Day: March 9, 2025

Most likely for the season, mom promises to make it next year, but alas she is getting up there in the years. It’s not something I would eat or make for myself – to unhealthy with all that saturated fat – but I figure best to enjoy a good portion of it while I still can.

TIme is a werid thing in your forties, it goes by so quickly but also is so short too. I really am struggling to understand how it can March 2025, when it th last time I looked it was March 2024. Whatever happened to that year? Why am I still stuck in my cold, run-down apartment, saving every penny so I can eventually own my own land? Living the life I want, rather then working in some non-descript suburban office building next to the old city garbage dump. Correcting addresses and building data frames and joining data. Camping, having fires, and smoking some pot in the wilderness?

It always comes up somehow that I’m not that far away from 55th birthday,  when I would be eligible for early retirement. We were talking about how I”ve maxed out my retirement for the past four years,  at the federal limit 457b of 23k or whatever it was those years, plus maxing out my Roth IRA for over a decade now. And pretty much matching that in my investment account. But I never taken a disbursement nor to have redemption plan filed.   I always feel so broke, but I make good money, and could live with so much more plastic – if that’s what I really wanted. But what I want is land, out in country, in the mountains and woods, away from the city in a free state when I burn debris, go to landfill once a year, heat with wood, compost my crap and raise as much of my own food as possible.

Truth is I keep seeing advertisements for luxury vacations and services lately, even though what I really want is land out in country – that is real acerage and not some plastic suburban house that smells like cow shit – type rural. I really don’t get the appeal of the vinyl-sided house on two-acre rural lot overlooking a cornfield where a dairyman spreads cow crap several times of year and you have mayflies on your screen with acres of grass to mow, not the grass you smoke, and an absurd amount of time spent commuting.

It’s not that I’ve thought about doing some travel, but not to a foreign nation but other parts of country where I could I could roadside camp in the National Forest back country, and spend my time exploring Real America on the back roads. See the run-down homesteads and farms, you know where people scrape together a living from the land, where people have burn barrels and gutted deer hung from the tree in autumn. Where people live off-Grid not by choice, but because they can’t afford electricity or it’s unavailable. Not the land of this luxury shit, the resorts and dune ranches. Deep rural. I know such places exist, I’ve been to many, and I have kind of fallen in love with many on the internet. There is this dirt-poor off-grid homesteader, Wildwood Off-Grid Farm I follow on Facebook, mostly because people remarked how dirty and run down – but real her homestead is. You produce your own food, it’s not wine and roses or something necessarily beautiful. It’s a lot of mud and manure, especially if you live without running water and cook exclusively on a propane camp stove. She was mentioning she financed her computer. Yes, she’s dirt poor but she has so many beautiful animals she takes care of and harvests to feed her family.

My neighbor in the apartment was smoking some grass yesterday and it smelled pretty damn good. Maybe I should have joined him for a toke, it’s legal nowadays to do it even outside, but I really keep it for when I’m up in the woods, just like with beer and the occasional puff of a cigarette. People are like – you’re a smoker – aren’t you into health thing? But then again, these are the same people who assume I’m a vegetarian even if when I do make that occasional pilgrimage to For the Love of Bacon, to have some of that locally-grown Mariaville bacon.

It was good to be back out in the country, I haven’t left the suburbs except for a bike ride out to Five Rivers past Meads’ cows a few week back. Driving over Derbyshere Hill during the golden hour was so special. Then I decided to ride down to the Elm Avenue Town Park and then back along the Nature Trail – still icy in parts – but it was pretty seeing the bare trees as it got dark out. And I was noticing the Red Winged Blackbirds are back in mass, a sure sign of the changing season. It was good to see my family, walk around the land, and drive past my homesteading parents neighbors, with all their junk and livestock and hay, along with the increasing number of houses being built out that way on 3 acre lots. Truth is even Dormansville is getting too built up.

Today was colder then I expected – when the clouds parted it wasn’t so cold but then the wind made cold again. There wasn’t quite enough daylight to hike Bennett Hill so I ended up riding to Elm Ave Park. It was nice there to watch the Heldebergs as the sunset on the land. Did my wash up at my parents and filled up their recycling bins with a bunch of cans and bottles – I was going to toss the paper in it too but it was wet so I figured I’ll just let it dry it out and save it for fires up at at camp. I was reading the article about how fake plastic recycling has gotten today in the Times Union, so I don’t feel all that guilty for all those years I’ve turned it into smoke rather then hauling it to the transfer station and paying to get rid of it. My pantry is well stocked for the coming week, I shouldn’t need to buy anything, though if I feel I’ve missed something, I can always stop on way home on bike at Hannaford. Nice having all that extra daylight in the evening.

I’ve been reading a few books about building science, one book about LEED certification and so-called environmentally friendly building with less toxic products. Another book is about the science of building Off-Grid cabins. The book on LEED certified homes seems so silly – it’s all about technical solutions to win certifications and less toxic products with a focus on things like grid-tied solar panels, heat pumps and good insulation. Not about composting, or wood heat, or homesteading though. Very different world, though I’m not sure which is greener. Honestly, I think it’s the dirt-poor hobby goat farmer who lives off-grid, heats with wood has the burn barrel, goes to dump once a year and drives a beat-up old truck with non-functional emissions system. But that is almost the opposite way of thinking of the LEED certifiers which are mostly interested in building big, energy-intensive luxury buildings with features to help guilty liberals feel less guilty about their big environmental impact. After all, they’re using heat pumps and not burning hunks of Styrofoam, so they must be green.

Going to be a warm week, the heat is off. Or at least turned all the way down to 45 degrees or whatever the minimum setting is. I think the thermostat still will kick on the gas heat if it gets really cold, but my windows are closed so I doubt it will get the cold tonight. Freezing temperatures isn’t expected tonight, and the heated blanket will keep me warm, as will the hot coffee and hot shower in the morning. Remember I winter camp in January and February many years. In the backcountry, in an unheated truck cap. At nine degrees. Truth is I like it cold, when I own my cabin, I don’t expect I’ll necessarily keep it piping hot in winter, and fires die down in the night. Going to be in the mid-50s tomorrow and sixties by Tuesday. Lots of sun and great riding weather.

People may be like, why don’t you buy that suburban house smelling like cow shit or otherwise. You have the money. But it’s not the life I want to live. I don’t want the big garbage container picked up weekly from my house, the big gas and electric bill, all the fatty sugar-laden disgusting foods people eat on their way to morality from diabetes, as they buy new shit every day just to pay to get rid of in garbage can. If my house smells like cow shit, they’ better damn well be from my own cows. But then I’m severely mentally ill for not buying into the American Garbage Dream.