The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 386)

in #homesteading4 years ago

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.

[End Introduction]

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 386!

Making More Ashes, Laying More Pavers & Researching Air Rifles

It was a bit of a chilly morning and even though it was rather sunny not much of the sunlight makes it down through the thick foliage which means it stays rather cool out even after the sun is up over the horizon. All of that will assuredly change soon as the leaves begin to turn colors and start dropping from the trees but for now it makes for a slow start to my morning where I basically sip my espresso really slowly and skim through stuff online to see if any other wacky stuff has occurred while I was resting. In that regard I am seldom disappointed because it seems like each day things just get weirder and the news articles (and stuff that folks post) get more outrageous, alarming or just sort of more surreal. One benefit to much of my life having been turmoil and chaos is that not much really phases me anymore and although I never thought that I would be happy for all of that (and what it did to me) I sure as hell do not regret it at this point in things.

After doing my usual morning chores I was at a bit of a loss as to what to work on so I decided to gather some firewood, make a fire and produce more ashes because that is something that pretty much always needs doing anyway. During that time I kept trying to think of what I wanted to work on and honestly every project that came to mind seemed like something that I really was just not in the mood to work on or I lacked one or two essential materials to complete... and I was equally not feeling all that inspired to start fabricating stuff or being ingenuitive. Inspiration has been a pretty damn fickle thing of late and lacking any sort of quality muse damn sure does not help.

It was not until the afternoon that I decided to just gather more flat stones from the woods and work on my recent paver project. I actually spent a heck of a lot of time gathering stones and had quite the pile of them before I started embedding them in the ground below where I stopped adding them to that walkway yesterday. I not only gathered a lot of them but I gathered a wide variety of shapes and sizes because I noticed that the more variety I have to work with the easier it is to fit the mismatched stones together in a way that minimizes frustration and maximizes productivity. I only added about two more meters to the walkway and since the ground was mostly level where I was working things went rather smoothly. I really like how it has come out so far and I guess that I should try to continue that particular walkway all the way to the chicken coop just so that I minimize my chances of slipping while walking to it this winter.

Anyway, I stopped working a few hours before dark and cooked a big meal of eggs and sausage and made a real effort to eat as much of it as possible but I still have enough left over to make for a nice lunch tomorrow. Of late I have been more or less just snacking a lot and not so much eating any actual meals. Like I was saying the other day sometimes I do not eat until late at night and although I am definitely eating enough food to get by on I have noticed that I am sort of stretching it out and getting into the habit of hyper-rationing things again which is a good discipline to have and all but in this instance I am preparing myself for perhaps having to do some extensive rationing over the winter months and perhaps even longer if things go truly sideways in this country.

As far as things going sideways goes I have been looking at air rifles a lot and not the chintzy kid ones but the ones that do a thousand feet per second or more and are suitable for hunting small game. I do not actually plan on doing any hunting with one or anything but I sure would give the mice and rats around here hell. I also just sort of like the idea of having one to put in my survival kit in case I ever do find myself in a situation where food is scarce and I would be forced to hunt to feed the dogs or myself with small game. I think the thing that I like most about the pellet rifles is that fabricating pellets would be pretty damn easy and the rifle itself is super quiet. It is totally a luxury item and I doubt that I will get one but damn air guns have come a long way since I was a kid!

Well, it is late here and I better wrap this up and get to doing the unavoidable editing and posting. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

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The quality control officer inspecting my work on the walkway!

Thanks for reading!

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.

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That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!

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