrigation tubing from the capture pipe to a point further downstream I gave up after a few failed attempts because it would require moving a lot more stones to get the transition in elevation right and I just didn't have it in me so I went and took a nice long nap.
The nap was quite refreshing but I awoke to getting chewed on by a bunch of noseeums and ugh it was such a wretched feeling that I instantly built a fire and stood in the smoke to get rid of them. They have been getting steadily worse here as the days pass but hopefully once I get more of the trees around here thinned out and hence get more sunshine in the wooded areas the noseeums will become less populace. Until then I just have to keep enduring them which mainly is just late in the afternoon towards the end of the day. For such a tiny critter they sure are annoying!
Well that is about it for now and hopefully the WiFi works well enough that I don't have to hike down out of the woods to post this.
I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 10. (TFC Burning Trash Wood, Clearing More Underbrush, Visiting Some Stores, Clearing A Flat Spot Near The Creek, Widening A Path To The Creek & More Pseudo Bush Hogging)
My sleep cycle is slowly getting back to my usual 'early to bed early to rise' routine and this morning I got up around seven and got to enjoy the tail end of the 'stillness' I am so fond of whilst sipping my espresso and mulling things over as I stared into an early morning camp fire.
Per usual I got started doing stuff not long after that and mainly just focused on giving the upper slope (where I have been hacking out a yard) a lot of attention hauling out more of that previously felled underbrush and adding the good stuff to my kindling pile and the trash (semi rotten) stuff to my camp fire for disposal/conversion into ashes. I made really good progress and am finally in the final stretch of getting all the previously felled saplings and sticks removed from the entire upper slope. The final stretch of that area left to clear has a bunch of larger pine logs in it so from here on out the progress will undoubtedly be a bit slower but I will hopefully finish that phase of things over the next few days.
The folks here were going out to some stores today in an adjacent town so I elected to go with them and basically spend the last of my funds on a couple of forty pound bags of dog food, a large can of coffee, some well ripened bananas, some cheap strawberry ice cream and a two liter bottle of root beer. Those last two items were absolute treat items as a reward for myself for all my recent accomplishments but I felt it well worth the four dollars they cost me.
While I was gone to the stores one of the folks here was nice enough to tend my fire and in doing so also got to hang out with my dogs which was really nice of them to do especially since I didn't want to waste my ashes by dowsing the fire with water and I never really like leaving my dogs alone.
Anyway once I got back from the supply run I set to work burning more of the brush and then did a bunch more pseudo bush hogging with the lawnmower which is always a bit of a challenge with all the rocks, changes in terrain and sapling stumps all over the place but I am slowly getting the hang of navigating the obstacle course it presents.
Once I was done 'mowing' the upper slope I went down to the the bottom half of the slope with the mower and quadrupled the width of the path that leads from the homestead proper to the first wading pool (where I recently cleared that path to the creek and installed that rail) and overall it came out really nice and I even mowed a good bit beyond the creek access path.
After all that I went and got the dogs and brought them to the creek and while they played in and around the water I used some loppers to clear out all the unwanted vegetation on another section of that flat spot near the creek that I worked on a few days ago when I curated that path to the creek and installed that rail. I was a bit saddened to find a lot of junk along the creek's shore but really it is just a lot of small stuff which has probably just accumulated there from being washed down the creek over the last many decades. I also found a string of really old barb wire running along the creek so I will need to go back to that area soon and clean all that stuff up and basically beautify the area.
Well it has been a long day but a very good one and I am thoroughly enjoying the new place and gradually making progress towards my fulfilling my goals here.
I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 11. (TFC Felling A Problematic Mimosa Tree, Removing The Last Of The Fallen Trees And Underbrush From The Property Line Trail & Getting A Guided Tour Of The Plants And Trees Growing In The Homestead Proper.)
I am incrementally waking up a little earlier each day and I was quite happy to wake up at six thirty this morning to the quiet stillness of the woods, build a small fire, brew some espresso and do a few stretches to limber myself up a bit for what I knew would be a long productive day.
Before I really even got started with doing stuff I first took care of some correspondences which lead me to walking around the edge of tihe woods a good bit trying to get a decent enough WiFi connection to hold a conversation and after climbing up and down a boulder several times to respond to some messages I finally had enough of all this 'hunting of the elusive WiFi' and started looking online for an affordable WiFi signal repeater which is something I should have had in my technology arsenal for years now but just never acquired.
When I went out to the stores yesterday I actually looked at several such devices but the prices seemed a bit extreme and fell well beyond my immediate budget which at the moment is actually no budget since the moving process basically consumed all my funds. So I decided I would make a mental note to try to find a cheap one online which I amazingly accomplished and found a pre-owned device that I saw yesterday at a store for seventy five dollars but found online for only twelve dollars. When I saw it I literally hit the 'buy now' button as fast as I could even though it won't arrive for another ten days or so. I think it used the last of my funds but I also think it was well worth it because I won't have to spend so much time trying to get a usable signal or having the frustration I have been having with making my posts each evening.
Anyway after all that I met up with the folks here to check in with them about a tree removal project that we had planned for the day which involved removing a rather large mimosa tree that was growing between two of the outbuildings here and was very problematic because the outbuildings are very close together and the forked tree with a large upper canopy expanding over both building roofs was leaning the wrong way to easily fell it without it landing on two different power lines one of which is attached directly to the leaning (and albeit dodgy) power pole that has the meter on it.
To say it was a tricky prospect is an understatement but thankfully the first fork was easy to persuade with some rope to fall where we wanted it to. The second much larger/heavier fork that was leaning at almost a forty five degree angle towards the power lines was much more problematic and required an anchor rope that we attached to a large dogwood after I did a relief cut with the chainsaw and then a second rope attached halfway down the first rope with a come-along attached to another dogwood with a tow rope that has two hooks on it. We had to recruit a third person to help with the cranking of the come-along as we kept tension on the first rope and after cranking all the cable in once on the come-along we had to re-tie the initial anchor rope, extend the come-along cable a second time and crank it again. We eventually got the tree leaning the way we wanted and I went and gave it a few whacks on the backside of it (opposite the relief cut) with my super sharp hatchet and it toppled over and fell safely atop the first fork we had initially felled. It was a slow process but we didn't hurry and did it all without much struggle involved.
Later in the day I cut up the tree into manageable sized pieces and even later still three folks here helped me haul all the pieces away and clean up all the mess. When we were cleaning up all the limbs I noticed that the tree was loaded with seedpods and not wanting to spread them around we piled all the branches with seedpods into an outdoor fire pit to burn later and raked up all the seedpods that had been knocked loose and added them to the fire pit as well. Those trees produce a heck of a lot of seed pods and after doing some research I found out that the seeds contain something called ginkotoxin and are poisonous to livestock and even some dogs. There are actually a lot of those invasive mimosa trees here and I am going to (with the help of the other folks) do my best to eradicate them from the property altogether.
Before the folks came to help me clean up the felled tree debris I went along the property line trail here that I have been slowly clearing for nearly my entire stay here and used the chainsaw to finally cut all the fallen trees out of the trail which made it much better for hiking along and also made it possible for me to get the rest of the underbrush cut out of the way and make the trail entirely more usable. I can also now use the lawnmower to widen the trail in several places and mow down the poison ivy that is growing in and along the trail which I am hoping to do tomorrow because I couldn't quite get to it today.
Just before dark me and a few of the folks here walked around the edge of the majority of the property and I got a rather detailed tour of the vegetation growing in the homestead proper. Much of that vegetation is stuff that the folks have been helping to propogate here and I am so glad that I got such a detailed tour because now if I see those plants/trees/shrubs/vines growing elsewhere on the property I know to just leave it alone. I am also glad that the homestead proper isn't really inside my realm of maintaining because I probably would have accidentally hacked down much of the vegetation the folks here have been doing there best to propagate and/or preserve.
I did of course do some other stuff today but per usual those are the highlights and the stuff that really stands out for me in my mind. I have been getting into the habit of visiting the creek with the dogs late in the day and just spending some relaxation time there with them which is really nice and something I want to keep doing as long as the weather permits it.
Well that is about it for now and I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 12. (TFC Cleaning Up The Last Of The Sticks On The Upper Slope, Collecting Fat Lighter For Rainy Day Firewood, Assessing The Structural Integrity Issues Of A 'Roof Over' That Was Done In The Distant Past, Felling A Mimosa Tree That Was Leaning Over A Solar Panel & Curating Another Path To The Creek.)
I awoke a little before the sun was up this morning and shortly after drinking my first cup of espresso I got an overwhelming hankering to have some strawberry ice cream mixed with my second cup so I hiked down out of the woods and got some damn strawberry ice cream to go in my favorite morning beverage and really started my day off right by treating myself. I could definitely get used to starting my day like that but I don't really enjoy the ensuing sugar crash that comes along with drinking that particular concoction first thing in the morning but dang it sure puts a gon my face as well as some pep in my step.
For most of the early part of the day I worked on getting the remainder of the sticks and the saplings (that were felled previous to my arrival here) all cleaned up from the upper slope and added the majority of them to my kindling pile. The entire slope more or less now has all the terrain revealed and is also ready to work in without a bunch of sticks being in the way for when we start felling some of the large trees that are not wanted here like several white pines, some poplars that are growing too close together and a few trees that are standing dead.
Getting all those trees out of the way is a really important step for me making further progress here because especially the large white pines are in places where I would like to build stuff or where they could potentially fall on stuff if I build near them. Mainly though the pines are making the soil entirely too acidic, blocking out a lot of early in the day sun and are not conducive to the mushroom farming that the folks here want to eventually do so for one reason (or all reasons) they just have to be felled.
Once I finished with all the stick collecting I decided to clean up the remains of a rather large yellow pine that was basically just a big pile of rotting wood that looked like it would make quite the nice snake habitat so I had the dogs sniff it out for snakes before I even began trying to sort through the mess. Fortunately the heart wood was all mostly intact and I wound up getting a nice small pile of fat lighter (lighter knot) out of it that I can burn if I ever want/need to have a fire in the rain or just want to use some as fire starter.
After all that I assisted the folks here and a fellow they have doing some work here on figuring out what is going on with a 'roof over' that was done to a structure previous to their ownership of the place. If you do not know the term 'roof over' it just means that a second roof was added over an existing roof. None of us knew how the second roof was actually constructed until some of the soffit and some of a gable end was removed so we could all give it a closer inspection. What lead us to doing that was that a corner of the roof appeared to have at some point peeled up some (from wind possibly) and we wanted to see how the second roof was anchored and what could be done to prevent any further damage from happening. Suffice it to say the prognosis of the structural integrity was not all that good but we were able to come up with some simple ways to address the problems we found and hopefully stop any further problems developing later. Although I could explain everything we found wrong I would rather just sum it up by saying that at least the builder of the second roof used good materials but they also used incredibly bad craftsmanship with no real concept of how structural engineering work.
Late in the afternoon I finally got that big mimosa tree that was leaning over my solar panel cut down and now I can stop worrying about the panel getting smashed and I won't have to go to it every few days and clean all the leaves off of it. I had someone help me in the actual felling process (to keep the tree from falling on the panel) by pulling on a rope while I cut the tree itself and it was all laying on the ground in short order and was a rather easy project. I still need to cut the tree into smaller pieces and put all the seed pod bearing branches in the fire pit to be burned but for now the tree is at least on the ground and not in the way of anything.
The last thing that I did today was working on another path to the creek that is not quite so steep and leads to a second nice wading pool. There was a bunch of barb wire in the way so I went ahead and took the time to coil it all up and just get it out of the way before I even started working on the path. The path itself came out rather well but about halfway down it there was a rock ledge that was a bit treacherous because the rocks were mostly loose and also the way they were positioned would make a convenient hiding place for snakes so I dismantled the rock ledge altogether and used the stones to line some of the path which made for a nice touch overall.
Well it was a productive day but I can barely keep my eyes open so I am just going to get some rest and get this all edited and posted first thing in the morning.
Day 13. (TFC Conversing With The Other Homesteaders Here, Bingeing On Loud Music, Erecting A Black Locust Sculpture & Capturing A High Volume Low Elevation Spring.)
I slept in until nearly eight o'clock this morning and whoa that little bit of extra rest was well worth it after all of yesterday's various activities left me falling asleep whilst trying to finish writing my evening post which I actually did but did not have the stamina to stave off sleep and get it posted. So first thing this morning I got the post all edited and posted during the time I usually use to just relax by the fire and think about my itinerary for the day as well as mull over whatever dreams I might have had. I really want to avoid missing my nightly posting like that again but sometimes exhaustion is just going to win no matter how much espresso I pour down my gullet.
After all the editing/posting was finished I went down to the homestead proper to get some strawberry ice cream for my second cup of espresso and got caught up talking with the folks there for quite a long time and per usual we had some excellent conversation which is something I have not had very much of over the last few years except when my friend would take me on my monthly supply runs. It is pretty strange having actual people around each day but at least it is folks whose company and communication that I thoroughly enjoy. It is also nice that the folks here are actively engaged with the various projects going on around here and make/take the time to listen to my input.
Anyway after that I took my big dog to the creek by herself just so she could cool down a little bit and I could take yet another look along the edges of the creek for potential spring sites and try to wrap my head around all the various elevation changes along the edge of the creek which I more or less am trying to work around so that I can run water lines down the bank of the creek and towards the homestead proper where the garden beds are.
Once I was done evaluating the potential spring sites and elevations I spent some time gathering up some sections of old irrigation tubing that were strewn along the creek bank by the previous owner of the place and getting them consolidated into a single pile at the edge of that big flat spot I have been clearing near the creek. Much of the irrigation tubing has been compromised by time and the elements but there are several sections that are still good and most of the fittings seem to be intact so I figure they come in handy for something eventually.
After that I retreated to my camp and started playing some loudish music and just sort of binging out listening to it and enjoying the day hanging out with the dogs. It is definitely nice not worrying about running out of electricity while listening to music and it is also nice just being able to walk around working on stuff with the music playing and not having to worry if my battery voltage has dropped too low for the inverter so that I have to constantly monitor it like I did at the last place. Just having the music be part of my 'surroundings'.without any sort of stress is fucking awesome.
At some point while listening to the music I realized that my camping area didn't really have any art in it so I installed one of my black locust sculptures at the trail-head that leads to the camp and I think it blends in very well where I placed it and it is also the first thing I see when coming into the camp along that particular trail.
After zoning out to the music I decided to attempt something that has been rattling around in my head for several days but since it was a bit of a big project and might or might not work I have continually been mulling it over and basically just being indecisive about attempting it. It also required me finding the right sort of spring along the creek, the right (or close enough to right) position of stones and elevation changes to actually work. So first I used a small piece of irrigation tubing with a short piece of pvc pipe n the end to see if I could not truly capture a spring but create a small pool near a spring head, position the pipe in the pool and then dig out a sloped channel below the spring to accommodate the short seven foot piece of irrigation tubing and see if it would create a decent flow of water which it did so I decided to go ahead and try my other much larger idea.
There is several sections of some two inch diameter schedule forty tubing here that was here when the folks moved in and although I haven't measured what all three pieces of it measure in length I am guessing there is around sixty feet of it. I took the longest of the three sections (maybe thirty feet) and drug it down to the creek where I had located what looks like a large spring under a rock at the edge of the creek in a sort of small cave that leads back into the bank of the creek itself at least three feet. Inside the little 'cave' it appears that the spring water mixes with a small amount of creek water so I did my best to dig out a small pool on the cave floor and then wedged that piece of two inch tubing into it and the rest of the tubing I ran along the bank to a point just below that other spring that I captured a few days ago and whoa did it work wonderfully well to move a high volume of water!
I then added a second section (maybe twenty feet) of the two inch tubing to the end of the first one then I added an adapter to the end of that tubing that reduces down to a one inch piece of irrigation tubing that is roughly twenty feet long and then added another adapter to the end of the one inch tubing that reduced the one inch tubing down to three quarter inch tubing. After lots of fiddling and trial and error I found a place where I could get the water to overcome the initial head with the volume/velocity/siphon effect and got the water about five feet above the original spring head. It was some tricky stuff to get that trick to work over such a short distance with very little elevation change but it worked out well and the place the water now comes out is an excellent place to install a barrel that has a twelve volt water pump in it (powered via solar) that can pump the water uphill the last ten feet and into the homestead proper's yard beside the garden beds. That phase of things I am hoping to accomplish over the coming days but I think the most difficult part of that process is already done which was just to get the water moving from a low elevation point (at the spring) to a higher one near the yard.
Well that is about it for now and I am going to wrap this up, do the inevitable editing and get it and all the pictures posted. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Day 14. (TFC Giving Construction/Maintenance Advice, Setting Up A WiFi Repeater, Doing Some Linux Updates, Building A Water Intake Screen, Hauling A Big Rock For A Bonsai Yard Feature, Working On My Recent Irrigation Water Project & A Single Lonely Barking Coyote.)
I woke up several times very early this morning but it took me until the third time before I actually got up and started my day because I was feeling just too damn cozy snuggled up to the dogs under the blanket and even after that I more or less just stayed in my pajamas for several hours and made a very gradual start with my work day.
The fellow that has been doing construction maintenance on pretty much all of the buildings in the homestead proper showed up rather early and although he is an excellent carpenter some of the stuff he has been doing lately to fix the 'roof over' that I mentioned a few days ago is just a little beyond his area of experience so I have been giving him some advice about it all and this morning was no exception to that. I don't mind at all because it sure is nice having someone willing to do things right and taking the time to learn the necessary techniques to do so. I am glad that I don't have to overly concern myself with that particular project because going up and down a ladder all day and working in the blistering sun is definitely not as fun for me as it once was.
Early in the day that WiFi repeater (range extender) that I ordered came in the mail which is awesome because supposedly it was not scheduled to arrive until about eight days from now. It was a bit tedious to get it setup via the WPS function on both it and the wireless router but after five tries and repeatedly consulting both device manuals I finally got them talking to each other and got the repeater functioning properly. I installed it in one of the sheds in the rear yard of the homestead proper and wow did it absolutely make a massive difference in my WiFi connectivity in the woods. I have yet to test my netbook with it from the tent but considering how strong the signal is on my phone I think that it will work just fine and make my life much easier at least as far as internet connectivity goes.
While I was in the technology headspace I went ahead and did some updates on a Linux laptop here and got all the kinks ironed out on it so perhaps now the folks that use it can stream videos a little better and even use their preferred web browser and search engine.
After that one of the folks here that has been working on creating some bonsai trees wanted to retrieve a particular big rock from the creek for a yard feature that would have one of the bonsai trees upon it so me and another person went with them and retrieved the rock. While we were at the creek I got to show off my recent water projects which was pretty fun and after the other folks collected some white quartz we got the big rock and hiked back to the homestead proper with it.
After lots of head scratching and scavenging around I found all the necessary parts to create an intake screen to put on that two inch piece of tubing that I installed yesterday to create enough flow to get the water partially uphill towards the homestead proper's yard for irrigation use. The screen is meant to stop debris and wildlife from getting sucked into the tubing and with the volume of water I am working with on that system it creates a lot of suction so a screen is rather important. I wound up stepping down the two inch tubing to a one and a half inch piece of pvc that I (and a helper) cut lots of lateral slats in, wrapped it in hardware cloth (eighth inch mesh metal screen), a smaller window screen material wrapped around that and a cap put on the end of the piece of pvc. It is actually a pretty good and rather simple design but when me and a different helper installed it the output of the water from the two inch tubing dropped to about a quarter of the previous output which unfortunately was not enough volume to create the velocity/siphon effect that is required to get the water at the output to overcome the initial head. So we pulled up the intake end, dismantled the screen/filter and cut several large holes in the pvc before re-assembling the screen/filter and trying again. The volume of water did increase slightly after that but it was still not enough to create the required velocity/siphon effect so basically it is 'back to the drawing board' with that particular project. I don't think that it will actually ever work with that piece of one and a half inch pvc pipe at the end because it constricts the available intake by a half inch right from the beginning.
Just as we were finishing the water project (more like abandoning it for the day) all the dogs here were barking (there are two other dogs besides my own) and mine in particular were losing their shit over something nearby in the woods. I couldn't really hear what was going on with the dogs while I was working near the creek (because it is down in a gully) but as I got closer I heard another dog barking off in the woods behind my camp. It wasn't until I let my dogs out of the dog yard that I realized that I knew that sort of particular bark and it was a coyote bark but by then it was too late and all the dogs were hauling ass after it. I caught my big dog pretty quick and another dog returned rather quickly after the coyote was well away from the property but two of the dogs chased the dog really far off into the woods and did not return for almost thirty minutes. The coyote was apparently alone and after all the dogs were back in the dog yard it actually returned and after barking for a short period of time it ran off and didn't return. I still haven't figured out what the heck it was up to but all I can figure is that it either got separated or kicked out of it's pack and was wandering around alone.
Anyway it was quite the momentous day and I am fucking stoked that I actually have a truly usable WiFi signal to work with now!
I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
@jacobpeacock I am glad to see you writing about your days on here, I did not read it all but will come back to read the rest. that is a nice railing going down to the creek, you could make steps and put flat rocks on them, just a thought. The noseeums might be going in your tent to be in the shade, if they are like mosquitos, you know how they like to get under leaves when it is hot out. By your writing I can tell being around good people is pleasing to you.
You've been visited by @minismallholding from Homesteaders Co-op.
Another busy week, by the look of it! I’ve featured your post in the Homesteaders – Living Naturally newsletter.
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Hello @jacobpeacock, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!