Planty of the Hamchuks

Aug 16 2026

The fridge we pulled up from the inlaws' basement is now in the Old BP. Farmer M hooked it up to the battery which is connected to solar panels there.

It seems a little overkill for their uses for now, but hey, free fridge.

Stacks of solar panels for their upcoming projects. One of the Very Big projects they have coming up is redoing the roof of the Old BP, which will involve a lot of structural work, including fixing some issues with the walls, in addition to the roof. Then they want to cover the roof with solar panels, to run the place.

Sovereign has been busy, taking down the house that the meth heads burned out. Last I heard, he wanted to put a taco truck here, but we'll see.

I assume the immediate neighbors will be thrilled to see this once- awesome-house-turned eyesore go.

Befriending heavy equipment operators has changed EVERYTHING. It's unbelievable what this equipment can do. All the work we've done at Critter Cove is by hand, and hand tools. But equipment like this can do in a few swipes what would take a half day by hand. It's something else.

It also takes a LOT of skill to use these. But now we know Sovereign (who is insanely skilled), Farmer M, and his BFF T (also very skilled).

Aug 15 2026 - at my SIL

She built - by herself, of her own design - an extremely sturdy and fancy place for her chickens, ducks, etc.

She clearly has the family good-with-engineering genes.

The big dark circle is a pond, the dark container to the right is a water reservoir, and there's pipes with water running out. There's a whole filtration system, with water continually pumped and cleaned.

Aug 15-16 2026 - helping the inlaws

My in-laws are going from a gargantuan house in the Atlanta suburbs to a small, 2-room apartment in a retirement community in the Atlanta suburbs. My FIL wants to move fast, but the house was filled with soooo much stuff, mostly thanks to my MIL who was an avid TJ Maxx (upscale-ish discount store, carrying things originally in nice department stores) shopper for decades plus they lived there for decades. The home was so big it's like having a storage unit itself.

This is our 3rd trip down there in as many weeks, helping to empty out the house.

It's all logistics. Family has already been through the house. The stuff we're pulling is for V or our home, for local friends, to donate to mutual aid groups, etc. etc.

Yes, the truck eats gas. V does the driving because I hate driving this giant behemoth of a truck - you can't see anything!! We are both drinking lots of coffee these days to get everything done.

There's still so much in the house. I think in the end, the remaining items will be donated to groups there. But the need here in WNC is intense, as this region is still deep in the recovery process from Helene.

One thing I'm marveling about my MIL is that despite a massive house filled with so much stuff, everything was extremely well organized, which makes this SO much easier. The whole thing was really serious example of domestic labor, beautifully decorated home, beautifully organized. She was born a poor ass mountain girl from the north Georgia mountains from a barely literate family, we're now dissembling her dream home.

Aug 16 2026 - Farmer M at the new location!

Farmer M was moved in on laaaaate Friday night / Saturday morning to the New Project location. His camper is 100% solar powered, but due to his chosen location, the trees block a lot of the panels (he has since moved it by 90° to get more sun).

No biggie. V has many more and is willing to set them up here.

On top of the camper are some large ass sheets of fancy greenhouse plastic - polycarbonate panels - the ones V specialty imported. They are a little damaged so can't be sold, BUT they can be used vertically to create a very fast vertical fence. Not a beautiful fence, but an easy, light-transmissible 7' fence that will help cut down on the winds from the traffic. Just on the far right of the photo, the gray you see is the small but busy rural highway.

Aside from the fence, next up is to work more on the well and get it fully hooked up to the camper, and some repair work to the septic and also get that hooked up to the camper. More fill dirt needs to be dumped as well - the assumption at this point is that the soil is at least somewhat contaminated.

Given the trees + overall dimensions of the land, it's not an amazing place for any sort of food production, though it is flat and Farmer M does have some in mind. I am chomping at the bit to get him seeds for what he needs, but he honestly has his mind on these bigger projects.

I can now sleep easier at night, knowing he's no longer at the old BP, even if there's much much much more work to be done. Most of it involves skills I do not have, but I can document to let people know what is possible, while cheering them on.

Aug 13 2026

While I was busy at work doing ... work things, V and Farmer M and T (a literal teenager, also brilliant) were figuring out if the well at the new locale works. It does!

Farmer M was all 'we ought to test this, it could have e. coli' and V just immediately started drinking it in large quantities and declared it good.

This is a screenshot of a completely unhinged video V took, but hopefully you can see the root cellar there. The grey box in the bottom of the picture is a large battery on wheels that has been charged up with solar panels (they call it a Fossibot), and the white piping on the right is the piping from the well. The giant claw above is the heavy equipment they used to pull up the piping, and hopefully you can see the water coming out as a small stream on the far right.

Reportedly, it tastes absolutely delicious!

Still no word on when Farmer M will move in. I'm afraid where he wants to be is currently a muddy pit, with the $1k in gravel on the other side of the property. But if we can get the water hooked up for him, that would be wonderful.

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Sadly, it's a no go on that property for D. Reportedly the Wealthy Landowner decided to rent it to someone else for a huge amount of money instead.

Aug 12 2026

Alllmost cleaned up. There's a pile of tires to the left of the giant TV, a random old fireplace, hopefully one more major sweep will get the rest of the stuff out. And hopefully Farmer M can be there on Thursday or Friday. The sooner, the better.

We've paid about $1k for all that fucking gravel for him to change his mind, and decide that he wants his camper on the other side of the property (where the original home was). It's not a total loss, maybe V and Farmer M will put the metal storage building there. It's all in flux.

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V and Bk just finished up wiring on a massive solar job at a crazy cult that has gone on for way too long, everyone is very happy about that. Hopefully they can get the last check and move on to the next job.

I had an intense day at work myself, mostly trying to figure out something with google business products that I don't think can be figured out. It's a multi-year problem I've spent hours working on and talking to tech support about on the phone and decided to take a stab at it again today. I'd like to say I've made progress but really there's a wall I'm hitting and it's ultimately the same one I've hit previously.

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Tonight, we went to hang out with Z and the Black Panthers down in Asheville. The Black Panthers were mostly two very gritty no bullshit white women feeding the homeless a range of food, and also offering free water and clothing. They had multiple tents and tables and chairs set up and ice for the water and everything.

Z pulled out his guitar (it turns out he's an excellent musician), and then a homeless guy pulled out his guitar, and there was an amazing impromptu jam session. Farmer M and his kids were helping to serve food. They really didn't need any more servers, so I broke down garbage so it would better fit in the modestly sized garbage container and cheered on the excellent musicians, it was a lovely moment of community (I really wanted to take photos but resisted the urge, the musicians were putting on a show and soaking up every moment).