evan's ant village log

Day 51

Planted lots of seeds in my new little hugel beds before, during, and after a good bit of rain. These seeds are a few years old, so we'll see how they do, but they came with me all the way from Bardo Farm, a survivor's enclave in the midst of the zombie-infested rainforests of New Hamshire.

In those same beds a comfrey transplant from Fred is already perking up, putting on new growth, and hosting new spider tenants, only a day after getting back in the ground. Go comfrey!

Day 52

After going through and checking and greasing all the zerks, that same track popped off the excavator again, twice! And Brian saw it happen the last time and he said I wasn't doing anything stupid enough to justify losing a track. So it might be something weird with the machine. My being a poor excavator operator may not be the reason after all.

Did some laundry in a hand-crank washing machine down at basecamp this evening. My socks have been cleaner, but it's a pretty neat device.

Day 53

Fred and I went into Missoula today to pick up a few things and check out the Saturday market. It was good to spend the day off the land, and the market was a lively and bountiful display of emergent order and voluntary exchange. Delicious food, beautiful people, and tons of art and live music.

While in town, we decided to see if we could do a little dumpster-diving for free food and such. It's amazing what gets thrown away. Besides a perfectly good turnip, some yummy sprouted bread, and a case of organic coconut milk creamer, we also found a box of books! We got a book by Herman Hesse, one by Laura Huxley, and a collection of works by Henry David Thoreau! I was particularly happy about that find, as Thoreau is one of my all-time personal heroes. Also, Fred found a black locust tree from which he gathered some seeds! Awesome!

Day 54

James arrived early for the upcoming PDC, and he gave me some apple and pear seeds he sprouted! Thanks James!

I spent much of the day planting apple and pear seeds all over Ava, and planting black locust seeds along key sections of Ava's borders. I tried to make sure to plant only where I was pretty sure I wouldn't go back in later and disturb them with the excavator etc., but parts of my master plan are still fuzzy, so some might accidentally end up buried or uprooted. Even if only a few come up out of the hundreds that I planted, it'll be worthwhile. Gifts to the future Ava.

Day 55

Spent most of the day down at basecamp, where James and I took apart the compost pile and then put it back together. The pile had a big metal frame in the middle that was supposed to support a coil of poly tubes, the idea being to run water through them for hot showers and whatnot. The water wasn't getting hot enough though, hence the taking the pile apart. After digging out the compost and exposing the frame, it became apparent that the coil of tubes had slipped down to the bottom of the pile, below where most of the thermophilic action was taking place. So we moved the coil back up and wired it into place before we rebuilt the pile. We'll see in a couple days whether or not this did the trick.

As I write this, it's quite rainy and windy, and the tarp that I live under is flapping around like crazy. I would take a picture so y'all can see, but it's dark so just take my word for it. Too bad I'm so slow in getting my debris hut built. So many other things seem to keep popping up and taking priority, but hopefully tomorrow I can get back to it.

Day 56

It rained all morning and I didn't make much progress on my debris hut, but lots of other noteworthy things occurred. So a couple weeks back I spilled a bunch of quinoa on the ground, which at the time made me quite distraught, because quinoa isn't cheap. But today I noticed that it's growing! I'm growing quinoa. How about that.

Abe, a local farmer and friend of Wheaton Labs, offered to bring a potbelly pig to the upcoming PDC so that participants will be able to get some experience butchering. The thing is, the pig will need a place to stay for the week or so between arriving and visiting the big wallow in the sky. I would like that place to be Ava, in order to benefit from the fertilizing, rooting, pond-making, and other work pigs tend to do. So my priorities have shifted once again, and now building a pig-proof paddock before the PDC is my prime priority. I'm thinking the lowest point on Ava, the southwesternmost corner, adjacent to Avalon, is gonna be Hamelot. James and I started cutting down and limbing up some little saplings for the fence around Hamelot.

While using a bowsaw, I managed to slice open my thumb. Luckily, wherever one is on the lab, yarrow can be found growing within about a hundred feet. I plucked some leaves, chewed one up and pressed the mush into my wound, then took another leaf and wrapped it around like a bandaid. Within just a minute, the bleeding had stopped entirely. Yarrow is definitely one of my favorite plants.

Hey Evan,
Any book requests that some of us permies could fulfill for you? Assuming you have time to read once the sun sets

Do you have an electronic reader? If so, which one? Can you use Kindle books?

Day 57

My level of industriousness seems to wax and wane somewhat unpredictably over the course of days and weeks. But this morning I woke up feeling pretty darn waxy, and I managed to get 55 trees cut down, dragged over, and delimbed before noon. If I can maintain such a pace, I should have all the materials I need to fence in Hamelot well before Sir Chops arrives. And all the limbs I'm removing should make nice comfy bedding for him too.

I spent the afternoon helping Brian and James with dismantling and rebuilding a skiddable structure and, when it was raining, with dismantling the interior walls of wofati 0.8. It's much brighter and more open-feeling in there now. Brian is talking about using the wood from the walls we took down to make some log furniture, which would be sweet.

I should probably try to set aside time for reading, but I also want to spend more time working on the story I'm writing. There's just not enough hours in the day. As far as the lovely people who want to send books, as much as I am tempted to request a couple novels my friend has been recommending, I think it would be better if folks sent books to Fred instead. He's been really good about taking awesome pictures and then following up with actually trying to identify the species pictured. He's made some requests for books in the gapper love thread, and he's sure to put them to good use, so I'm happy to redirect book love his way.

Day 58

Got some more work done cutting and limbing little trees for the Hamelot fence, and then I worked with Brian and James on building that skiddable structure. We got the posts and beams up, now we'll just need to shingle the roof and throw some side walls on there.

Had a delicious meal of sweet potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, black beans, wildcrafted greens, and avocado for dinner tonight. Mmmhmm. Fred and I have been collaborating on dinner fairly regularly, since he's an actual legit vegan, and I happen to be an experimental vegan at the moment. On that note, the experiment is going well so far. I haven't really noticed a difference in my energy levels or my general health, and I haven't had any real cravings for animals or animal products. I feel fine, and I guess the only downside so far has been the minor social inconveniences my diet has occasionally caused when dining with omnivores. That said, I'm only about halfway through the experiment, so we'll see how it goes.