Hello Everyone!
A brief introduction: Hi I am Jacob.
TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.
The Fantastica Chronicles Day 377!
Creating A Rain Harvesting System, Assessing My Survivability And Self-Sufficiency & Having A Productive Day
I made it most of the way into the afternoon before taking a nap which was pretty nice considering that I got up at three thirty in the morning and immediately got busy doing stuff. It was a little before dawn by the time that I finished writing and got everything posted and since the sun was not up yet and I was feeling a bit inspired to do so I merged two videos into a single video about spring water capture and a simple holding tank and got it posted and shared. After that I finally got one of those mixtape tracks that I made last week posted and uploaded so that it can be streamed and/or downloaded. It was in all the most productive that I have been in the wee hours of the morning in quite some time. Usually when that sort of 'burst' of productivity occurs for me I feel rather manic but today I just felt serene and found myself enjoying the entire process.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about my water situation here and how yeah it is nice that I have a few springs tapped near the creek and have been gradually developing those spring sites over the last year and that I have also done plenty of gravity fed water system elevation tests... really none of that actually gives me usable water and especially useful water at the shelter site. The springs as they are make for good backup water supplies and hauling water up from the creek by hand is always an option but having done that kind of rigmarole before with hauling and sterilizing water I know that it is good to avoid it if at all possible.
My current potable water system at the shelter site is one that I created by running nearly one hundred meters of irrigation tubing from the homestead proper to the shelter area where it terminates at a valve and water hose hookup. Although this has worked fantastically and the water is very clean and often ice cold it also comes from a well and the well's pump is grid powered which means that without grid electricity there is no way to pump the water up from the well. In the previous ten days the grid power has flickered or gone out altogether here more times than in the previous year combined and each time it has done that I have to wonder if it will eventually go off and not come back on.
All that said, I keep thinking about how to improve my water scenario so today I finally retrieved a PVC gutter from the homestead proper that one of the folks there said that I could use some time ago and after cleaning a bunch of dirt and debris out of it I hauled it to my greenhouse. When I first built the greenhouse part of my plan was to harvest water off of it by installing one or more gutters on the low side of it where the water sheds into the raised garden beds. The PVC gutter was actually pretty perfect for the task and I had even thoughtfully set myself up for its installation when I was originally building the shelter by leaving just enough greenhouse plastic to lap over the edge of the gutter and more or less have a flap that insures that the water all flows into the trough of the gutter. On the lowest end of the gutter (where the water will exit) I used a plastic jug to create a temporary downspout that then feeds the water into a short piece of corrugated drainage pipe that will evacuate the water into the garden bed. Eventually I am thinking to cap the end of the gutter and affix some irrigation tubing fittings to the end cap that I can then attach irrigation tubing to that can fill some water tanks or barrels set slightly downhill.
Considering that at one point a few years ago I was harvesting all my drinking water off the rusty roof of an old shack in a region near a paper mill nonetheless and lived through it I think that if I wind up having to drink water collected from a greenhouse plastic roof that is going into a PVC gutter then I will be just fine. I also will not have to filter out a bunch of rust which is always a good thing! I think that my biggest problem with the new rain water harvesting setup is going to be keeping the leaves out of the gutter itself and thus avoiding a high tanen content in the water which is not so good for humans and can be very bad for dogs.
For now I am just going to let the rain wash the gutter clean and once it gets fully clean I am thinking to scrub it out with some bleach water and then cover the top of the gutter with either screen, hardware cloth or even just some chicken wire or wire mesh to keep the larger debris out of the gutter and whatever holding tank(s) that I wind up using on that setup. For now just having a way to harvest water is frigging awesome and it even rained pretty good just after dark today so in the morning I will get to see how well the new system worked.
On a different note, the last several days I have been thinking a lot about my scenario and what all I can do with the stuff that I already have to become more self-sufficient and just how long I could maybe last in a grid down pseudo-apocalyptic situation. Those kinds of thoughts are nothing new to me for sure and I have more or less had them in one way or another my entire life and hell my whole lifestyle has been built around the idea of self-sufficiency for quite some time but now I have to ask myself if what is going on in the world (and especially here in the US) what I have been preparing for my whole life and just how damn prepared I really am for a potential societal breakdown/disruption on a scale never before seen in this country.
Keep in mind that I am rather hardy and amply skilled and have actually lived for many years in one more-or-less 'third world scenario' or another as far as resources and accommodations go so in other words the life I have lived has not been a big 'what if' and in fact has been very hands on and up close and personal so to speak... and I am asking myself not 'can I make it through' what potentially lies ahead but 'how long' can I make it based on my practical and direct experiences. I could undoubtedly 'survive' but like I am fond of saying 'If you are going to live like this then survival better already be a fucking habit' and 'surviving' and quality of life seldomly go hand in hand. What I want to do is actually prosper in the face of adversity and in doing so help as many folks (and other living things) along the way as I can either directly or indirectly. As much as that sounds like a lofty goal especially in a pseudo or even a full-blown apocalyptic scenario I think that given what I know, the skills at my disposal, the gear that I have and my current location/scenario it is absolutely possible especially if I can spend the next few months just hammering away at setting some stuff up and really dialing my own scenario in.
I have never been much of a prepper or anything but growing up where there was always the potential for hurricanes I got used to having a few kits that I could grab and go with in case I had to evacuate and/or live in the aftermath of such a natural disaster and that combined with growing up camping, hunting and fishing a lot sure gave me a good idea of what I actually need to have on hand to sort of 'smooth out' the ripples of 'living in the rough' as I like to call it. To this day I still keep such kits packed and they basically come down to one minimal kit that I can wear on my waist, one I can wear on my back and one that I can carry and given how much time I have depends on how many of the kits I can take with me but they all would work individually as well. I also like having an 'extra' kit that is just a sleeping bag, a towel, extra socks, a t-shirt, a sweater and a blanket which I think of as my bedding kit but I view it as a luxury kit and not so much a kit that is necessary.
Having spent many decades using, supplying, re-supplying, re-packing and generally having said kits I have a really good idea of their contents and what I really need when it comes down to the proverbial 'brass tacks' so to speak. I think that having such kits (or even just one) is kind of important at this juncture of things and hopefully in my current scenario the need to use them will never arise but that does not mean that I do not gain an immense amount of comfort, relief and just plan old peace of mind knowing that I have them if the need arises.
Well, I have rambled on enough for one evening and I better get to working on the editing and posting so that I can unwind for the evening, get some rest and do more stuff tomorrow! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
More about me: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.
A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!
The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.
I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.
The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
https://peakd.com/hive/@jacobpeacock/hive-survival-guide-sixth-edition
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 24/32)
Thanks for that! 🤠