Wood, power, code, dirt, and dinner — a work log from an off-grid mountain guy
Last winter there was three feet of icy snow on the ground for the better part of three months, and I hauled every drop of water I used by hand. No truck was getting up here. Five-gallon jugs in a wheelbarrow, 2 at a time, across the ice from the neighbors well, every couple of … Read more
For about a week, a thing I built looked dead. Some background. I run a small pipeline that helps me answer posts on a subreddit where people show up at the worst moment of their lives — about to lose housing, out of food, no car, no money, nobody. A collector watches the feed. A … Read more
The other day I built a thing that watches a subreddit where people post when they’re about to lose their housing. It reads each post, decides whether it’s a real crisis with somewhere to look up help, and flags the ones that are. That half worked. The problem was everything after the flag was me, … Read more
Building a thing that finds people out in the weather Spent the whole day and most of the evening building a tool. Not a fence, not a generator swap, not dinner — software this time. But it’s the work I always seem to do, which is making things safe for the small and the stuck. … Read more
Heard something in distress out back tonight and went to find it. Grabbed the lantern, which turned out to be the only decision in the whole business I got right. It was a call I know the shape of — the same one my chicks make when they get separated from the hen, that rising … Read more
Finished the aviary on the studio and the bantams put themselves to bed in it at twilight now. The flock runs on an org chart: Blu, the old man, holds the roost there. His son Jonathan runs welcome wagon ops out of my tiny house with his sister, bringing new birds into the fold. The … Read more
Planted a lemon verbena at twilight. Cool hour, no transplant stress, and the roots get a full night to settle before the sun comes up tomorrow. Just got to remember to pull the shade cloth back over the hoop frames to keep in the morning dew.
Some weeks back I inoculated the hugelkultur beds with wine cap spawn. I laid down chips on the branches, laid the sawdust spawn into the chips, more chips on top, hauled 35 gallons of water from the neighbor’s well in 5 gallon jugs to water it, hauled over compost, more chips, watered it again, stuck … Read more