click here to see the official bootcamp web page!
Most of the information is on that page. This thread is mostly for discussion.
Let's make sure you are in the right place:
permaculture bootcamp: 40 hours a week elbow-to-elbow with others seeking the same thing. Get a warm bunk and organic food with your gardening and natural building experiences. All of your effort is to benefit yourself and future boots. Kinda school-ish. If this is what you are looking for, you found the right web page!
the sepper program: Rent a humble cabin for a few days or weeks. Participate in the bootcamp as much or as little as you like. Maybe you come as a couple and one person works online while the other is in the bootcamp. For more information
click here.
2024 PTJ Postcard - a taste of what goes on at Wheaton Labs:
A recent bootcamp project:
A recent winter bootcamp project:
Solutions for people
Some people buy land and do this, only to hate it and take a big loss. The bootcamp eliminates the financial burdens while giving people a chance to try it out. And we hope that this way has less chance of hating it.
Some people ache to get into homesteading, but cannot afford the land to even try. Not only does this give you a taste, but there are paths to land.
Some people make the leap into this stuff and discover they thought they would be a superstar at this, but end up just not putting in the hours. The 40 hours per week of the bootcamp, side-by-side with like minded folks helps to develop good, industrious habits.
Some people are plenty industrious and have good, industrious habits, but they are sick of doing this alone.
Some people desperately crave wholesome substance and a bit of time outdoors.
Some people feel they are currently living a gray life, with a gray job, eating gray food. They live in the brown cloud of the city, eating from foods they know are loaded with toxins, and they know the water from the tap contains chlorine, fluoride and a buffet of other things. Their world seems to have a new flavor of sleaze every day. The bootcamp gets you out of all of that.
Some people are about to graduate high school and do NOT want to take on the massive debt of college. Nor do they want to enter the bottom rung of the work force. The bootcamp will be an excellent fit after high school.
Some people ache for community and we have that.
Some people have tried community living and were frustrated:
... by a community that accomplishes very little. A group of people chipping away at things 40 hours a week adds up to getting a lot done.
... that too many other people consumed but didn't contribute. The bootcamp has a solid 40 hours per week from everybody.
... by 12 hours a week of decision making meetings that were mostly drama. Our replacement for that takes about ten minutes per week.
A new recipe for building community
We changed our policies a while ago. The only people allowed to do our ant village program or our deep roots program must spend a minimum of six months on the bootcamp first.
overview
We have 220 acres. We spend our days gardening and building stuff to our standards. In the winter we heat our buildings with rocket mass heaters (we have more than a dozen). We are the host for the annual "Permaculture Technology Jamboree" - and in a way, the bootcamp build those same things all year. We even get quite a few experts stopping by from time-to-time.
We have a different way we do things. Our gardens feature a lot of hugelkultur. The homes we build are made of logs and mud. Zero cement, paint or glue.
People come to hang out in the bootcamp for a week or two to immerse themselves in this form of living. Some come for months. Some come for years.
95% of the work done is to benefit the current boots or the future boots. Growing gardens to produce the food of the bootcamp. Building habitat for the bootcamp. Caring for tools that are used by the bootcamp. Etc.
a little jingle in your pocket
COIN-1: Several boots have harvested hundreds of dollars by posting pics and videos of theirs experiences here in the
BEL program (most recent payout was 5 digits).
COIN-2: You can shoot videos for Paul's YouTube channel. Details
here.
COIN-3: After a few weeks (once we think you can do stuff on your own), talk to us about some bounties for coin. There are several little projects we are willing to pay for. A person could earn a few hundred bucks per month on evenings and weekends.
COIN-4: And if there is a special tool or bit of warm clothes you would like to have, the
boots love program has proven to be quite generous.
COIN-5: When people need a ride to and from the airport a person with a rig could harvest pick-up and drop-off bounties. (Normally $20 one way during normal hours and $50 for crazy hours)
COIN-6: When a boot is here long enough, they can harvest some coin giving tours.
COIN-7: Grow your own weekend garden and sell your produce for events.
COIN-8: Some ants and deep roots people have paid for help with their plots - building and gardening.
COIN-9: We have a neighbor that sometimes needs some construction help and has paid for that on evenings and weekends.
COIN-10: Some residents in the past have set up patreon accounts and made a few hundred bucks a month posting videos and pics.
COIN-11: When you have a plot to play with, you can build a fence and some gardens and a structure. And then you can sell those improvements to somebody else.
COIN-12: Grow a 200 square foot garden and harvest the fat payout for the
2025 GAMCOD project.
the tie-in to the PEP program
The estimates are that a person participating in the bootcamp might get PEP1 certified in about 10 to 12 weeks. We're thinking half of the BBs would be harvested during project labor and the other half would be on evenings and weekends. More about the PEP program
here.
An interview with people that had been in the bootcamp program, about the bootcamp program
audio only.
Bits and bobs that might be of interest to new boots:
A summary of all things Wheaton Labs
Bootcamp Experience log
the Wheaton Labs forum
click here for the complete FAQ
Here you can get an idea of 65 different things that the boots have created in about 9 minutes
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