Looking forward to the Month of July!

2022 is the year of big projects here at Kamp Krap the farm formerly known as the T5R LOL. In 1998 I decided to make small farm/farmstead/Homestead whatever you want to call it my full time life. A NICE QUIET REMOTE LIFE WHERE I DIDN'T NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE AND THE HORRORS THEY DO SO LOVE TO INFLICT ON EACH OTHER! I wanted to bury the ghost and everything that went with them from 1985 through 1997 in a hole in the ground and leave all of that behind. I did not know then, what I know now One does not simply bury that baggage and leave it behind, one comes to terms with it and accepts it, remembering the past but not living in and existing in that past. I discovered that my options in a civil life were pretty limited as there was really no practical application for my particular skill sets in the illusion of a civil society.

Oddly enough I had always been good with animals and at growing things kind of a contradiction really. So I pulled the trigger and bought a out of the way place with a nice house and 6 acres. That went well for several years, I rented the top 1800 square feet of the house out and I lived in the 4 bedroom, living room, kitchen 2 bath 1700 square feet basement. I paid $140,000 for that place and the taxes were $1200 per year. By 2007 that place was valued at $490,000, the taxes had risen to $7,433 per year and I had large sub divisions being developed on 3 sides of me. During that time between 98 and 07 I had to work at something so I was selling my surplus food and had started a small landscape company that turned into the second biggest landscape company in the area. In a 30 day time frame in 07 I got a offer from the biggest landscape company in the area to buy my company contracts, equipment and name and a offer from one of the developers for my house and 6 acres. By all measures I was doing very well in life, except I was not even a little bit happy and was no where near where I had planned to be in life. So I counter offered and walked away with $560,000 for the company and $975,000 for the house and 6 acres after I got done paying all of the capital gains taxes.


I bought the raw land in the middle of nowhere, where I live and work now on July 8th 2008 for $71,500 cash. I bought a 5 acre tract adjacent to me a year later after hearing that the owner was selling it to some Urban folks for $3,000 per acre........ I offered him $5,000 per acre and it was min a couple of weeks later. I have way over paid for a couple of other adjacent tracts as they have came on the market......... simply because I DO NOT WANT ANY NEIGHBORS CLOSER THAN 3/4 of mile to me No danger of anymore adjacent land to me being sold now as they are all well established multi generational farms.

My first home here was a camper identical to this one but in a bit better shape


Then I upgraded to a small portable building and called it a cabin. Plenty of space for me and my two dogs.


Then I married that pesky Renter I had at the first place and The new Mrs T5R demanded a bit more space. So I obtained a really junky 1973 14x70 mobile home and made it nice inside.

No matter how I cut it, the mobile home was a 1973 and had issues. So I got the 16x46 portable building and turned it into a really nice place inside. It worked very well for us until 2020, Covid and the Work from home order that turned our Cabin into a Government Field office!

Files, Computers and file cabinets pushed me out pretty fast and I have been living in a Camper again since mid 2020 I love my wife but I can't complain about living 75 feet apart



We really do need to do something different than the current arrangement though. So we decided to convert a 30x40 pole barn into a house. We also decided to just make 2022 the big spending and big project year. A question I get a lot is "Why don't you just have a nice house built? Its not like you don't have the money!" The answer to that is........ I AM A TOTAL CHEAP ASS and a big fancy house is so low on my list priorities that it is not important at all! I am inside to sleep, sometimes to eat and what little waking time I do spend inside is spent trolling the internet Why in the world would I want to spend $300,000-$500,000 on a nice house?

More so when this can be turned into a nice little 1200sqft......... Lets just call it a cottage.

Took some work to clean out all of my fix it projects LOL but I got it done! And have all the windows and doors going to be installed in it on the trailer waiting for the contractor.


Cleaned up the mess that built up around it over the years as well, and cut the two trees that came to over hang it down. And got some real good sawmill logs in the doing.




Getting the junk metal pile cleaned up is one of the 2022 projects. It started small but grew over the years. For the time being I just pushed the whole pile off to the edge and will trailer it up and haul it all to the scrap yard in the fall.

Had to grub out like 70 little elm trees that took root all around the back and sides of the building... a couple not so little.


That tree on the corner farthest away was a real PITA. I ended up just going 40 feet up and tying a 1 1/2 bull rope between two big limbs that forked to make the crown. The rope out in the pasture over the fence and tying it on to the massey. Running a chain 80 feet of chain over to the tree to left and ratcheting it tight with a binder. Did a old school undercut notch, and a plunge cut through the center leaving two hinges to keep the tree up right. Waited for a dead calm wind day because even light breeze would have broken the hinges. Went out to the Massey, pulled to rope tight, throttled it all the way up and didn't let up until the tree fell due south dead center of a old gate I was aiming for.

I took the pic at 6:30am by 8am that area where the bulls killed all the trees will be in full sun until 6pm less as the days shorten but still a ideal site to build the house solar system in 2023. Looking like we are going to be able to go with a 25kw home system. I just do not have money in the alloted 2022 project budget to get the panels and parts to build the solar system........ Don't have the time to build the frames to mount the panels on and to mount the panels and build the block house for the battery bank and hardware either. So our personal electric use (Excluding farm and business) requires a base 15KW system, I am going to 25kw to have plenty of buffer and excess. I have to pay for the personal system all out of pocket, no grant funding or tax rebates out there that will cover a DIY off Grid system. I have interrogated Government people and Solar Experts and all tell me sorry but your on your own there. Where I will get a system paid for with grants and tax rebates is the farm and business 40KW system. Since it will be pro installed on the roof of the Machine shed, and will be grid tied for a minimum of 5 years. Basically a combination of SARS. EQIP. State funding and Tax Incentives will cover the entire cost and leave around $18,000 excess for admin cost of the grants, the grant writing cost and blah blah. LOL If I was worth a damn at writing grants and using all the right buzz words to feed the bullshit required for grant approval I could pocket that $18,000. I can make the words they want without making copious amounts of mouth puke.



Before cutting it down.


The entire top half took a turn over the years and leaned over the building. A whole lot of weight leaning West that I had to make fall South.


The Old Gate I was aiming the tree at now resides in the scrap pile. And I am left wondering where the toilet came from and how it got in the scrap metal pile??????????????

The old Hog Barn sits next to the pole building to the South side. A storm this spring blew some tin off the hip roof and some boards off the East top above the hip. This is the Second building I built here after I got the sawmill. It is all Post Oak except for the roof tin and screws. I can't even count the number of piglets farrowed in that barn since then. Not a huge barn at 24'x36' and the hip 12'x36' Roof tin is scraps left over from building pole barn. Can't see in the morning sun but it is white and brown. That post oak will stand longer than I will live Don't really want a hog barn right beside the house. So I am going to change it a very little bit,,,,,,,,or a lot. I have soft foot steel mesh on dirt right now over all the floor, kept the hogs from rooting the floor out. I believe I will pour 4" of concrete on top of it. Just take to hip off and rebuild it to cover and come down from the gap between it and the roof. It low roof anyway going to from 8' to 6' and was just four farrowing stalls. Build a 20' wide header across the end and put a roll up door on it and call the whole thing a garage for Mrs T5R to park her truck in Or just make it a big firewood shed.


For the effort of taking that corner oak down, I got it down! and got 30' feet of good straight trunk for mill logs. 20' of trunk had to much curve to be good for anything other than firewood


The new pole house will have one huge benefit in my mind. 100 feet down this path will bring me to a boat dock at the new lake And one arm of the lake will flood up to about 40 feet from the back door of the house to the left of that path.



I can NOW take the entire Month of July off and rest and recover. The Tree Removal project is complete, My Dirt Work and road building projects are complete, The New Fence project is Complete, Getting all of the doors and windows is complete!!! Door and Windows for me would be real simple........ when choosing with a Mrs T5R it became a major project LOL. The Shipping container Project IS COMPLETE and that DIY MrCool Heat Pump works as good or better than advertised! Can take the container down to 50 degrees and hold it or set it at 70 and hold it. LOL took it down to 50 and then turned the heat part on and it warmed it right up to 70. And was very simple and easy to install.

Tomorrow will begin the contractor chaos that I wanted to avoid. The concrete work on the pole house starts tomorrow morning between the interior floor and the huge patio I am doing 6 spinners of concrete will be coming throughout the day. At the same time the Lake Contractors drop decks will be coming and going with 2 dozers, 2 big tractors, 4 big pans, and excavator. I am really hoping Concrete Spinners do not meet Drop decks on the mile gravel road coming down to us! There is not room for two pick up trucks to get by each other on the road and there are no pull offs. Someone will have to back up a half mile if they meet in the middle.

But everything I had to get done got done and amazingly got done exactly on schedule! A first time for everything hehe. Now I get to watch everyone else work. And to be honest I NEED A BREAK!!! I have been going balls to the wall since April. The Lake should be done and ready to fill up by the last week of July. I am going to take care of netting, strawing and seeding the backside of the dam, lining and rip rapping the spillway, and rip rapping the the water side of the dam. I have all the equipment to handle those jobs and it saved me $15,000. The house shell will take a bit longer, Concrete work will be done by Friday of this week, then spray foaming the under roof a week later and then a two week gap on the Closing the open side up and installing the windows and doors. I am doing everything else after the shell is done. With delays like getting the new sawmill at play, it will be September/October of 2023 before I have the house done and ready to move in to. I can get the framing, electrical, plumbing and tile done over winter. The mill lumber for the Wall and ceiling covering, the cabinets and counter tops.......... Yeah all of that is going to be be sitting in stacks of logs until the new mill arrives and then gets milled into 1x stuff, stacked in the drying shed and cured for at least 6 months if the weather and humidity are right. Green Lumber Shrinkage is REAL And Oak stinks to high heaven when curing....... really don't want that stink in a new house anymore than I want a working hog barn 20 feet from the house

The most important thing here is I am finally getting to my plan back in 1997/1998 of living without people constantly bothering me and wanting something and being as self sufficient and independent of this totally F'd up less than civil society America has devolved in to. I had not intended the last 24 years to go the way they have. Glad in many ways that they did, but regret in many ways that they did. Either way I have spent the last 24 years doing almost everything for others and doing very little for myself. and the 12 years prior to 97 literally doing everything for a bunch of ingrates that have done nothing but piss on my flag and nation and turn my Country into a shit pot where people don't even know what gender they are while trying to turn us all into a bunch commie pukes. I am soooooo very sick of Commies, Muslims and Cartels and all being welcome to come on in and destroy America. Sorry if that makes me a bad man but I was trained to fight and kill Ivan, Ended up fighting and killing the garbage in the Cartels in Central and South America and later Sending Muslims to their virgins in the middle east. If you ever want to see some of the worst things humans can do to each other....... Go down to central America where the cocaine starts out. Now instead of fighting it, we open the border for the most despicable and violent people in the world to just come on in and set up shop here. Just with the border as it has been and what have already gotten through........ we have set the entire Nation up for a 3rd world of hurt like we have never seen before. And that does not even count all of the Muslims we import wholesale....... a entire different kind of evil but equally as destructive to America.

Nope best that I just stay out here in the woods with the snakes and lakes. I will end up getting in a lot of trouble if I spend to much time out among the uncivilized folks!

 

And no apologies, I just can find nothing to celebrate this Independence day as America as Many of us Knew it and Loved it is either dead or being killed. I am just not going to apologize or compromise with anyone on how I think and feel about the state of affairs now days.

 

Bob Hope's them song was "thanks for the memories" I'll add American--- Not the country I grew up in, not my parents country may be it is good they are gone --not to see what it has become

 

I can totally understand your beliefs. If I never had to set foot in public again,,, I'd be a happy man . This sure as hell ain't the country I grew up in ,, or the one I swore to protect ,,, and it seems 75% of the people in this country ain't worth saving either .

 

Bravo T5R! I salute you for your efforts, hard work in pursuing your American dream, and your enjoyment for being out in the country on your own land away from the braying jackasses who resent happy successful people, and who think America owes them a favor!

 

Sounds to me like you've more than earned the right to your opinions and feelings.

As am I. Makes what I'm able to do here look like having a paper route!

 

I FOUND ANOTHER PROJECT!!! I was going to just have a fence row dozed out in the building of the lake. But thought hmmm I should go look at the T post and see if they are worth pulling. Glad I did go look, I was thinking I did that line with older almost wore out post..... I didn't I did it with brand new post that have only been in the ground 4 years. 220 T post at todays prices is well worth going out and pulling up! Even the junky RK T post are $5 and no offense to RK since pretty much everyone everyone sell the junky 1.0 - 1.33 T Post Now days, only a handful of places left where you can get 1.5 - 1.85s (SASCO) being one place still making 1.5s. I miss the days when my 6' T post weighed 12 pounds and 2.0s were common.

 

You make me tired T5R!

 

I thought I had a lot of energy TR you make me look lazy