Seems i am getting into a routine of sorts. These are the things that happen daily or weekly:

urine and kitchen waste to compost
water garden with greywater
dehydrate some produce
check on my kvass, cider vinegar and whatever else is brewing
read more on permaculture and food preservation
get stuff from food pantries on the days they are available
do some recycling
do some mulching
try to feed the ferals
check on what is free this week in the drugstore circulars
try to find ways to get free cat food using store sales
work on decreasing my watt use
charging my battery with the solar panel
decluttering and simplifying
thrifting for items i need

Today I also put out my bedding to sit in the sun and get freshened. The UV light helps sanitize things and the fresh air makes everything smell a bit cleaner, without having to run a wash load on something that ins't actually dirty.

Hi, Jilly.
I think you are definitely a "Homestead-ologist's!" LOL! I love that expression. Looking forward to the continued entries of Professor/Scientist "Jilly" and following your laboratory and homestead experiments.
Take care.

Thank you for your nice comments, Dean! Maybe I need to design a course in Homesteadology. Just call me Doc Jilly.

Today I got some good stuff done around the homestead. Used my rainwater to load up and soak the laundry in my Wonderwash. That is a manual cranking tub that lets me do a wash load with no electricity. I then used the wash water to pour around my fruit trees. I added some excellent compost tea to the wash water to make it more nutritious. (I barter empty plastic milk jugs for the compost tea from a hydroponics store.)

I got about five pounds of used coffee grounds from Starbucks to add to my garden and compost, for free. I try to get a bag whenever I drive by the Starbucks. Usually they have something for me.

I used the urine from my urine toilet to add to the compost, and also the used coffee filters from my Grounds for Gardens bags. The grounds themselves went around my fruit trees, which are suffering badly in the heat.

I added more produce scraps to the compost bin as well. It's really gotten hot in there! The black tire walls and glass top trap massive amounts of heat. I don't stir the compost as much as I should, but I'm really in no hurry here. I just let it perk along like a really big pile of coffee. lol.

My garden in general is doing quite poorly in this daily 106 degree heat and blazing sun. Most plants have died back. I'm okay with this, since summer gardening here is not really feasible without shade cloth and a lot of babysitting. I don't feel like babysitting. Fortunately, the spring, fall and winter gardening is very simple. I'll just start things up again when it starts to cool off.

I have some food pantry apples and garden tomatoes to slice up and dehydrate. I hope to get to that tomorrow.

I also spent some time trying to tame the feral momma cat that I feed (her name is Giles). She comes to me for food every day and eats the food while my hands are on the bowl, but she still feels a need to hiss at me if she's not eating. Ingrate.

When she weans her litter I will be getting a spay voucher for her to stop this cycle of kittens. Then I will have the three kittens and handful of other ferals to think about capturing to spay.
I filled up my water jugs yesterday in Cottonwood from the free hose outside Catholic Charities, and contemplated the waste from their peach tree. You can't reach their peaches without a ladder, and the ripened fruit just falls down and splats on the driveway. I want to make a note to talk to them about this. They have a pecan tree too. No reason to let this food go to waste.

Since my city water is turned off, I am more active about filling my potable water jugs, and using captured rain water more.

I've learned to wash dishes in very little water. The key is using a small amount of detergent so you don't need to rinse as much. Then I let the dishes air dry on the picnic table outside in the sun. The UV light does a better job of sanitizing than hot water would do.

The rain water actually gets pretty hot during the day right in the barrels, so if I need warm to lightly hot water, I just wait until midday. That is especially nice for a splash bath, foot bath, or for washing my hair. I'll be doing a warm splash bath after my chores tomorrow.

During the weekdays I did a lot of my freebie shopping - i used store money from couponing to buy things. I made around $50 in store money like Catalina coupons, register rewards and extra bucks. This isn't the easiest thing to do (there is a sharp learning curve), but it is a fun hobby once you have the knack. People need to shop for food anyway, so why not buy the things that give me free money back?

Elsewhere on this forum i list the articles i've posted about how to shop like this. When i have everything written it will all go in the ebook.

Also tomorrow - I cleaned off the dirt from my solar panel and will charge up the dead battery from my dead jeep. Tonite I will use my multimeter to test how dead the battery is and hook it up to the solar panel.

So I do have a good day ahead of me around the homestead.

Today I emptied the rain containers into my rain barrels, which made them totally topped off. YAY! Then it started to rain anew, so now i have extra water coming into my buckets that I will need to find uses for. I have some ideas.

I also put my newly dehydrated broccoli in a jar, and then chopped up some garden tomatoes to dry. I have two shelves in the dehydrator of tomatoes and one of apples. Some of the tomatoes were from the garden, before the heat killed the tomato plants.

The apple cores and bad parts I put aside in a jar with filtered water to let rest. In a week or two that will become apple cider vinegar, which i love.

I tended to my compost (and again i had to toss a bunch of produce in there that rotted before i could figure out how to preserve them).

I worked with the ferals (I can now pet the feral kittens while they are eating). The mother still hisses at me, but i make her put up with eating from the bowl in my lap. It's like The Hissing Game. She hisses, and I make her eat from my lap. I hope she drops the need to fear me some day. But at this point I could trap the whole lot, get them neutered and release them back here. the kittens might be salvagable as pets. I don't know enough about feral cats to draw a conclusion.

I am currently charging up my old car battery with my solar panel, and have also removed the car battery from the dead jeep to charge next. Because it hasn't been as sunny as usual, the charging process is taking longer. I keep going out with my multimeter to check on it. What's nice, is that when these are charged, I will have three batteries to use in my studio (or while camping) with the inverter. Only one is a deep cycle battery, but i can certainly use the old car batteries until they are used up. And then, of course, I can recycle them for money.

I might take the batteries out of the RV also and charge those, but i don't know in what shape they are in. They might be too far gone to take a charge. I have to check. It's on my list.