Hi Martha,
Glad you're going to make it out here! If you don't see me before you go, no worries, if you make it through the winter, I'll see you then.....
...cool that you get to see the green house go up and be a part of that.
There are bees here on the Lab, both wild and domestic.
Two jobs is hectic, here you'll only have one -but I hope you choose a lot in Ant Village and work on it during a day off after you've been in the
Boot Camp one month.... I always suggest to those coming to the Boot Camp to be active during the weekend even though most people just want to rest as much as possible
-I believe if one is active just four hours up on the Lab on a Saturday or Sunday, when you are stronger and have more endurance, after about eight weeks for most, then one can easily start working as much as they want on their Ant Village lot.
Whereas, those who just rest on the weekend, train themselves to physically crash on Saturday or Sunday and cannot re-train themselves to do their own work (in your case bees maybe?) when they finally do have
enough endurance and strength. They end up leaving
Wheaton Labs without having accomplished anything during their stay here on their own Ant Village lot. Those who had planned on staying at Wheaton Labs feel they simply aren't up to the tasks needed.
Be that as it may, Clayton, without any
experience when he arrived, is now beginning to build his own Wofati. He did work with me on weekends until after a month, he picked his own lot. Initially, he was exhausted and slept well until he found himself stronger and able to work to his own satisfaction. Today,
Josiah, Jennifer and I gave him a hand moving his logs into position around his wofati. There have been other Boots who, after the first hour they worked with me, I never asked them back. Some chose to not work at all up on the Lab during the weekends.
With regards to myself, I chose a lot and renamed it to On Narrow
Pond immediately after the 30th day. After four months, I had nine honey
locust trees, 13 sun chokes, a few brave corn, squash, and tomato plants growing On Narrow Pond. I also had dug a 6' deep cistern and had begun to rock it in (most of the rock had been also collected during weekends during my stay in Boot Camp). Since I chose the Ant Village path rather than the
Deep Roots path, I left the Boot Camp after the fourth month and began eating and sleeping On Narrow Pond.
So feel free to ask Clayton if you can work with him on a Saturday or Sunday on his own acre (Josiah, Jennifer, and Fred might be willing to trade work with you after you've show your abilities in the Boot Camp). Clayton might want to see how you do in the Boot Camp too before he is willing to trade hour for hour, but it won't hurt to ask. Of
course, if I am still here and you arrive on a weekend, you'll be working with me :)
As of the time of this writing, I owe Clayton 8 hours and 15 minutes of work. He'll get some time back from me tomorrow when we replace some rotten beams for his soon to be Wofati. Fred owes me four hours.
Also, currently Josiah, Jennifer, Clayton and me have been teaching ourselves FreeCAD on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7pm to 8pm. Feel free to join this group even though your body is probably going to be asking for bed; you'll end up with a design tool skill you didn't show up with beyond the natural building and growies you'll get to learn about during the 40 hrs of Boot Camp
project time. In case you don't have a laptop, there's a laptop here named Treetrunks which you might be able to use or Gunter depending on what Jen is using for FreeCAD that night.
Josiah has also been holding Permies Documentary Movie Night on some Friday nights; if you want more learning to happen while you're at Wheaton Labs, ask Josiah on Thursday what he is showing on Friday night!
In closing, Permies Boot Camp is what you make it. Everyone comes with different motivations but I believe it is the values which matter the most. Could it be the closer their values align with those Paul Wheaton has described in his podcasts the happier each person is here? I don't know, because my general values match Paul's in many ways in the
permaculture realms of natural building,
energy, growies, and yes, even his views on community.
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