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

BRK #172

Whew... Where did the day go? I'm keeping this one brief, as I'm simply exhausted.

In the first half of the day, it was all hands on deck. We straightened-out everything still left over from the Houseplants Day effort of yesterday. Then we went outdoors and felled two massive dead-standing trees at Basecamp. Caleb and Grey were the sawyers, while Daniel, Boot Jeff, and I were on prep and hauling duties.

Here's Caleb cutting down the first of the two trees.



Here's a shot of the team limbing and then bucking the first felled tree.



The second tree was much larger, and was a more involved production. Preparations included tow rope, Timber Tool, ratchet straps, and a come-along ratchet pulley. The good news is that no one was hurt, no property damage occurred, and the tree fell down very much in the place where we wanted it to come down. So in short: it was a win.

Here are Grey and Jeff tying a tow rope up to the target tree. I was at the other end, fastening a ratchet strap and then a come-along to another tree, perhaps 100 feet or so away from this one.



Again, Caleb and Grey used the chainsaw to notch and then back-cut the tree.



One of our first tasks for tomorrow will be to buck this second tree. There will likely be sections large enough for us to use at the Sawmill, so that will be a matter of hauling them up the mountain to the Lab for processing. But one step at a time...

Finally: here's an ice-encased drain at a corner of the Fisher Price House.



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

BRK #173

Thursday, and with it comes preparation for tomorrow's Proenneke Day activities. Caleb and Daniel were on the search for a specific section of wood today at the special request of Paul, and I hear they were successful. More about that, of course, tomorrow.

For today, the first half of the day was all about wood processing. There was one more massive tree we needed to process, and we finished more than half of it today before the break. Here's the team: Boot Jeff, Grey, Daniel, and Caleb. There's still more to do, though we hauled, bucked, and split more than a face cord today.



For my part, I split wood under the watchful eye of my own supervisor, [Trash] Panda. Some might criticize him for being moronic, letting split logs land so close to him. However, it's my opinion that he clearly has nerves of steel. He sat there, unmoved, at least until lunch time. What a guy.



While cleaning up the site after wood processing, I couldn't help but be distracted by the combination of sawdust and snow in the driveway...



In the afternoon while the other members of the team were up at the Lab, Boot Jeff and I worked to install double panes on the large windows of the Solarium. We progressed to about 90% completion today, and by lunch break tomorrow we ought to have both windows finished for the "first version" of double panes. Daniel and I will be recording temperatures throughout the weekend to see how these affect heat retention, if at all.



Proenneke Day tomorrow...! Pancakes for dinner, and maybe s'mores! Oh... and we'll be building stuff with hand tools, too.

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

Happy Proenneke Day!
Nancy & Bill

BRK #174

Happy Proenneke Day to you...!

I couldn't help but be excited about today from the moment I woke up. It most definitely lived up to expectations, and even the pancakes I'd made for dinner weren't half bad.

At the start of the day, Boot Jeff and I wrapped-up the Solarium windows project, while the rest of the boots were busy bucking and then hauling the rest of this week's felled trees up to the Library for processing. Doug - our blue pickup truck - was loaded for bear when they pulled up outside.



We filled-up the wood racks at the front of the Library just in time for lunch break. Then it was off to celebrate Proenneke Day. I joined the rest of the boots at the Classroom after prepping some pancake stuff up at the house. Here's a host of photos of Daniel, Caleb, SEPPer Julia, Boot Jeff, and Grey as they worked on their various projects.







Thanks to Mike Haasl for his fantastic shaving horse, pictured here.







For some reason, I was fixated on fabricating a foot-stool today, and I think I succeeded. The first step was to fashion some suitable legs for the stool. I made six of them, just to be on the safe side, and hey: there's enough to make a matching pair.



There's a hand-cranked tenon maker - basically, a gigantic pencil sharpener - used to quickly and neatly whittle down the sticks to the proper diameter for insertion into the seat.



Here are my completed stool legs:



Grey had a spare plank of wood lying about, so I decided to use that as the seat(s) for the stool(s). Here I am in the process of cutting it in half.



Once I had the seats, I used a hand auger to drill holes for the legs.



...I'm glad I made a few extra legs! Hammering them into the bottom of the stool seat resulted in one of the more fragile legs breaking off in the seat. Better I find out about that now, eh?



Anyhow, I drilled the broken bit out with the auger, then added a different leg in there. the end result is a indisputably ugly foot-stool. But it's my ugly foot-stool, my first one ever, and now that I finished one (in less than an hour, at that), I experienced a much-appreciated confidence boost, and now have a place to rest my arse or my feet whenever I please.



We wrapped up the evening with the pancakes I'd made for everyone, the sausages and bacon cooked-up by Boot Jeff. and then a screening of The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn. If you're a Sidney Portier completionist, you won't be disappointed.

That's all for now. Hope you go out and use your hands to put something together this weekend.

BRK #175

Lots of errands running round town today. I had a little time to kill prior to the start of the vegan donut shop's Happy Hour (two-for-one donuts!!!), so I took a stroll down Missoula's river walk. Here are some snapshots from under the bridge at Higgins Street.















And here's one of the walls of the bathroom at the Pie Hole, the pizza shop I visit on Saturdays (again, during their Happy Hour).



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