Hello Everyone!

Apocalyptic Homesteading Day 433-434!

More hard freezes, Charging batteries, A greenhouse for the tub, Changing writing habits & Thoughts on making dogfood!

I was so warm and cozy during the night that if I did not see all the ice I would have not believed the weather was that foul (nor cold) outside. The little cabin did awesome during the first real hard freeze and I had a difficult time waking up again after letting the dogs do their morning routine. I woke up another two times between then and noon and did the same thing in a near zombie state! I guess that I really needed the deep sleep and once again eating a bunch of food late at night may have had something to do with it.

It is worth noting that throughout the evening when the storm was at its worst I kept sweeping the ice off the little porch in an effort to keep it from solidifying and this morning I was stoked to see that my efforts were worth it. Everything outside had a pretty thick coat of ice on it and the ground itself had a thick layer of frost in most places. By late afternoon the sun was shining brightly and all of it had melted away and yup I failed to get any pictures even though I had made a mental note to do it upon waking. There was also a small window when I could have brought the water system back online but since it is just going to freeze again I chose to leave it off instead of having to drain it all yet again afterwards. I have plenty of water on hand so having the main system operational or not is not all that big of a deal.

On a different note, with the incoming hard freeze last night I went ahead and put a charge on my main twelve volt battery in the solar shack just so that it would not get damaged. I had actually had that solar rig offline (ever since I noticed the vermin activity) so not only that battery but the other batteries needed a charge also. When I got up and about today I went ahead and reconnected all the solar stuff and put a charge on as many batteries as I could since more cold weather is on the way. I have basically been charging pretty much everything that I can and attempting to be mindful of keeping all the batteries topped off just in case the grid goes down.

Well, as far as days go it was not a total flop of non-productivity because I did do a bit of writing on that story. My goal is to add a little to it each day and see if I can get back into the swing of writing fiction. Having written earlier in the day I kept putting off working on this entry tonight and almost convinced myself to put it off entirely.

The only other thing that I did today was sort through my eXode collection and watch some science-fiction movies. I also had a bunch of computer stuff to take care of to fix a few bugs that I had created when I was fiddling with that game a few months back. Now things seem to be doing much better so I guess the wee bit of 'housekeeping' in that department was worth all the time that I put into it. Its not like I was going to be going outside in the cold anyway and doing something techie was a soothing endeavor to say the least.

Alright, it is now the morning of the following day and I failed to finish this entry yesterday because I fell asleep before I could type any further on it. At first I told myself that I was going to just take a wee nap but after waking up and staring blearily at the monitor I let myself drift back off to sleep instead. This morning I keep thinking how doing the writing at night like that and more often than not battling fatigue to do it might be a big part of why I have not been able to fall asleep early and wake up early the next morning. I am thinking to go back to either writing first thing in the morning or writing some at night (like I did yesterday) and then doing the editing when I wake the following day. We will see what works out but one way or another I have to stop the cycle of being up late and sleeping in.

This morning I awoke not all that long after the sun was up and once again everything had some frost on it. Although it was not as thick as it was the day before (nor is there any ice) its still the result of another hard freeze and yup the chickens once again remained in their coop later than usual. These super cold mornings are the only thing that I have seen that will make them suspend their morning foraging and remain roosting in the coop which is really saying something given how voracious they tend to be.

Lately I have been considering either letting the chickens roam outside the dog yard or building a compost that they can forage in within the dog yard. Since they have picked (and scratched) the dog yard bare over the last few months I have to do something even if it is just fencing off a portion of the dog yard just for them and perhaps putting a compost for them to forage from inside said fenced area. As much as I like having things setup the way that I do where the dogs can access the area around the coop to help thwart predators (or just scare them off by leaving their scent around the coop) there has to be a better way.

While I do have plenty of room to make 'chicken runs' (wire mesh tunnels) I really do not want anything like that stretching across the dog yard because it would undoubtedly get in the way not just for me walking around but for the dogs doing their running around the yard itself. One way or another I have to find a better solution and although I know that the best solution is to re-locate their coop to outside the dog yard I am hesitant to do that because to do it right I would need more of that strong kennel fencing and I would need to build another strong gate if I utilize one of the existing gates and two new gates if I do not. I am just unsure if it is really worth doing all of that given I would have to build a new coop as well.

On a different topic, my bathtub being outdoors where it is often makes it unpleasant to bathe in during the winter and that has been bugging me a lot lately so after lots of consideration I purchased a small pre-fabricated greenhouse that hopefully will arrive in the next week or two. As far as cheap greenhouses go it did not seem like all that bad of a deal at around fifty dollars USD. If it does not work out well for the tub I am going to set it up in the dog yard and seed the floor of it with grass seed (to help get it started in a spot where the dogs and chickens cannot disturb it. It also has multiple shelves inside of it so I am thinking that I can perhaps grow some lettuce or other food plants inside it also.

There were a lot of different types of those small greenhouses but I went with one that has a shed style roof so that I only have to worry about the rain water running off one side of it instead of both which will make managing the runoff much easier. In the long run I might (if the greenhouse is not total trash) get three more of them and arrange them in a square with all the doors facing in. Basically I would have four enclosed areas and one large open area in the center of the four greenhouses which would assuredly give me plenty of protected area to get the grass growing in the dog yard. The only real downside to that setup is that I would have to cut an exterior doorway into one of them which would be pretty easy with a few of those adhesive backed zippers like the ones that I used on the solar shack door.

It is a little after ten-thirty now and it still has not warmed up very much outside even though it is quite sunny. I doubt that I will get out and do anything besides my usual chores today but if it does get warm I am feeling inclined to go check out those watering-holes that I dug in the meadow and perhaps doing a bit of hiking just to stretch my legs a bit. I am tempted to bring the water system back online too but since it is going to freeze again this evening I will probably just leave it offline like I did yesterday. There is no real advantage to bringing it online except to get a hot bath but whoa the wind is frigid and blowing strongly so I cannot see it being a pleasant experience given the current weather conditions.

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot lately about what else that I can do to insulate my life against the seemingly sporadic availability of goods. Unfortunately said availability does extend beyond just food but for now I mainly want to stay focused on the food aspect of things. Like I have said numerous times before hoarding a bunch of food requires a heck of a lot of space (and finances) and I am way more inclined to look at growing stuff (or having the ability to grow stuff) instead.

With that in mind I think that I am going to make a big order of seeds from online instead of just grabbing whatever seeds that I can find at a store like I usually do every spring. Hopefully doing it that way will not just give me more variety but will also prove to be less expensive. I have a feeling that there will be a crunch on seeds over the coming months as this hemisphere moves into springtime so I am planning on doing the seed ordering soon just in case that intuition turns out to be correct.

Another big thing that I have been considering is making dog food and growing cauliflower, flax, soybeans and similar types of stuff that can be processed down into a healthy mix for the dogs. One of the reasons that I want more chickens is so that I can potentially get more eggs and use them in the mix as well. It is worth noting that just with an abundance of eggs I could probably make some decent dogfood with some off the shelf products from a store but I really want to reach a point where I can rely less on the stores.

Even if the dogfood is a temporary backup/replacement/supplement for their current food it would give me some peace of mind in that regard. Once again it all comes down to storing the dogfood securely which I may have found a good solution for by making lots of small bags of homemade dog food and then freezing them for later use. More than likely I will land on some combination of buying pre-made food, growing ingredients and making their food from scratch. I swear I worry more about their future food supply (given a total supply chain breakdown) than I do about my own. Honestly, if things get that bad I am going to catch some of these rats around here and start breeding them as a reliable meat supply and try not to overthink it too much!

Admittedly most of my concerns for the future of late center around both the food and water scenario and how to shift as much of my reliance (for food) upon stores to self-reliance. Having in the past, gone for long periods with scarcity in both those departments it is not pure speculation on my part of what it takes to accommodate those things and by now I have a really good idea of what works and what does not. It is worth noting that in my experience relying on foraging alone is pretty tricky given how many calories get burned off in the foraging process and aside from a few good mushroom harvests it almost always amounted to more effort than actual reward.

Of course, different geographies and flora are going to yield different results but overall (in the places that I have lived) it is just not a feasible model to do more than simply 'survive' off of. To be productive and keep making a scenario better it takes having a large enough nutrient/calorie intake and 'just surviving' is not sufficient enough for that as far as I am concerned. Hence, I always plant potatoes and leave them in the ground so that I will never hit a point where I am absolutely out of food or lacking a way to produce more. Given a healthy supply of potatoes, my current chickens' eggs and the ability to forage just a few things (like those jelly roll mushrooms and cactus fruit) I could probably get by for quite some time but once again my experiences tell me that having more variety sure helps even if its just for flavor purposes!

Okay, I have rambled on enough for now and am going to call this entry good enough and get to doing the editing. As a side note hopefully now that I am going to be writing during the mornings I will catch more of the typos than when I was doing the writing and editing at night when I am more often than not feeling fatigued and generally 'over' the day. We will see how all that jazz works out but hopefully it will also help me get my sleep cycle fully back on track again as well! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.