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

BRK #70

All-Nighter Edition!!!

...Well, I call it that because one of the photos I'm including was from the middle of the night last night. Pearl decided to try his luck in scaling my tent, but managed to climb between the tent itself and the rain fly. So the image here is of looking at Pearl from inside my tent, as he's standing on a see-through mesh - and clearly confused by the phenomenon. What a goofball.



Monday morning eventually rolled around, and after our boot meeting we all had a chance to see the sun through the smoke. It was a brilliant, vibrant scarlet colour, and unfortunately this photo really doesn't do it justice.



Next up, today Grey and I were working on the vertical posts for the Pump House project over at the Lab. Our goal today was to size up some cross-members for support of the building and its walls. In this photo, Grey carves out a horizontal notch after I zipped-out some guides for him with the chainsaw.



We completed gardening tasks in the afternoon. While investigating Basecamp Too - the road-side hugel I'm caretaking, I smiled a bit at the volunteer squash. It's fruiting right now despite being a relatively tiny plant. There's one I hope to harvest on Thursday, and then I noticed two additional fruits currently growing. Everything's looking healthy over there, with Empress Mullein presiding over it all.



Finally, I want to say thank you to Dez for being a fantastic mentor and sharing a metric ton of insight with me over these past several weeks. I'm wishing you the best for your Freedom Day, and I hope the boot camp can live up to the standards and foundation you've been instrumental in creating.

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

BRK #71

Another Taco Tuesday has come and gone. With a full belly, I submit to you these few photographs of a little of what went on today.

In the first half of the day, Hao and I chipped-away at a couple handiwork projects specific to Cooper Cabin. Here's Hao with his first time at the drill press. These wooden bits will be eventually used to raise the bunk beds off the floor, to provide more space for storage.



The second half of the day was spent gardening over at the Lab. There's a lot of talk about how to maximize productivity before a hard frost takes over - though with this week's weather, you wouldn't expect it. We did have our first frost - at least at Basecamp - this past Saturday, so the health of the plants, how to preserve the heat they've been exposed to, and how long we can hold out until harvesting are the subjects we're all discussing lately.

Swamp Castle seems to be doing all right. There are more desirable plants there now than when I first started caretaking it, at least.



Here's a shot of one of the deer-bitten sunchokes over at Swamp Castle. It seems to be recovering okay. In the background you can see the rear door of Allerton Abbey.



Some of the stalks of those sunchokes and sunflowers are impressive. Here are two examples. The ones on the left are sunchokes growing on Cricket Hill, while the ones on the right are the two very tall sunflowers at Swamp Castle.



Speaking of those sunflowers, they finally bloomed! I think one of them is over 9 feet tall. Quite a nice specimen, and I hope to preserve some seeds from it.



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

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:BRK #68

Pollinator Edition...!

Looks like the winged assistants are out and about these days, putting in the last desperate hours of work before the first frost. There were even a few I noticed catching brief naps: sitting in the center of large blossoms, completely still. They're all working hard. I caught a few snapshots of them while we worked the hugels out at Allerton Abbey on the Lab today.

Here's a big, fat bee doing some acrobatics  on a comfrey plant this afternoon.



Here's another bee sitting - I think - within the blossoms of a Jerusalem Artichoke. In the past few weeks I learned that if you harvest after the first frost, the sunchokes have a bit more flavour. We're all holding out the best we can for the cold weather to impart that little bonus before we start gathering them up.



This yellow jacket is checking out some flowering Tansy. In general, these bugs have been troublesome to several of the boots this season, though personally I have yet to be stung. Maybe if I stay dirty enough, they'll think I'm just a moving rock or something.



Here's another bee on a flowering Jerusalem Artichoke. I've noticed that the dark purple-stalked variety seem to be flowering much sooner than the green-stemmed kind. However, the green-stemmed variety seems to grow taller. When we finally harvest, it will be interesting to see the differences in what they produce.



Another Jerusalem Artichoke, this one a birds-eye view of a flowering specimen with several more buds waiting to pop open.



Finally, here's one of the sunflowers from Swamp Castle, the one too big to fit in my last photo attempt from earlier this week. I assume that - when we return on Tuesday - it'll have completely opened.



Dez, Hao and I closed-up a few more breaches in the junkpole fence surrounding Allerton Abbey at the close of the afternoon today. Our hope is that all these plants will remain unmolested by deer, and then we'll have a decent harvest in the weeks to come. We were also gifted a large braid of garlic from the Missoula Farmer's Market (thanks, Samantha!), and those will go in the ground late next week, at both Basecamp and the Lab.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and make it a wonderful weekend...!

Hi Stephen,

I’m really loving the Jerusalem artichokes and the giant sunflower. I took this of my Velvet Queen for you. It must have been great to have all of that cosmos! I grew Cosmos Tango this year. I’m hoping when the weather cools a bit it will flourish more.

Gemma Boyd wrote:I’m really loving the Jerusalem artichokes and the giant sunflower. I took this of my Velvet Queen for you. It must have been great to have all of that cosmos! I grew Cosmos Tango this year. I’m hoping when the weather cools a bit it will flourish more.

What an impressive array of flowers... And those carrots look amazing! They're destined for a salad or stew in short order, I presume.

BRK #72

Wednesdays are all designated as Project Day. Surprisingly, we've had rain lately and at least for today irrigation is a bit lower on the priority list. So the boot team took care of our regular long-standing projects, along with wrapping-up a few loose ends.

In the first part of the day, Hao and I worked together on coming up with handles for the boxes he and Cory had built for storage in Cooper Cabin. Here are two of the ones I made. I test-fit them on a few scraps before bringing them over to the cabin. Hao's look impressive, with a much more "natural" look than my own. When the full complement of boxes are complete, I'll be sure to include a photo of all of them in a row.



On our way over to Cooper Cabin, we stopped by to check out progress with the Pump House project. Here, Caleb and Grey are discussing wall supports and various measurements with Jeff (hidden behind the vertical post in this picture).



Dez and Fred were busy over at Cooper Cabin with Fred's tongue-and-groove flooring project. This was the first time I had a chance to see the process in action, and it was interesting. Here, Fred and Dez do test-fittings on some of the boards they just completed moments before.



Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Hao's and my Willow Feeder Patrol session. This was Hao's first tour of Willow Feeder Duty, and despite the dirty work, it was still fun.



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