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

BEL #750

Here's the latest rough cut of the Boots' GAMCOD project. Enjoy...!


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

BEL #751

Looks like the Truly Passive Greenhouse is in need of water more than once a week nowadays... That's a great sign! Maybe I will harvest at least one of those massive daikon radishes after all. And it's only a short time before we can start seriously considering gardening outdoors.



I picked up gravel from the Boneyard, and over a dozen junk poles to take to the Bark Park today.



The fence at the Bark Park is approaching 75% complete.



Since the fence seems to be coming along at a smartish pace, I decided to turn my attention to the gate.



I think the design will look something like this. The angles are a bit crooked, but the goal is to stay parallel to the ground. I'll use a kind of mortise-and-tenon hinge that Paul has suggested, and that I actually saw implemented when I visited New Mexico earlier this year.



This is the tiniest "deadman" trench I've needed to dig in all my time here. Eventually the bottom support of the Bark Park's gate will be placed here.



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

BEL #752

Tidying-up and prepping for a total of five new Boots scheduled to arrive this Sunday, so it was mostly routine maintenance tasks today. However, I did have a bunch of "leftover" logs, and decided to do something with them today.

I sectioned-off a chunk from each of these eight logs for firewood. With the remainder, I decided to replace several of the busted solar lamps that line the driveway up to the house.



This is actually a revision on what we did a couple years ago for the Day of Light half-assed holiday. The original was a post with an almond-shaped cut made near the top, and then a round of wood at least an inch thick but close to a foot in diameter attached to the bottom.

We found a few things that went awry with the original design, and this iteration is something Paul and I had discussed in the past. It's a single piece, and maybe a bit shorter than the original. But the almond-shaped cut is still there, and the solar lamp is still there.



The end result is something that uses far fewer metal fasteners, and will likely resist weather better than its predecessor, owing to its larger size. Here's one of the new ones next to a fallen older model. Plus, with a shorter form factor there's less of a chance of people being blasted in the eyes at night when the solar lights activate.



That's all for now. There will be a massive team of Boots on Monday, should everything go as planned. We'll see...! Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #753

Day One with a new Boot crew, and it was fun, plus productive.

I decided we would harvest the daikon radishes in the Truly Passive Greenhouse. The vegetables were nowhere near as impressive as the foliage...



...However, we all decided to prepare a bunch of sunchokes and walking onions with those greens for this evening's dinner. Pictured here are new Boots Jared and Geoffrey. Seth's out of frame, but just like the rest of us he was up to his elbows in chopped onion greens.



In the afternoon, at Paul's request, the team headed out to clear out more of Complexity Trail. I introduced them to my favourite yardwork tool: the Pulaski.



Finally, I hardly ever use pictures of food I eat, however in a true garden-to-table maneuver these sunchokes were in the ground less than 12 hours ago. We sliced and then fried-up these sunchokes, and served them with the rest of our dinner: stewed walking onions, and onion and radish greens over rice.



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

BEL #754

Happy Taco Tuesday to you...!

To start off our day, we visited the Lemon Tree Site and the Dogstar. Here we are at the Lemon Tree Site, adding willow saplings - which look more like sticks than baby trees to me, but that's how willows work - to the base of the berm. We'll be visiting this site each day for at least a month to care for these trees as well as some sunchokes/Jerusalem Artichokes we added to the upper story of the berm.



We returned to Basecamp, and in the afternoon I made sure that everyone knew how to use a chainsaw. Here's Seth and Chris bucking logs to firewood length.



The team was crawling all over the berms at Basecamp before the close of the day. Here's some asparagus that someone spotted, just outside the Library. I've seen this patch for at least two years now, and there were a couple more spears in the same area, so maybe now we'll be able to manage harvesting it.



Also: Gold Star to both Jared and Auren today, for fixing the Basecamp hydrant. This is a MASSIVE weight off my shoulders. We can water plants without interruption now.



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