Nine's Bootcamp Experience (BRK)

Jen Tuuli wrote: Living + working so much around a bunch of other people is exhausting, and it's difficult to find uninterrupted time and space.

Having kids, I feel a small amount of your pain. I'm never alone, and it's hard. But, at least with my kids, I can be myself without having to worry whether "myself" will be interpreted as rude or weird or whatever. Having to be social is draining, even if the people are fantastic.

I hope you're able to find alone time so you can recharge!

#69

Helped unload the pallet of bricks at the Boneyard, then walked Alana over to Fred's plot to begin planting. After he arrived, we walked down, got some seeds, then began planting on the hugels.

Saw lots of shooting stars, an evening primrose, rhubarb, recently planted strawberries, wild strawberries, mullein, rue, cat mint, hound's tongue, saffron, and many tiny bulb flowers. Really can't wait to see what else comes up out there. I love planting on Fred's plot. I put persimmon seeds in the hugels while Alana planted wild indigo. 🤞🏻🤞🏻

After that we met up with Chris who had been grading some of the road up there, and we all headed down for lunch. I miss split lunches. 8 people in the kitchen is hectic.

After lunch Chris and I combined three partial pallets of bricks into one ~3' tall pallet of bricks. Whew. After that we moved one huge pile and one smaller pile of fencing poles onto stickers and made them look more orderly. We even found a large bench under the big pile. 🤨 Go figure. 🤷🏼

That done, we grabbed the two remaining bamboo plants and put those in the ground. Upon getting back to the berm shed to put things away, we found that one of the wheelbarrows was broken, so that got fixed as well.

Nearing the end of our day, we did a lap around Arrakis to see what was left to take care of. It's looking much more orderly than it has since we arrived. Walked up the hill to the Love Shack to check on the piles of wood there, and met up with Dez and Daniel. Helped them load a bit of scrap wood into Doug, then that was the end of the day.

Went out to dinner, then for a long drive to see a town our waitress insisted we go visit. We were sure we missed a turn, since we were on this road for what felt like forever before we saw landmarks. But at some point in that drive we both didn't really care if we had missed it. It was a beautiful evening. Sun peeking its golden rays through the mountains, illuminating the evergreens and old ranch houses along the way. The river tempted me with its meandering sparkles, but the occasional glassy ice along the bank brought me to my senses. Someday, temptress. It was nice to get away for a while. 🏞️

#70

30 more days to 100. Let's do this.

Today was gardening day. It was kinda chilly until the rain started coming down. Then it felt nearly icy and wet. Our fingers were all red with cold and moisture from working in the garden. But it had to be done!  I pulled up my mulch in the lower front area of the patch and sprinkled seeds and some seed potatoes down. I found a few little seedlings under there doing their best to grow into big, tasty friends. I saw what looked like a few brassica buddies in my path, which seems like they maybe got lost or dropped. But they're happily growing amid my bark mulch, so I'll let them continue until they become too tasty-looking to pass up. They have a friend friends above the path that are also growing, so I don't think they'll be too much of a loss if I cull them. They're probably the daikon, so they'll get chopped and dropped later anyways. I don't think there are any other brassicas that I've planted in the patch so far. Some kind of radish - I think I planted at least two varieties.

Before all that though, Josiah took us all on a plant walk through the hugels around FPH and down into the Lower Paddock. So many fun plants sprouting, blooming, leafing out.. all stages of life! Enjoy the pictures of some of the plants growing around here.

After lunch, Chris and I took a little trailer full of things up to the Boneyard, unloaded it, and left it. Came back down and popped in to see how Erica and Alana were doing with their firewood rack build. They're making great progress! We gave them a couple tidbits of information for their build, then walked up with them to see where it was going and how it was going to fit into the space. While up by the Red Cabin, Erica mentioned how the wood cracker there wasn't functioning well for them. It wasn't secured well to the stump, had a bunch of dings/dents in the blade, and had a really short-handled sledge to hit with. Some rather wet wood had also been dropped off at the Cabin yesterday, but there was no place to put it yet and, well, it was wet and essentially useless to them.  We traded out the sledge for a longer handled one, but that one had a wood handle. Not wanting the handle to degrade quickly outside, I applied some linseed oil to it. Brought the can of linseed oil up to apply it to the wood deck that's covering the sand barrel by the Cabin. Afterward, I took that wet wood down to the shop and traded with some dry, smallish, black locust for them. By then, Chris had finished straightening out and sharpening the cracker and had secured the bolts to hold it down to the stump. To test out the new arrangement, I split the black locust with the longer sledge and stacked it on the porch for them to retrieve when they got home. The longer sledge made a big difference, and even though it was hard wood it split pretty easily. Awesome. Hopefully it'll work well for them too!

Chris had brought Doug down to the Berm Shed area to load up the trash for our landfill run, and I started working on the tailgate handle. It needed to be greased a bit and needs some adjustments that I wasn't able to make. Sigh. It's working better than it had been though, so I'll take it. By then we'd reached the end of our day!

In case you're curious about my seedlings.. extra pics!

Two years ago, I got a Matt's Wild Cherry. It was great! It was far more late blight resistant than the other tomato varieties, and so I got a lot more tomatoes out of it than from the other ones.I hope your's does well for you!