BEL Post #10 (double digits!)
Happy "hump day" Permies! It is odd to think that in my past life only a few months ago, Wednesdays held more significance as it represented having more than half the work week done. When the stress was high (which it often was), finishing Wednesday was a significant work week milestone. Why do jobs have to be only about looking forward to getting past the halfway point and the (hopeful) "glide" to the weekend. Let's just say that one of my motivations for my significant life change was driven by these thoughts. I can't say I have experienced the same longing here at WL -- honestly, I find it harder to keep track of the days of the week of the time of the day. I think my only anchor, right now, when it comes to time is looking forward to being reunited with my family before we all collectively take this journey together.
This "hump day" also happened to be the half-assed holiday
Johnny Appleseed Day. So while the second half of our day was to be focused on activities aligned to the holiday, we started our morning up at the Abbey feeding the cats and moving forward the repair of the floor. Specifically, today was the start of repairing the cob earthen floor. Given the depth of the majority of the repairs, we decided that the fix was going to need to take place over the next few days. Today, we reconstituted some of the cob we removed from the damaged floor and started to fill in the gaps between the new hickory plank as well as the tool access cuts we had to make in order to pin the plank to the log. I would estimate that we have two more days of working on the cob floor to get to a finish top layer that will eventually go through the linseed treatment.
Next, as an alternative to costly (and disposable) sandpaper, Stephen introduced us to the card scrapper. The best way to think of it is a piece of steel that you can drag across the surface of wood to scrap (and in some cases plane) the surface similar to a drawl knife but much less material is removed. The reason why this works is all in the preparation of the scrapper. First, it requires a clean and "squared" edge to be established. This can be done with a file, but in watching a video on YouTube University, we discovered that a jig can help to significantly improve this step. So, when we got to the workshop, I made the jig that holds the file and establishes a right angle to assist in the steps to prepare the scrapper. After filing the edge, it must be further polished to a very fine finish, so fortunately, the jig made for the file can also be used to assist in this step to hold the established right angled edges. Finally, the scrapper gets burnished on either side with a burnishing rod (which can be any rod-like tool as long as it is harder than the scrapper) by running the rod at a slight angle along the edge of the scrapper with it lying flat on the table. This creates a microscopic burr along the edge of the scrapper. Finally, the burnishing rod is used across the narrow edge of the scrapper to bend down the burr established in the previous step causing it to "hook over" (you can feel it with your fingernails) and create the feature used to scrap fine wood shavings from surfaces. As a budding wood worker, I was glad to have the opportunity and learn to use the card scrapper. There is nothing like causing beautifully curled shavings when using a well prepared tool
. I even came back down after the day was done and redid the preparation process for the scrapper and played around more with using it.
For Johnny Appleseed Day (JAD), Stephen planned for us to head up to the Labs and start a fruit tree "nursery" at Dances with Pigs Meadow. We identified a spot, raked back last season's dried grasses, removed established grass roots and exposed the soil, collected mulch in the form of the dried grasses from around the area, planted our seeds (apple, apricot, and plum), mulched around the seeded area (for wind protection and water retention), and then put up a fence around it to keep out the deer. Given that we have plenty of precipitation in the forecast, no watering was necessary
. The plan will be start these fruit trees off here in the Meadow and once established, move them to locations behind fences around the Labs.
Next up on JAD, we regrouped at basecamp and worked together to cut apples and start an apple cider vinegar fermentation. The hope is that in 6-8 weeks that we have our own homemade apple cider vinegar to add to the pantry!
Lastly, we prepared more apples and pancake batter to make apple pancakes! I was able to enjoy mine with some honey that Stephen brought home from his travels earlier this year where he visited Permies friends in North Carolina. Thanks for the wonderful and tasty gift!
I am looking forward to more progress at the Abbey on the floor tomorrow and the other efforts I can help move forward! Thanks for reading!!
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