evan's ant village log

Day 107

Made a bit of progress on prepping Siesta to take the side walls, and then headed over to Allerton Abbey to help with the cobbing. First I was smooshing up cow pies and sifting them through a screen with Burra and Josh, and then Erica and I were sifting rocks out of the ready-mixed cob. It's good to be getting this experience with cob, since I plan to be cobbing the gaps in Siesta before long.

Day 108

Spent the day working on Allerton Abbey. It was super fun stomping cob and smearing it into the walls with such lovely permies. Erica and Ernie are great teachers. And it was cool to meet and work with the permies staff members: John, Julia, and Cassie. What an awesome community!

Its great watching your progress Evan, keep it up:)

Day 109

Lots more cobbing at Allerton Abbey. Ernie taught folks how to notch, trim, rebale, and tie straw bales, and the first few bales are in place now.

Radar, Erica and Ernie's dog, was quite an affectionate, if not helpful, member of the cobbing crew. He found a bone for lunch, and the rest of us got to chow down on tons of goodies that Jocelyn sent up and Carol-Anne prepared. Yum! Thanks y'all!

Day 110

Huckleberries! Cassie, John, Julia, Fred, and I all went up to the huckleberry spot and picked and ate juicy blue and purple and black huckleberries, and there were even a few ripe red thimbleberries too!

I'm thinking I'd like to try dehydrating some hucks in an attempt to preserve them. Maybe if it works and I can exercise some superhuman willpower, I'll even be able to keep some until next September. Huckleberry raisins seem like a good start to a calorie stockpile.

Kelly Ware brought a ton of plants from her gardens! Sedum, sunchokes, maples, poppies, an oak, catnip, comfrey, irises, lilies, and a few more I can't even remember! A bunch went into the hugels at basecamp, the oak went in near the tipi up on the lab, and lots were split among the ants. Sweet! Thanks Kelly!

So there's been a sign above the door to Paul's office for a while now, and while it proudly proclaimed "The Barony of Bacon," it was made out of cardboard and sharpie, which seemed incongruous to me. So I went ahead and replaced it with a wood-burned sign I made. Much better.

Day 111

Got some good rain today, just in time to water all those plants from Kelly. All the growies look so happy!

Did a bit more wood burning. Paul's already got a sign on his electric golf cart thingy that says "The Dukemobile." It's usually parked in the garage next to his office, so Brian asked me to make a sign to put above the garage door saying "The Duke Cave." I took some liberty with the shape of the sign.

Also gave some folks a tour that are thinking about doing the ant thing! Spots are filling up fast, not to mention winter's coming soon, so if you're thinking about anteing up, I'd recommend getting on it.

Supposedly it'll be sunny tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to pulling the tarps down and getting back to work on Siesta.

Day 112

This morning I helped Josh and then Curtis mark out the back borders of their ant plots with a 100ft tape. Then Josh helped me carry a few 20ft logs over to Siesta for my side walls. I spent a little while digging out the areas where the side walls will go. I should have levelled my floors, (plus a foot or two outside of them,) properly with the excavator or tractor before I put in posts and whatnot. Would have been much easier than shoveling. Let that be a lesson to future ants and builders. Learn from my foolish mistakes.

Now I'm thinking I might leave a slight slope for drainage, since it goes downhill, and just start building the bottom foot or so of side wall with stone and cob. Of course, my plans and designs change constantly, (remember when I was talking about building an octagon? hah!) so there's really no telling what the hell I'll do until I actually do it.

Found a couple screens and laid my huckleberry harvest between them out in the sun. It's still a bit humid from the rain yesterday, and it was cloudy this afternoon, so they didn't dry much. A proper solar dehydrator will be sweet someday.

Put up that fence Baxter sent me. Now most of my gardens in Téjas are mostly protected from deer and turkeys, in theory. Of course, most of the herbivory so far seems to be from rabbits or chipmunks or squirrels or groundhogs maybe, which the calf panel section of my fence does nothing against. Fred made some suggestions for how to augment my fence, and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

Speaking of Baxter, he also sent me some radish seeds and some zipties! Thanks Baxter! Check out Baxter's website: http://www.mistertidwells.com

Just FYI, when my good chicken guarding dog died (back in Wisconsin), rabbits started chewing holes in the black nylon netting that we'd used to make their outside run. It wasn't to try to steal chicken food - that was inside the hangar and too scary to enter - it was just to facilitate getting from here to there, as far as I could tell.

I only noticed the damage when chickens started using the openings to escape. I ended up using 2' of hardware cloth to back up the netting.

Looks like every thing is comming right along

Many have done that successfully. As long as the lower fence is strong, the top one can be a string, hopefully a very visible color. They don't want to get caught. Like a good pole vaulter (which they are without the pole), deer don't want to get caught halfway over a tall fence.
John S
PDX OR