Hello Everyone!
# <center>Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 432!</center>
**A peculiar dream, A mellow meadow, To duck or not to duck, Keeping the bore hole clean, Water systems & A hard freeze!**
I was up pretty late once again last night but this time it was more from a general restlessness which was exasperated by my boy dog being restless also. He has actually been like that for most of the week ever since the last full moon which was (I think) three days ago. Eventually I reached a point where I gave up on trying to fall asleep, got back up and ate a bunch of food just so that I would get sleepy. Given that I seldom eat much that late at night it worked rather well and I was fast asleep in short order but by then it was nigh on three in the morning!
Once I was actually asleep I started having this incredible dream that although I will gloss over many of the details I do want to layout the part of it that kept replaying in my mind all day. In this dream there was this massive complex of buildings that were somehow also a single building and although they had many exits there was only a single entrance. Just inside that entrance was a small room and it had two exits minus the main entrance which technically could be counted as an exit also but that is beside the point.
The exit to the left lead into a kind of domestic area where supplies, furniture and stuff like that were located and generally it had a very homey feel to it. The other exit directly opposite the main entrance (it could be said that it was located at the 'center' of the room) lead into this entirely 'wild' (very non-domestic) area where lets just say 'anything could happen' given that there were others located there occupying the space as well and most of them were either menacing, hostile or both. Now that I am spelling it out I guess its safe to say that the two areas were almost polar opposites as far as environments go.
I will try to spell this next bit out as best I can because it is the part that really nags at me. I also want to say that the whole dream had a familiar feel to it and yes I have dreamed of that place or a similar place before and sort of 'knew my way' around it. So, at one point in the dream (pretty far along in it actually) I was in that entry room just as some folks that I know entered from the main entrance and one of them was not in the best of shape. At the time of their entrance I was more or less sprawled out on the floor bleeding out after a series of unfortunate events moments before. They were in extreme distress but visibly 'shook it off' as they saw what was going on with me.
Meanwhile I had momentarily forgotten about my own predicament and reached out towards them to hug them and more or less lend comfort. Long story short here because all that is just the summation of the scenario and not the part that has nagged at me. We were both quite surprised to see each other and it had been a very long time since we had last seen each other and there was this (since it was a dream) very palpable emotional exchange of relief, kindness, empathy, concern and a slew of other very (fucking albeit) 'wholesome' emotions. It was like seeing an old friend that also happened to be a family member and yet they were also a totally familiar stranger. It was odd and awesome but I lack the words to truly describe the 'feeling' of it all so suffice it to say there was a very strong comradery.
Not long after our exchange began there was this moment in our conversation where everything lulled and they had just said something akin to '... and then I found you here in this dream' and all of a sudden I had this 'aha' moment and immediately quit bleeding out, said something like 'oh yeah I am dreaming too' and stood up in this mildly awkward tangle with the other person where we were both sort of wobbly and holding each other up. To be clear they had not been in the best of shape upon there arrival either and we were both beleaguered and there was a horde of other people around, as well as events that I just will not detail here given how much of a rabbit warren it would become.
Right as we both got untangled and we could both stand on our own, I walked a bit towards the center of the small room and then turned back to face my friend and in that moment I went fully lucid, laughed and began to explain to them that if I were to step away from where I was standing the lucidity would fade... or to put it more aptly it would be an 'option' that was available but if I walked towards either of the exits it would grow stronger. I then demonstrated this by walking around the room a bit and sort of describing what I could recall of what lay beyond either exit as far as their environs, denizens and whatever strategies I knew for dealing with it all. In hindsight it was a lot like explaining a video game and giving someone a brief tutorial on basic survival but I also made it clear there were plenty of areas that I was either bad at navigating or knew nothing (or very little) about.
Obviously this dream had a lot going on in it and I dunno why it has nagged at me all day to the point where I had to word it out but there you have it. As far as dreams go it was actually all quite soothing and not nearly as painful nor hectic as it might sound. In other words I got some of the best rest that I have had in quite some time now and six hours later I woke up feeling much better about damn near everything even though the weather had taken an even further shift downhill and it was steadily raining ice cold rain often sideways from all the super frigid wind! I mean it is the worst weather day we have had so far and I was like 'meh everything is fine' and just brewed my espresso and zoned out reading and watching the bizarre news cycle.
All in all I came to some kind of significant understanding that foul weather or not, being cooped up all winter or not, watching the world undulate under the strain of the times, or not... that everything as it is around me is actually 'fine' and that of all the peculiar times that I may find myself in I am okay with being in this one doing what I am doing and not really making it harder on myself than need be. You would think that I would have learned that lesson by now and (although for the most part I have) there is still a tendency to get mired in my own thinking to the point where I have to remind myself that: When you live alone and isolated out on the edge of things you have to not believe your own bullshit. The disastrous results always become rather obvious even though the phrase 'its a crooked game... but its the only game in town' often comes to mind to sort of validate it and dose it all with humor which seems to be an effective antidote. Well, perhaps the only antidote besides not doing it to start with.
Anyway, early in the afternoon during a lull in the by then nearly sleeting rain, I hiked around and took the water system down and made sure all the pipes, hoses and such were well drained. The way that system is setup works out rather well and the entire network which spreads over (I am estimating) fifteen hundred meters of pipe, tubing and hose does not take long to drain. Which is a good bit of coverage given the sprawl they cover on the property supplying water to various sites. It was all by design and as long as the well pump gets shut off it will gravity drain the entire network in minutes. The reverse is also true and re-energizing it takes about the same amount of time and all the air gets pushed out at about twice the time that the filling of the system takes. I would have to time its actual fill and drain rates but including hiking it takes about twenty minutes which is not bad at all for that size system and its a pretty short stint of hiking even in bad weather.
Tonight the temperatures are going to truly plunge and it is looking like I have about a solid week of cold weather to bear through and just sort of hunker down indoors and make the most of it. Mainly, I need to get the loft sorted out and resign myself to building some shelving in there and perhaps a few closets and trunks so I can have some dust free storage. As far as the dust goes its been pretty brutal given the lack of grass in the dog yard, the occasional high winds blowing sand off the roads and the general grit of living in the bush. Some of it is preventable (at least in the attic space) if I cover the attic vents with air-conditioner filters and add some screen to the vents on the lower eve. There is a lot I can do so we will see what happens. For now its just good ideas to occupy myself with doing if I can ever peel myself away from the computer.
I try to make good use of my time and lately I have been trying to engage more with others (another lesson not fully learned) and its always hit or miss if I get some notification and then cringe at it but I was the one that had initiated said engagement! Its tiresome honestly and I have to be honest with myself and admit its because I may well be overwhelmed by everything else that yeah is not creating a 'notification' for me. Most of the time of late I get so fixated on a single aspect of something (say for example bolstering the wildlife) that I really delve into exploring the possibilities. Often this gets me into researching stuff or engrossed in these complex thought processes along the lines of how one thing relates to another.
As an example, I keep thinking of importing ducks into the meadow. Which would obviously draw more snakes and other critters (and pests) because they lay eggs in ground nests and well whats a good solution to that... importing geese to deal with the snakes and whoa then bigger eggs and a bigger fowl that will attract even larger predators and (in this thought experiment) the coyotes and raccoons move in and from there its all a frigging mess. Easier to put the ducks in a well built outdoor enclosure where they have everything they need and plenty of room to do their thing. If they have enough room they would do pretty well and it is not entirely a bad thing if snakes are drawn to a specific place in the meadow where by the way they already live.
There are so many frogs and other stuff in that place year round that it makes for a rather active wetland and provides for plenty of lifeforms so I really want to maximize that and see what happens. Hence digging those experimental watering holes and generally doing my best to understand the entire area and how it all relates to the larger property and its ecosystem and watershed. When learning about the meadow and thinking of making changes I keep reminding myself that it is an active habitat and I am already making an effect just by walking around in it. Which by the way is why I only take a single dog there and even then they stay on task and do not disturb anything except what I point them on to investigate for me for vermin, snakes or other critters.
All in all I just keep it as low impact as possible and before I ever took a shovel to anything in the meadow I had watched it for well over a year to gain as much understanding as I could. For an area like that I would say watching it for three or four years would provide a lot more 'fine tuned' understanding of it but given how disturbed the land has been over time with it being basically a yellow pine timber plot for nigh on fifty years... there is not anything that I can do to it that has not already been done to it. All I can do at this point is do my best to help the little meadow out and harness as much of its potential as I can to benefit the entire scenario.
Heck, I have even been eyeing the meadow for growing rice in just to see if it will yield a crop or not. As far as aquatic vegetation goes there may be more options but I would really need to do some research and see if there are any native plants that might be close to what I am looking for as far as a low maintenance food crop goes. It would also require that I build some berms to create some circle, square or rectangle areas that I can line with that white clay so I have better control over the water levels and irrigation cycles. These are the kinds of rabbit warrens my mind gets fixated on and most of the time I would rather actually be working on them.
I never mentioned it but a few nights back I had this nearly overpowering urge to take the trenching shovel, hike to the meadow and dig up as much of that white clay as I possibly could all the way until the sun came up if that is what it took to get on a good vein of water there and yield an actual spring head or subterranean pool or heck even a solid seep as long as it was 'moving' water. On a different night I had a similar compulsion to do it with the post-hole diggers and dig a bore hole as far down as I could go! The funny thing is on that (very warm full moon night) I did not want to go through the hassle of cleaning and sterilizing all the tools because if I create a bore hole and then contaminate it I have totally ruined the whole point of doing it in the first place if its going to be useful for human consumption. Basically when creating a 'clean bore hole' or uncovering a spring head its vital to not contaminate the site. To accomplish that I would also have had to drain the existing watering hole and whoa stuff starts getting a bit too much just as far as prep work goes!
Well, I have rambled on enough for one evening but I wanted to note that since the other day when I went on that supply run and there was hardly any fruit in the store my buddy brought me out a big bag of all the things I had been looking for when I was shopping! It was a really nice surprise and while I stood there shooting the proverbial 'shit' with them I ate almost and entire large bag of red grapes. Alright, I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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<center>*It was a chilly, overcast one outside today!*</center>
<center>**Thanks for reading!**</center>
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<center>**That Is All For Now!**</center>
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