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

BEL #692

Happy Taco Tuesday to you...!!!

Day 2 with SEPPers Derek and Suzanne, as well as Ringer Jennifer B. Lots of progress with the finicky Pump House issues, plus end-of-season harvesting and preservation.

The team gathered up the yield from two more sunchoke plants at the Boots' GAMCOD project hugel, totaling over 11pounds. Quite impressive, in my opinion. We have some thinly-sliced and drying in the rocket-boosted dehydrator, some pickling in jars, and the remainder set aside for planting in various locations here at Basecamp.



We visited Dances With Pigs Meadow earlier today, gathering up mulch to add round the trees and on the roof of Allerton Abbey. Thanks to Derek for volunteering his truck to haul us and the mulch all around the Lab.





Also up at the Lab, I visited several of the trees in an effort to spread bone sauce on several trees. Sometime over the weekend, one of the gates somehow fell open, allowing deer and other critters inside the fence. They nibbled some sunchokes and many, many trees. Hopefully our new batch of bone sauce will help prevent so much damage in the future.



Finally: I posted this photo in a handful of other places at Permies, so what's one more? I picked up snow tires for our newest truck, Roy, today. They were funded by Deane Adams. Thank you so much, Deane...!



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

BEL #693

The larger team did some GAMCOD project harvesting today. Here's Suzanne digging up one of our potato plants.



Unfortunately, we didn't have much of a yield from that one plant. Maybe the others have more promise. I think the taters facing southwest ought to have something to show for our efforts. We'll see.

Meanwhile, we did a partial data collection regarding our current harvest, based on weight. There are some questions we have regarding caloric content (for example, there's a significant difference between pumpkin flesh and pumpkin seeds) but for now, we're going with basic calorie counts. It will be greater, provided we itemize our pumpkins, though that would require we process them and there wasn't time for that today.

Numbers are based on the nutritional content listed at USDA dot gov.

PUMPKINS: 3,823.82 calories (not counting pumpkin seeds)
POTATOES: 1,333.08 calories
SUNCHOKES: 18,088 calories
Current GAMCOD total: 22,704 calories

If we had 19 more identical plots with this current harvest (as in, we would have grown this much over one acre of garden), we would have generated 454,908 calories so far. I'm not confident we'll have five different vegetables/fruits to include, however I think the experience of building a hugel by hand and then cultivating such a haul of vegetables is still an admirable accomplishment.



Meanwhile, I took it upon myself to dig another hugel berm pathway today. Paul requested more sunchokes be planted at the peak of the Turtle Lot berm, facing the road. So in order to reach it without walking all over it, I started a path about five feet below the peak of the hugel, on the road-side of the berm. It's about 66% roughed-out right now, and I have about 50 feet to go.



I'm looking forward to more sunchokes growing up there, particularly since I've seen what they've done on the GAMCOD plot. Overall, this season has been a good one for sunchokes. Next season, we'll be sure to add bone sauce to the stalks once they achieve a decent height, especially since these aren't behind a fence and we're practically inviting deer in for a snack. These sunchokes will be... defenceless.



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

BEL #694

No video update today. I'll have to save that for tomorrow or over the weekend or something. I was diverted by some needed repairs today.

In the morning, Chris, Derek, Suzanne and I gathered junk poles from a couple sites and brought them to the under-construction Bark Park.



The roof rack on Roy works excellently.



The team sorted out the fencing, and it's coming along nicely. I hope we chip away at this in the coming weeks, and if it's still not done then we'll finish it off during the Junk Pole Fence & Bark Park Theme Week later this year.



A section of junk pole fence had toppled during last night's rain up at the Lab. I reported out there with the needed equipment and set to work.



I took a break for lunch, and by then things were taking shape.



I decided to experiment with a pair of narrower-diameter horizontal supports. Since we're using a pneumatic nailgun to fasten the fencing together, I wanted to try this kind of assembly (nails last longer than screws for this kind of work). I picked two narrow-diameter poles and used them as the center horizontal support, attaching them to several vertical supports and even each other.

It will be nice if this works out, since the nails we now use have a shorter length than the screws we would use in the past. Plus, it's easier for a solo Boot to manage attaching these narrower poles.



From the outside, it looks just the same as any other segment of junk pole fence.



Once I was done, I loaded everything onto the trailer towed by an ebike. Ben and Ringer Jennifer B were also busy at Allerton Abbey this afternoon, and just so happened to require the service of the air compressor. So my final trailer-load was without the compressor, and therefore much easier to manage.



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

BEL #695

I'm beat after finishing this berm path today. It stretches across the front of Turtle Lot (one of the parking areas), facing the road. The goal is to be able to grow sunchokes atop the berm without trampling the plants or compressing the soil. So the path is built so that someone can reach across and access the peak of the berm without straining. It's roughed-out now, though I hope it's now wide enough for easy walking.

(also highlights my favourite digging tool: the Pulaski!)



Lots of heavy moving at Wheaton Labs today, besides. We elected to move the VoltsWagen power station down to Basecamp, and will be able to finish it next week. For now, it's staged at Tipi Road up at the Lab. We needed to make sure it was ready for moving, so a tire check was in order.



Big THANKS to Derek and Suzanne: two SEPPers who helped us every single day this week! Derek used his big truck to persuade the VoltsWagen into an accessible position.



Ben and Ringer Jennifer B prepped Leviathan (another power station) for a move as well. Ben and I disassembled the Sawmill for the move to its new location.



Meanwhile: one of our neighbours was just bored all day.



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

BEL #696

Here's a video update on the Boots' GAMCOD Project at Wheaton Labs. I think we'll have done the final harvest by the middle of next week.



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