Lara's Bootcamp/Wheaton Labs Experience/BRKish

Finally found your thread, as well as Nine's. I always want to follow all boots and other people living and working at WL. Every time one of them leaves I feel sad. And every time a new one starts posting photos here I am happy! It's a little bit like being part of your community. I don't think I'll ever be there i.r.l., I am living in western Europe and decided never to travel by plane anymore. Permies is a way of flying without a plane ;-)

Well, Clayton left us this morning, but we waved him off with so much love. We will miss you Clayton!!! And then I found tart cherry preserves in my cubby... Made by Clayton. I teared up.

Today is Chris's birthday!! In celebration we made egg foo young and brownies. The egg foo young was absolutely amazing. The brownies were fudgy and delicious!

I had a long office day today but managed to steal a bit of sunshine in the afternoon, organizing the garage.

I'm so tired today so I'm keeping this one brief but I'll make up for it later. Enjoy a couple pics! Night y'all.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Finally found your thread, as well as Nine's. I always want to follow all boots and other people living and working at WL. Every time one of them leaves I feel sad. And every time a new one starts posting photos here I am happy! It's a little bit like being part of your community. I don't think I'll ever be there i.r.l., I am living in western Europe and decided never to travel by plane anymore. Permies is a way of flying without a plane ;-)

Thanks so much for commenting Inge!! I'm glad you're here with us boots in spirit. We appreciate you following along with us! xoxo

Took a little trip this morning to drop off Ranger Doug at the mechanic and pick up farm fresh eggs, how exciting. Also met a wonderful woman who owns the local flower shop. Her flowers come to her from one local source and one dude in Florida, who gets them from South America. Such a long way for flowers to travel.

The entire bootcamp (besides me) worked on the Greenhouse today! Such a cool thing. And we all get to go out together tomorrow to throw some cob on that roof! And hopefully take some awesome footage of the process. Today I got to clean out the Red Cabin and tomorrow that process will continue.

Today our lovely Seppers arrived all the way from Wisconsin so I got to greet them and show them the property, which was fun, but the snowmelt is over-saturating all of the roads to make driving a bit difficult... so I think they're gonna hang out in their sweet little home for a while and rest up and get ready to join the bootcamp next week. I'm looking forward to getting to know them because they really seem like two beautiful humans.

Had a good meeting with the duke today, sent some emails, spent some qt with my favorite people, overall a lovely thursday. Looking forward to friday!

enjoy :)

Wow I missed three days of posting?! I guess that goes to show what a busy weekend it was; we invited four new people into the community here just yesterday! Three of them will be full time bootcampers and I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of interests and skills they possess. As I type this, the house is packed with breakfast makers, eaters, and shunners, people milling about and stretching, warming their bones next to the RMH. Erica sits net to me me and eats some delicious smelling tomatoes on toast. Friday we had a Greenhouse cob party! We took footage for a music video, danced, and cobbed. We finished a good portion of the greenhouse roof cob and all felt very accomplished afterward, but very exhausted. On Saturday I learned how to do the Wheaton Labs grocery run so hopefully I can take that responsibility sometimes, so Jen and Josiah aren't always having to do it. And yesterday I spent all day preparing for and welcoming the new arrivals, so luckily I started the day with a strong cup of coffee from freshly roasted beans (that morning!) courtesy of Josiah. One boot is staying in the Tipi with his feline friend, and we have a boot/sepper couple in the red cabin! Everyone seems lovely so far and we had rich and colorful dinner last night, thanks again to Josiah.

I'm looking forward to the morning meeting. We spent some time planning last night and it sounds like this morning is slated for the Shop Layout/Safety Training since we have a new influx of people. Safety first! Also I feel it's really important to give people that foothold in where everything is located, so they can feel empowered to take ownership of projects when they're ready. Today will be some housekeeping for me and then a run into Missoula to get parts needed to fix the sawmill, as well as to drop off a drill for repair.

A couple pics from the weekend and then I'm off to take up my post in the library.

Today is Tuesday! So tonight was Taco Tuesday and also one of the longest community business meetings we've had, but fun too. Lots of new people to catch up to speed on everything and new ideas for how to make community better. I also really like doing "shouts" because of my time working at Avery Brewing Company; we started our all hands meetings with "shouts" wherein we give a shoutout to someone who did something cool for us, or someone who we just appreciate for being awesome, or whatever else that is good. So I decided to try that out tonight and was really happy when people jumped in with some shouts to others. All in all an awesome addition (in my opinion) to community business but might work better at the end of the meeting so that we can wrap everything up quicker, and people don't feel obligated to stick around for that part if they don't want to.

Today was bright and sunny, and crisp. Morning tasks saw teams tending to the sawmill, the Greenhouse, some junk pole fencing, shelving, Loveshack renovation, and a trip to the hardware store for me, to pick up some electrical parts to finish the wiring in the Loveshack. Lunch was crowded but fun, and in the afternoon, tasks continued and there was also some log peeling done. I organized and cleaned the library, which mostly meant dealing with a bunch of crap that's just been sitting around gathering dust for a long while. But now it's a much nicer space to sit and work in, and have our meetings in.

Tonight I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and homesick. Virginia is far away -- as are a bunch of other places where I've left pieces of my heart. But it is good to be in community and surrounded by these people. I'm grateful for all of the opportunities to grow. I'll sign off here to get some rest, and leave you with a random photo drop (not many taken today), and with something I wrote after I finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

Let us be grateful for our challenges, the mountains at whose feet we gaze up into the clouds, the small home in which we are woken by water dropping on our faces, the tugging of heartstrings as we say goodbye to our friends, all of those things which are the sandpapers handed to us by the universe, by the gods, by those who watch over us, as they whisper into the wind, 「 Smooth out your edges, that you may flow more easily with the way of things. Soften your frown, that you may smile more readily and remember to play. Clear your mind, that you may be free to listen and to live outside of time. Change your perspective, that you may see the world and its people for what they are: a part of you. Be grateful for these chances to grow and know yourself, for the opportunity to overcome, for the strength to go on. To become what you already are, by shedding that which you are not.」

with love

Love reading about your day. Can you remember what you wrote about on the OCT or do you have to look it up. Still in lock down in the UK 10 weeks

Garry Churton wrote:Love reading about your day. Can you remember what you wrote about on the OCT or do you have to look it up. Still in lock down in the UK 10 weeks

Thanks for reading, Garry Hope everything is going alright over there. I looked that up from one of my Instagram posts, which is the platform I used for much of my 'blogging' on the trail. I decided not to keep a journal on the trail because I thought it would stress me out to have to do a thing every night when all one really wants to do is collapse in the tent and pass out.