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

BEL #718

What a slobber-knocker of a week, eh? I have a few things to show for it. It's underwhelming to document things when it's mostly maintenance and upkeep tasks. I suspect a typical homesteader finds themselves in this position a fair amount: firewood preparations, vehicle maintenance, checking on the animals (someone's been hunting cats up at the Abbey lately), tidying-up, putting-away, and other day-to-day to-do-list items. Necessary, but not necessarily noteworthy.

One highlight is that we have SEPPer guests this entire month...! Alexandra and her kids are here for several weeks, and her husband is showing up later in the month. It's been lots of fun to have them around. Here's SEPPer Alex, sharpening a chainsaw in the Woodshop while I coach.



Firewood prep still happens over the cold season, though we won't be using it until next year. It's a satisfying job. One of my personal goals is to eventually replace the term "wedge" worldwide, with the accurate term "Pac-Man's Mouth." #goals



I've also been refining my barber-chair prevention technique, and I think I'm building my skills.



Finally: Here's the current state of the Gregorian Woodshed, up at the Lab. It's so nice to see it finally filled, and that's what I plan to have done prior to the start of the 2025 growing season.



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

This website is a lot less interesting without any active Boot journals. This is not to guilt trip Stephen into posting again, at all. Just an observation.

If there were more funds in the BEL, I think you would see a lot more boot journals.  https://permies.com/bel

Andy Ze wrote:This website is a lot less interesting without any active Boot journals. This is not to guilt trip Stephen into posting again, at all. Just an observation.

I wish I had an easy response to your comment here. I am tired, and I have been sick (seriously, some kind of sinus thing has been dogging me for weeks), and then I've been bogged down with maintenance tasks for like the past month and a half while prepping for an extended trip out of town.

On-boarding two past Boots who haven't stuck around has been a personal drain. Beyond that, I'm just not convinced that people want to see me feeding cats and chopping firewood, yet again. The boring/typical stuff takes up a lot of time and energy, as everyone knows, and it can't be ignored. I don't think it makes good photo or video, either.

When the growing season is here again, there ought to be more to share. As it happens, right now I'm en route to visiting relatives and on a Wheaton Labs "ambassador trip" kind of thing until early March (I call it "Stephen's Snowbirding & Sustainability Sojourn"). I will do my best to post things for you all once I'm back in town. It's not that I wouldn't have a use for the BEL money, trust me on that one.

Put out the call for a Wheaton Lab rat with a tough hide, willing to slog through the snow, tend fires, record temperatures; for the permaculture science record.
That is what I appreciated in past winters.