evan's ant village log

Pigs are beautiful. They're my favourite animal and Sir Chops looks quite a character. You're right about him getting more comfortable if you work nearby. In the end his curiosity will get the better of him and he won't be able to resist coming to have a nosey.
The plants are so interesting too. Mostly completely different to what we have here in NZ, either native or introduced.

At last, a good shot of Sir Chops!! ;) he's adorable... probably too adorable, and soon too friendly ;) Thanks again, Evan... I really enjoy the excellent plant pix... they'd be attracting my interest also. And loved the 'giant tearing off his own toe' lol! Is that what's so great about human individuality... we each see things from endlessly surprising and entertaining (when not frustrating and maddening) unique perspectives ?

By the way, I like pork too. Good life, quick death, use it all.

Sue, I agree. Give them a real good life, do a good stun so that they feel nothing in death, and don't waste. Last week I taught a fellow homesteader (who is still learning about these things) how to do humane slaughter of their pig. We butchered it out and I was aghast to see how much wastage they were going to throw away. I finally convinced them to cook up a giant potful for their chickens plus I walked away with about 20 lbs of assorted waste, most of which I made into meals for ourselves. With my own pigs there is very little that goes into the compost pile, and zero into the trash. While I am a meat eater, I still respect the animals I eat. I wouldn't dream of wasting them and making their death in vain.

Day 91

Starting to get back into the swing of things here on Ava. Did some mulching this morning of those first beds I built way back when. The sunflowers are doing awesomely in spite of the drought, and there's also some beans and daikon radish doing well, plus a little bit of lettuce coming in. Some peas came up but most have since yellowed and withered. Most of the seeds I planted seem to not have come up, at least not yet. Now I know to focus on sunflowers for next year, as they seem to really like it here. I'd like to put more seeds in as soon as I can get the excavator back over here and finish some of my half-ass hugels. It may be a bit late in the year for most things, but I can always harvest more info about which plants seem to do well.

Also dug a few post holes and got the corner posts of Siesta in the ground. It feels good to be making progress on my shelter again. I've been putting it off for too long, and after all the flip-flopping back and forth on designs, I think I just gotta do it, just use the materials I have and make something that'll be purty darn close to a wofati. The deadline I've set for myself is to have the umbrella dirt layer on the roof of Siesta by mid August at the latest.

Hey Evan,
I'm on the wrong side of the world, but just thinking about getting food grown to store for Winter and starting mid Summer...things that work here are:-

Beans - both green for drying or freezing, (freezing may not be an option for you), and growing to maturity to dry for Winter soups and stews.
Potatoes - quick maturing varieties, also called early potatoes even though you plant them late!
Corn - early maturing varieties.
Brassicas - to grow then stand through Winter
Carrots/parsnips - again to grow then stand through Winter. You might have to lift them and store to prevent freezing.
Quinoa
Even cucumbers, courgettes and tomatoes could work because they can be turned into pickles, chutneys and jams as soon as the weather looks like killing them off, even if they are immature.

NIce start to a house there bud

Great to see some progress on the shelter! Picking a design is the hardest part sometimes.

Day 92

Another hot and dry day today. The road is so dusty, any time anyone drives or even walks down it huge clouds of dust float up and coat everything on either side. I guess I'm gonna need some big berms along my dust sector.

Made some progress on Siesta today, getting the two in-betweensy posts in along the sides. Before filling in the holes and tamping them, I ran a thin pole horizontally to make sure the in-betweensy wasn't gonna cause my walls to bow in or out, and I also tried to get the posts upright/level-ish.

Those walking onions Fred gave me are doing great! And some squash is coming up! I did some thinning in central Téjas this evening so I'll have more space to expand my hand-crafted hugel gardens.

Day 93

Josh, Jesse, Brian, and I worked on the berm shed down at basecamp. We cut, loaded, and hauled tons of logs, and got about twenty feet of wall built and ready to be bermed.

In the evening, Jesse, Carol-Anne, Josh, and I hung out on the edge of Truckton and Ponderosaville, two freshly-named areas of Jesse's ant plot. Occasionally Curtis would wander by listening to podcasts at chipmunk speed. I'm so glad to have all these lovely people as my neighbors here in antville. And I probably don't mention this often enough, but I'm so grateful to our beloved dictator for creating this opportunity. This whole ant village thing was a brilliant idea, Paul!