Fat Bunny

There are some jobs that seem like bigger milestones than others. Yesterdays removal of the batteries from the old solar system felt like one of the big ones.

The house was originally 100% off grid and then converted to mains electric much later. Which means the house had two completely separate wiring systems, both of which I have to remove, a process that is 90% done. I think I was dragging my feet on removing the batteries because they are really heavy and under a spider infested house, both of which are very good reasons to avoid something.

I mean 600kilos of heavy, that’s 1300 pounds for the non metric readers. You will be glad to hear my back is surprisingly okay after loading and unloading these yesterday, other than a little muscle soreness I am largely unscathed. I of course was unaware exactly how much they weighed when I was loading them aft to the rear axel in the back of my ute for the 30 min drive on winding country roads to the recycling center.

I’m no engineer but that load definitely altered the sports car like handling of an old hilux, which I assume had Lotus like 50/50 weight distribution beforehand. I traveled at 20k per hour under the speed limit with steering that felt like it was now attached by rubber bands to make a car that handled like the house from UP. I did however arrive at the scrap metal dealer largely unscathed but with noticeably worse fuel efficiency than usual. Upon arrival I was pleasantly surprised to shock the dealer with how many batteries I had precariously packed into a single work utility, I was less pleasantly surprised that I had to unload most of them myself.

A pallet and a bit of batteries comes to 593 kilos plus a box of copper wire took the load up to over 600. It was nice to get $350 back instead of paying to get rid of things with tip fees, though technically I could have dropped these off for free at the tip because they are recyclables. But I will happily take the cash to spend on the next item at the farm so I can tick something else off the list.

Why? That was the only question I had as I uncovered the incredibly heavy electric train door that was being used as a roof brace in the goat house.

Other questions that came to mind shortly afterwards were:

Where the hell did he get this from?

How did he lift a 60-70kilo door up there?

And importantly:

What the hell am I going to do with it?

Obviously I am tempted to keep it and use it as a door for one of the outbuildings, but it is so heavy it will require serious engineering to mount it safely. Also I am aware that hanging onto things without a specific need for them is how the farm got in this mess in the first place.

My solution is to write a use by date on it. One year to be precise, so if I open the garage on the 1st of October next year and see this door labeled BEST BEFORE 30 SEP I know to throw it away like out of date milk.

A day of nothing but playing with fire, and by playing I mean being a responsible adult and taking all necessary precautions.

So after pouring a bunch of kerosene into a stack of timber and hitting it with a blow torch, I spent the day throwing things in the fire.

It’s two days before fire restrictions kick in, so I was feeling very motivated to incinerate anything flammable that stood still. In a few days it’s back to hauling things to landfill the way the environment protection agency likes, because I’m pretty sure they are against throwing slightly damp leaves in a bonfire, and rightly so.

Try to think of it less as environmental vandalism and more as a really big smudge stick. Because I definitely smoked out a few demons this afternoon, and had a pretty relaxing afternoon enjoying the view.

There are 100 days left in the year and there is a lot to do, but I am not sure exactly what. I got out of the habit of writing lists at the farm because when there is one big job a list seems sort of pointless. The job was clear out several 100 tonnes of junk and 1000s of square meters of weeds, and that doesn’t really need a detailed plan of action.

Now that I am down to the last 20 tonnes of detritus and the jungles have been pushed back a bit, it might be time to start making those detailed day to day lists. I mean who doesn’t love the little endorphin bump from running a pen through a finished task? The fact that it’s raining today and I can’t do anything at the farm is also seems like the perfect day to get back into lists.

Maybe making a 100 day list is a bit ambitious? Even a list with a 100 items on it would be overwhelming. So the plan is to commit to 100 days of making a list in the morning while I have a coffee, nothing detailed just a few bullet points with achievable tasks for the day.

Good luck Centurion.

Sorry it’s been a while but I was sort of busy, or kinda sick. And a few times I was busy, sick, and not dealing. I’m still busy trying to turn the farm into a habitable space, while juggling budgets and side hustles to pay for all those expensive materials required to build stuff. Who knew that building walls needed so many bits of wood? I only did after watching a couple of YouTube videos.

But even after 20 series of Grand Designs I still had the hubris to claim I would be in by Christmas. I would love to blame getting sick, or discovering unexpected problems with the house, but that’s only half the story.

I hate to leave you with a cliffhanger, but it’s important to take things slowly when returning to blogging. So I will need a little time to stretch and warm up before I go all Captain Ahab:

“He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”