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

Thanks for the update! Really liked hearing those numbers, hoping for a strong finish

Radish pods are edible too!!
At 16 calories per cup, maybe that’s the plant which will push this GAMCOD over into the million calorie range

BEL #697

I'm 95% certain we made our last GAMCOD harvest today, as it turns out. Still working out the official numbers, but I'm comfortable saying we're north of 800K calories, and that the bulk of those by far are sunchokes.



I made some observations today during harvest. Our plants were inconsistent, even though they might have been only a few feet from one another. For example, here's a healthy sunchoke plant. Plenty of firm, rounded tubers. No strange odors or colours. It's everything we'd expect out of a sunchoke plant.



Meanwhile, this one had shades of green and purple on the tubers. Many of them were putrefying in the bunch. Lots of bugs. Ants crawling up and down the stalk. The tubers had lots of bore-holes in them from insects. Definitely something wrong here. Maybe this was one of the ones that tipped over too far. The colours and rotting could be signs of what might happen to sunchokes exposed to air and/or sunlight.



Even if we don't reach the 1 million calorie mark, I'm still pleased with the outcome. There was pretty much no soil at all in that hugel berm, and we still came up with lots of tasty edibles. A personal highlight of mine was  seeing those pumpkins sprawl all over the place, and then produce such lovely-looking gourds. This was also the first-ever hugel berm I ever built from scratch. It's pretty much the size I want to grow on, from now on.

Maybe we'll hit the goal, maybe not. I'm much more pleased with the process than the outcome, in this case.



Meanwhile, I'm grateful for the team "batting cleanup" for me on this project. The VoltsWagen, a portable power station, had a damaged hitch clip and I attempted to replace it today.



When I first assembled it, the ball wouldn't fit in the hitch, no matter what I tried.



Fortunately, Ben and Ringer Jennifer B took a close look at what I'd done, and fixed a mistake on some of the static, internal workings. The hitch is operating as expected now, and I'll be bringing the VoltsWagen down to Basecamp tomorrow.

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

BEL #698

First day of October, second day of frost this season. I've had to scramble a bit to harvest as much as possible before everything withers away. We're protecting more of the saplings and young trees, both at Basecamp and the Lab.



Another shout-out goes to Ben and Ringer Jennifer B for sorting out the issues with the hitch on the front of the VoltsWagen. I hooked it up today, took it slow and steady, and made it down the mountain with no problems.



Finally: first sauerkraut fermented cabbage I'd made since before the summer events. Straight purple cabbage. My hands are tinged blue from mashing it this evening. I'll always be grateful to my friend Austin for being the Ringer for Fermentation Day back in early 2023, as well as teaching the rest of the Boots and me all sorts of fermentation techniques.



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

BEL #699

First off: fare thee well, Chris! Thank you for being a Boot with us for several months. Best of success to you in Belize.

Today I shuttled Chris to the airport for his flight back east, then ran errands in town. I returned late in the afternoon, but still had time to take care of a few tasks before the day was done.

When SEPPers Derek and Suzanne were here, they helped with several tasks. One of the last they did prior to their departure was to process the pumpkins for our GAMCOD project. They cleaned and weighed the pumpkin flesh as well as the seeds separately, so we could do an accurate calorie count of our gourds. Then Suzanne was wonderful enough to slice the pumpkin into bite-size chunks, which were later transferred into the rocket-boosted dehydrator. I packed and labeled everything today. In addition to this pumpkin, they also sliced up and dashed with cinnamon a selection of apple slices. Thanks, Derek and Suzanne...!



Speaking of Derek, he and Chris started planting sunchokes on the Turtle Lot berm in the areas I'd finished the new berm trail. Since I'd finished the trail the rest of the way since then, I decided to start planting sunchokes on the rest of the berm as well.



I only had time to clear away the grass, however I'll use that as mulch when I do the rest of the planting tomorrow.



Finally: this might not seem like a big deal. But two things I'd like to mention: this is the first of the firewood I've brought in this season. Secondly, this small amount of wood will likely last us until the middle of November...! The rocket mass heater in the Fisher Price House is fantastic.



I just spent so much time off-site today that I really didn't have much to show in terms of projects, but sometimes that's how it goes.

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

BEL #700

(It's a major milestone...! :-D  )

It was time to close down the Corn Scoop today: a "sun scoop" planted exclusively with corn. Here's how it looked at the start of the harvesting:



Here's what it looked like afterward:



It was underwhelming, to speak frankly. I'm not fond of corn to begin with - I think of it as a nutrient hog that's always thirsty and doesn't do well in a polyculture at all - and the low yield we experienced was a tad discouraging. It's pretty clear that I hadn't thought-out the process well enough, and perhaps in the back of my mind I expected it to fail. Earlier this season, I was reminded of how grasses require some serious soil restoration if one expects to plant in the same location in successive years (specifically, regarding Sepp Holzer Grain, a rye grass), and this is just another reminder of me needing to pay more attention.



Chris had been massaging Judy, our big red truck, back to health prior to his departure yesterday, and so the baton was passed to me. So far the fuel filter and fuel pump have been replaced, with no success. So I checked the fuel injector today with something called a "noid lite." I kept thinking it had something to do with Domino's Pizza, yet I was completely wrong. Instead, you plug a light into the fuel injector's electric ports to detect a charge. All signs ended up nominal.



Our collective heads then ruled-out fuel problems, then went to electrical. I began inspecting the spark plugs. They look relatively new, and have no discernible corrosion, however they are quite oily. This is consistent with some of the other symptoms Judy is showing. I've decided that I'll remove all the spark plugs for a thorough cleaning, and inspect the cables. Hopefully after a wipe-down the engine will start.



Ben and Ringer Jennifer B noticed a slow leak with one of the tractor tires today. Hmm...



And I took a closer look at the leak in the Pump House up at the Lab they'd pointed out earlier in the week. I'll be addressing this tomorrow with some metal sealant and wire in the hopes that the leak is small and benign enough that a full replacement isn't required. That would be a significant job to undertake, particularly just before the colder temperatures kick in. We'll see.



Sometimes, it's all about patching things back up again after a long year where it seemed there was no time for maintenance, ain't it? At least I'll be practicing some worthwhile skills.

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