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

BRK #50
(half-way to the first milestone!!!)

It was an important day of garden projects and then work at the Lab - and wouldn't you know it, I didn't bring out my camera for any of it! My hands were full.

Luckily, I have a little time this evening for catching up. I have two images of my current Basecamp hugels. It's amusing to look at the original plans I had for the patches, and how they evolved into their current state two months later. Here's Basecamp One:



To sum things up: gardening would be much easier without the cats around... Or would it? They use my conveniently-placed hugel as a gigantic combination cat-box and play-pen. But they also eliminate garden pests (for example, the burrow that emerged in one of the cells in this hugel was deserted scarcely a week later, from all indications). Potatoes are going gangbusters. I munch on Lambs Quarters daily. Building soil with cover crops is a priority, though I think next year will be big for herbs (that's what the area on the far left will be reserved for, I think. Right now, it's a bunch of cover crops and a couple mullein).

Here's a diagram for Basecamp Too, my -true- problem child.



To sum things up: well, don't look for corn, but should you want mullein we got plenty for ya! And then there's this random volunteer squash that seems to have shown up (and still survives) for no discernible reason. I dropped seeds for some herbs and cover crop late last week so we'll see what happens here. Oh, and I have one lovely nasturtium that's been thriving in the shade. I added a pile of stones so as to attract some beneficial insects, and my insect watering station is about 30 feet away (though difficult to keep full due to the heat... Maybe it's time to relocate to a shadier spot). King Mullein is likely over 7.5 feet tall at this point.

Photos of the actual garden beds will be later this week. It depends on how much fun we're having over at Fred's plot tomorrow.

Finally, I hate to become one of those people who pads their BRK with constant photographs of cats, but I really couldn't pass up this one. Can you find all four of them?



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

BRK #51

Another hot day, with temps reaching 102F. Had a fun, productive time with gardening this morning, sending out over 1300 gallons of water on the Basecamp hugels and the surrounding trees. In the afternoon we worked over at Fred's plot, came back to Basecamp for an excellent dinner prepared by Cory, and then I hosted board game night. Congrats to Magdalene for her hard-fought, hard-won victory in Phase 10! Fred and Hao were right on your tail.

Here are a few picture highlights from today and yesterday.

I operated Rex - the excavator - for my first time ever this week. We'd been working on a pump house project over at the Lab, and I did my first few scoops to remove some earth for where the foundation will be laid down. This might not look like much at first glance, but it's the first step in ensuring water continues to flow up at the Lab, even during the coldest times of the year. Caleb, Fred, and I did the excavator work, and Cory, Hao, and Grey also put their backs into shoveling and picking to finish the 7'x7'x10' pit. I'm personally excited to see the building take shape over the coming weeks.



I also have a few garden snapshots. Learning how to garden properly on a hugel bed has been a challenge, and I may grumble about the cats from time to time. But especially this month, the garden has been giving a lot back to us. Here's a top-down view from one of the Basecamp hugels I'm responsible for, and in the background Panda lounges in the shade. This patch in particular has a bunch of daikon, walking onion, and hairy vetch. There may also be (or eventually be) some red or golden clover cover crops.



Meanwhile, the "mini-terraces" I installed along the upper edge of the same hugel seems to be paying off, as well. Here are sprouts for some cover crops: more hairy vetch, alfalfa, and crimson clover.



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

BRK #52

It's a Friday, and I think it was just too damn fun. Lots of enjoyable experiences today. We flipped our typical schedule today so we could tackle wood harvesting in the first half of the day - before the temperature reached triple digits.

Cory led us in day two of firewood harvesting in the further reaches of the Lab. Fellow boot Hao was pretty awesome with both handling a chainsaw and driving Doug today, and in addition he snapped a photo of me where I look like I actually know what I'm doing (um, except for the fact that my safety glasses kinda sorta fell off...)



Here's what it looks like with us rolling back to Basecamp with a Doug-truck full of wood to buck and split:



The hot n' sweaty work was done prior to lunch. After that, it was back to the Lab for two rounds of watering the hugels. At some point the temps reached 103F or so (at least that was recorded at Basecamp, maybe it was higher than that at the Lab). Cory brought up the idea of planting some bulbs, and so the rest of us were inspired and hoped to see a potential Autumn harvest. Dez showed me an example of how to plant some Walking Onions. Here's a handful of 'em, which reminded me of the "Ultimate Nullifier" from ye olden days of The Fantastic Four comic books.



Seriously though, that handful of onions is chock-full of potential for plenty of onions to harvest. You can either stick them in the ground or simply toss them around (the way Nature does it), so I tried a little of both.

Meanwhile, Swamp Castle had a few visitors today. Here's one of them, trying hard not to be seen, and (confidentially-speaking) being terrible at it.



Here's another visitor, much better at concealment than the first. Can you find the White Cabbage Moth in this picture?



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

BRK #53

Well well well...! It was time for my first tent wash-out this past weekend. It was a surprise. Here's what my "front porch" looked like most of Sunday.



The rain fly of my main living space split from its moorings on the windward side, and that's currently an unsolved problem.



Fred remarked that the brief series of squalls that came past Wheaton Labs on Saturday afternoon was the most intense he remembers from the past seven years. So I could have had it a lot worse, I imagine. The tent didn't fare so well and I think I ought to replace it before too long. Visions of a wall tent are becoming clearer in my mind. A lot clearer than the horizon Sunday morning, it seems.



Meanwhile, I put more work into the towel-drying rack that will go into the Solarium. Just needs a bit more sanding until I can call it done. I'm pleased with the twine-wrapping work I did on most of the joints. Here's detail of what the front-facing edges all look like:



I'm investigating some other wrapping techniques and may do that for the back corners. I don't want to over-engineer the thing, but I do want it to look nice. Should someone have a suggestion for resources related to decorative wrapping and knotting, please pass it along. Thanks!

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

BRK #54

Today was an enlightening one. Gardening tasks in the morning with a light crew (two boots are on vacation leave), and gremlins seemed to have decided today was the perfect day for some mischief. Their range spread from the kitchen to the creek (where we sometimes draw water)... Had a review of The Big List of priorities with Paul today, and then wrapped-up the workday with some review and recon of junkpole fences. There were a number of them damaged from the recent storm, so we wanted to see what would be in store for us later this week when we put them back together.

(I had a weird colour filter on for these photographs. My apologies.)

In some cases, the wind buffeted the rock jacks so much that they dropped their rocks, causing the fences to blow over.



In other instances, the rock jacks weren't the problem. The beams, however, were old and worn-out. Something to keep in mind when we find materials to fabricate the new fences.





We then reviewed the design of a few successful, resilient rock jacks for inspiration. A couple general concepts to keep in mind as we build:
- The "arms" should be fastened on the inside the "legs," in most cases.
- The lower the arms/stage are to the ground, the sturdier it will be.
- The higher the legs begin on the main mast, the sturdier it will be.
- Strongly consider some additional bracing in the front area (picture below).
- If building on a drastic slope - like we will in this situation - you can consider a second or even a third stage to hold more rocks.
- Supports on the opposite side of the fence can be helpful, provided there's no footpath or other structure(s) that would be blocked by the additional bracing.

A couple examples we compared and contrasted are below, as a reference.





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