Stephen B. Thomas

Derek Thille wrote:The Seek app believes your protector to be a banded garden spider.

Much in the same vein as I have labeled Cow Thistle, I was thinking I could call them "Stabby Spider." You know, for consistency's sake.

BEL #825

Here's another GAMCOD update for the Wheaton Labs project garden:



Thanks for watching, and enjoy your day...!

Lif, I will send you a letter (thank you for sending me your address in a PM).

Now, the next person to post in here and say, "I would like a letter," will be the person to whom you send a letter.

I will see you all there...!

I'm a big fan of letter-writing. Did this a few years ago, and it was fun to reach out. Thanks for reviving this thread, y'all...!

Happy to write and send one to the next respondent who requests it.

Benjamin, I'll send you my postal address via PM.

BEL #824

Brought out the shaving horse today (thanks again, Mike Haasl! ) and decided that we would fix the broken foot. I also decided that we'd not use any metal fasteners.

Shown here are the old and the replacement piece. In the bottom right is the old foot - I suppose that's what it's called: the part that presses down on the piece of wood you're carving - while the new foot has the green markings on it. We'll carve out a hole that matches the post in the upper left: the part the green arrow is pointing towards.



We used the drill press to start the hollowing-out process, then fellow Boot Matthew transferred the new foot to the vice and began chiseling and rasping the remaining material out of the hole we needed.



I figured that my current favorite wood joint would be perfect here: a draw bore. You put the two pieces together, then drill a hole straight through them both. Finally, you add a dowel rod in the hole you've made.



Looking back, I think that drilling completely through both pieces of material was a mistake. To add the dowel rod snugly into this hole, we had to stick another dowel rod in the bottom to hold-in-place the dowel rod that would be used for the joint. Next time, we'll try to have at least some material remaining at the bottom.



We cut a wedge into the top of the dowel rod we would insert into the draw-bore joint, intending to force a wedge in there and assure a snug fit.



It may have been a bit of overkill, but we used the grind wheel to shave down this splint to the wedge shape we wanted.



Our first attempt let us know rather quickly that our wedge-slot was too small. We had to take it back into the shop and cut the slot just a bit deeper.



Matthew hammered the wedge in completely, and at this point we were both satisfied that it would hold as snug as possible.



We used a tiny hacksaw to trim the unused portion of the wedge off the top. Looks done to me...! We'll stress-test this new joint this week as we prepare some felled green wood for this winter's roundwood furniture projects.



And now for something completely different. Yesterday I was in the backyard garden, looking for tomatoes for our Taco Tuesday dinner. A trio of ripe, lovely tomatoes were protected by this absolutely massive spider...! I decided to look elsewhere. Maybe later in the week they'll have moved on and I can have a tomato sandwich or two.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Coydon Wallham wrote:

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:the log on the far right will be used for my "Best Season to Peel Logs" video entry for August/Summer.

Have you been able to maintain consistency of species and size of the logs?

Yep! Spruce, 10ft long, 1ft in diameter.

I'll have a video posted (the summer installment) this week.

BEL #823

Matthew and I have been busy, completing various Boot-ish tasks and keeping the plants alive.

Here's some dried mint that's been hanging in the kitchen and I finally set time aside to pack. We have likely the best mint tea I've ever tasted.



Late last week, I taught Matthew how to use a chainsaw to fell a tree. Here he is strapping the timber tool to Roy prior to our expedition.



While demonstrating, I think I cut out a perfect wedge. In the background, you'll see the most-perfect "Pac-Man's Mouth" I've ever made.



Matthew takes a knee as I coach him through chainsaw use.



Eventually, we needed to bring the logs down the mountain. Due to some mountain road accessibility issues, this time around we opted to use the RAV to do the hauling. I practiced some creative ratchet-strapping on the smallest-diameter log we brought down.



When they became too big for the RAV, we chained them to the back and dragged them down (had we a hitch, I reckon we would have used the Log Arch). Most of the time a single chain was sufficient. However, when in doubt, use more chains.



The log on the far right will be used for my "Best Season to Peel Logs" video entry for August/Summer. The rest will be peeled eventually, and then the lot of them will be used for construction projects.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Hello Amber, and welcome...!

I have a number of penpals I exchange hand-written letters with, and when I mention it to the "uninitiated," responses range from they think it strange, or exotic, to completely beyond them. Keep the postal service alive, says I.

Enjoy your time at Permies.

BEL #822

It's Matthew's second week, and Seth has returned from his travels down south. Welcome back, man...!

I'm beat after today, but it's been so long since I'd made an update I'd feel bad about not doing anything while I still have a bit of energy left. So here we go.

Friday last week, Matthew and I went to a nearby lumber company with Judy - our heavy hauler - and the dump trailer. When we returned, we had maybe a couple tons of shaved-pine mulch.



Over the next several days, we encircled baby trees with "mulch donuts" in an effort to preserve moisture and help keep them alive in the heat. We'll use this mulch on stuff that doesn't like "hot" organic material, while our grasses will be reserved for things like corn and rhubarb.

A plant that seems to like bark mulch is the raspberry bush. We added thick rings around these plants up at Raspberry Rock, as well as Raspberry Island, back behind the Classroom. Along with those mounds of mulch, we added trickle jugs of water. We open up the top just a little bit, then tilt the jug on its side so there's a slight, consistent stream of water making its way into the soil. This prevents runoff and increases the chance that the soil around the plants will absorb and hold the water poured on it.



Here's the first set of Basecamp-grown tomatoes I've ever had for Taco Tuesday dinner.



Today, while I was outside throwing mulch around, Seth and Matthew tackled more jam-making. I ate the leftover bits of ginger once the batch was cooked.



Finally: not necessarily related to Boot happenings... However, I wanted to give a shout-out to the Little House series of books. Here's a couple pages from Little House in the Big Woods, which I finished reading for the first time. I find this book, and its sequel Little House on the Prairie, absolutely fascinating and some of the most wholesome, fun (not to mention quick) reading I've ever experienced. A discussion here at Permies about horse-powered equipment made me think to snap this photo a while back.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!