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

I've found this video helpful for understanding gate design.  

BEL #772

Here's a video update about an experiment we carried out on the dehydrators we have on site.

Which does the best at drying throughout the Spring? Make your predictions now.



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

BEL #773

A couple highlights from today.

The team (from left: JP, Catherine, Seth) started off by harvesting some junk poles to polish off the fence at the Bark Park: our dog pen, behind the Dogstar cabin. JP and Seth were on that project, and later reported that the fence is done...! All that remains is the gate.



Buoyed by their success, I proposed a plan to fasten the gate to the fence at the Bark Park, where we would use no metal fasteners. After fielding a few questions and bouncing a few solutions around, we came up with this. Maybe it'll make more sense once we finish it and can show it off to the rest of the world. However, this is the sketch that shows how the upper portion of the gate connects to the pole.

Essentially, we're sandwiching the gate between the foot-board at the bottom (a log surrounded by gravel) to a wooden cap on the top. The gate has a tenon, the wooden cap has a mortise. The cap is secured to the vertical post of the fence with a graduated/angled wedge that feeds through both the cap and the post. The wedge is secured by a wooden pin. The whole thing makes me think of the head of a hatchet for some reason.



Meanwhile, in the afternoon JP and I felled what's likely my largest tree to date. It's one of the trees near Raspberry Rock. Since we want to cultivate a bunch of raspberry bushes up there (for real, for real this time), removing all the pine trees from the vicinity is a worthwhile task. We estimate that it's somewhere north of 70 feet tall, and will find out once we section it off and haul it down the mountain.



The tree was so long that it stretched across the mountain road that leads up to the Caldera/top of the mountain. Before we wrapped this task for the day, we made sure to haul off enough logs to clear the path.



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

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:Since we want to cultivate a bunch of raspberry bushes up there (for real, for real this time), removing all the pine trees from the vicinity is a worthwhile task.

Mind if I probe the reasoning behind this? Raspberry brambles are rampant throughout my pine plantation. They seem like ideal companions, at least with Red Pines on sandy soil...

Do you find 'goat mode' is reasonably successful at mulching out the grass regrowth? I'm contemplating the same process on my new mini hugel. The original turf is growing back through the soil. I think I have 'onion grass': a sort of couch relative that grows from bulb like tubers and can be very persistent! I think I will need extra material to mulch out the grass.