Grey's Bootcamp Journal

Day 13. Saturday August 14

The first time I backed my car into the corner of the Turtle lot, the rear tire made a divot in the sand when I tried pulling out. So, after almost two weeks, I finally got around to fixing it. I chipped away at the back wall of the lot to make gravel, moved it to the low spots, and raked the sand in the area level.

In the afternoon, Lara, Josiah and Fred introduced me to the thrilling expansion to a game with which I am quite familiar. I made some mis-plays, but had a good time.

Day 14. Sunday August 15

Went on an outing. Had a nice lunch, then tooled around a river. Lovely day

Day 15. Monday August 16

Kyle and I started in the morning harvesting grain—Sepp Holzer's hardy rye—planted atop the "berm shed" berm. It turned out to be one of my favorite experiences so far. That, coupled with the forecast for rain got me to spend another 4 hours harvesting after boot time.

In the afternoon, we made improvements to the wood racks attached to the library. Unfortunately, this required the removal of all the wood from a few of the cells.

What is sippy cup infiltration?

Keep the cat photos coming. Looks like my kind of community. Good choice. I entertained the idea of working at Masanobu Fukuoka's farm but he died before my retirement. Would love to be there but I live at the opposite end of the world tinkering with permaculture and low technology at my little garden laboratory.

I love that drill press.
I wonder if companies will start making metal and wood human-powered tools again?
I hope they do because you can't find many in Australia.

Hi Grey. I like your videos. Please more of these!

It can get pretty dry/low humidity up there Grey, be sure to drink enough water between meals in case dehydration was the cause of those headaches. Especially on those hot, sunny days working out there be sure to drink water even if you don't think you need it, when you feel thirsty you're already a bit dehydrated. It's nice to hear Dez is keeping an eye out too. Many years ago I saw some pretty dire, in-a-coma-for-3-weeks, results for a kid when people didn't pay attention for just half a day so now I'm perhaps overly cautious about it.

It's great seeing new faces show up, I hope to see you in March when I head up there! Paul has a great program going there and I hope you find it to be a great fit!

Roger Engstrom wrote:What is sippy cup infiltration?

Part of boot gardening is watering the hügels, which are covered in growies and straw mulch. When spraying water from a hose or sprinkler, the mulch blocks most of the water from reaching the soil where the growies' roots are. To infiltrate water more effectively, we allow a drip of water at specific points on the hügel. At those spots, we have a so-called sippy cup: a pit just big enough to fit your forearm in, packed with sawdust, wood chips or straw and topped with gravel. Does that answer your question, Roger?

Edward Lye wrote:Keep the cat photos coming. Looks like my kind of community. Good choice. I entertained the idea of working at Masanobu Fukuoka's farm but he died before my retirement. Would love to be there but I live at the opposite end of the world tinkering with permaculture and low technology at my little garden laboratory.

I'll make sure Master Zeke and the Vicious one get their deserved attention. I'm very pleased to be here, and quite grateful for the opportunity to live like this. While I'm not aware of anywhere you can get as sweet of a deal as the Bootcamp here, there's nothing unique to just this one place. We're all making the journey on our own path, and Wheaton Labs is a really awesome point of convergence for many of us. And ain't it great we have this platform on the intwewebs for us to share our experience and experiments!?

Alex Pine wrote:I love that drill press.
I wonder if companies will start making metal and wood human-powered tools again?
I hope they do because you can't find many in Australia.

There's something to that, Alex. Why does it seem so difficult to manufacture the kind of tools that can last for decades without any kind of trouble and for centuries with careful maintenance? We have these artifacts that we've inherited from our ancestors. Do we not have all the resources that they had access to back then, now with much more availability? I think as more people catch up to what we've left behind, we'll start to see brilliant people bringing lost arts back to life.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Hi Grey. I like your videos. Please more of these!

Thank you, Inge, I'll make lots more videos!

Mark Brunnr wrote:It can get pretty dry/low humidity up there Grey, be sure to drink enough water between meals in case dehydration was the cause of those headaches. Especially on those hot, sunny days working out there be sure to drink water even if you don't think you need it, when you feel thirsty you're already a bit dehydrated. It's nice to hear Dez is keeping an eye out too. Many years ago I saw some pretty dire, in-a-coma-for-3-weeks, results for a kid when people didn't pay attention for just half a day so now I'm perhaps overly cautious about it.

It's great seeing new faces show up, I hope to see you in March when I head up there! Paul has a great program going there and I hope you find it to be a great fit!

Mark, you're right, and I know the perils of not being able to cool down. It took my body 14 years to start doing the perspiration thing it's supposed to do, strange as it sounds. Replenishing electrolytes and spraying water directly onto my face is key for me. The general dryness here makes evaporative cooling super effective. It is feeling like a good fit here, and I hope to see you too!

Tuesday we tidied up, finished the wood racks, and finished harvesting the grain before the rain.

Wednesday morning went to The Lab to cycle the game cams. Some height adjustments to the Solarium posts in the afternoon

Thursday I remembered to take pictures, so here they are!