!!!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:
Man, that pallet shed looks great! Nice work!

I'd have to lobby pretty aggressively in order to have a metal roof accepted, but I know it's been approved in the past. Building stuff at the Lab has a different set of criteria than that built at Basecamp. In any case, I ought to check in at Home ReSource or whatever it's called in Missoula and see if they have any of those panels available. Chances are that's where I'll be able to find these kinds of materials, at least in the short term.

I've never seen any at the ReStore here (lots of used HVAC ducts for an RMH though). The dump sometimes gets cut offs or tear downs with usable sections, not enough for something like this though. I'd suggest pretending you are going to put up a 50x100' pole barn (Paul would be down with that, right?), and call around looking for someone that you could contract for it. They would likely be the ones getting in the pallets and willing to deal with the public.

Also the camo colour thing might help sell the idea for an ant farm build. I'd like to see a drone pic to compare the new roof to my shed that is solid "Forest Green". I was thinking of listing the colours I used for reference, burnt umber or what not. Made me think back to that big 64 crayon box to come up with the colours, so I started to search on that and then thought better of it (hope a little off colour humour is okay here)...

BEL #840

Back in the swing of things today, over at the acre. I made a promise to myself that the only way I'll feel justified in attending Missoula's Halloween weekend movie viewings (I've gone every year for the past four years) is if I finish this willow feeder to my satisfaction. I have less than a month and a half to make it happen, but I don't want to miss out on it. So back to it with a vengeance I go...!

I have a funny idea about the roof. I want to make a frame and cover it with canvas. It'll remind me of life in the tent, plus it'll be light-weight and allow natural light to permeate the structure. It may be a terrible idea, but it's the one I'm obsessed with at the moment. The poles I had started several weeks ago are now dried and ready for use. I cleaned-off the remaining branch stubs and "nubbins" with my hacksaw and hand-rasp-thingie.



With four poles cleaned and refined, I laid them out in the grass next to the building frame. It may not look like much, but each of the poles is roughly 11 feet long.



I opted to carve out notches in the thick ends of the poles, and set the narrow end of the adjoining pole in each notch. Here's the mark I made for my first go at the notch work.



With my saw, I roughed-out the width, then followed-up with hammer and chisel work. I love it when I'm reminded how much I enjoy using a nice, sharp chisel for this sort of thing.



I'm undecided as to how the pieces will be finally connected, so I just temporarily lashed these two together after the notch was set. I marked so that a 3-inch section of the pole will stick out off each end.



I am leaning heavily into  using wooden pegs/drawbore joints to keep things held together, though I am concerned about wood rot. I have some finishing oil so I might use that to make the joints water-resistant, to a degree. Still undecided.

Anyhow, I was unable to finish all the notches this afternoon, so I set two pieces aside for processing, then left the lashed-together two leaning up against the building frame.



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

Just out of curiosity, have you been a boot for 4 years now?! You must really like it Are you doing one of those programs where you end up owning a piece of the land?

Also out of curiosity, it seems in your early days 4 years ago you were doing the SKIP program and quickly did 20 BBs, but that since then you haven't continued adding more. What made you change your mind on that?

M Pearson wrote:Just out of curiosity, have you been a boot for 4 years now?! You must really like it Are you doing one of those programs where you end up owning a piece of the land?

Yep! I've been here since May 2022, though I've traveled for a couple months at a time maybe once a year. I still stay in a big canvas tent most of the time.

I think the easiest way to explain my situation is that I've been granted stewardship of an acre over at the Lab, and I don't own it. I'm permitted to stay there, rent free, for life, and build stuff and grow stuff on it. Right now I am a part-time Boot, having stepped-down from the High Commander spot this past Spring. I spend time with the Boot team in the first half of the day, and on my own projects in the afternoons and evenings. When I'm able, I do construction over at the stewardship acre in the afternoons. I hope to keep documenting those tasks and my progress in this thread.

It's a massive understatement that I'm grateful to Paul for his generosity and for granting me both such great opportunities while here at Wheaton Labs, and for providing a "soft landing" into what seems to me to be pretty close to an authentic homesteading lifestyle. He granted me stewardship of that acre, and I really do want to turn it into something even more special in the years ahead.

M Pearson wrote:Also out of curiosity, it seems in your early days 4 years ago you were doing the SKIP program and quickly did 20 BBs, but that since then you haven't continued adding more. What made you change your mind on that?

Being the High Commander is a demanding position (well, for me, anyway), and after I achieved that threshold amount of BBs I stopped pursuing the PEP stuff, and just focused on supervising the Boot team. Nowadays, I am working on personal projects and/or spend time over at the acre, so achieving more BBs just isn't on the radar at the moment.

It's funny to note that, after all the experiences I've racked-up at Wheaton Labs, had I documented them anyway I would likely have exceeded PEP1 by now, and would be well on my way to PEP2. So it goes...! I still do several errands for the Boots outside of typical Boot time, that being part of High Commander-type stuff, or Nest Labor projects that are part of Boot life.

Tensioning the canvas on the frame?    What workrd well for us was using poles in the midle that were flxible enough  so that the ends put into mortises in the frame made a bow that held the center of the tarp tight.