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

nicholas thomas wrote:thanks for all the great, insightful, inspiring posts Stephen! congrats on hitting 200! nick in spokane. p.s. my pinky finger healed up nicely. watch out for the cement mixer gear! hope you get the dump truck running! Thanks for inventing Preonneke Day. I made a spoon

Hahahaha! Thanks for all the well-wishing and kudos, Nick! Good to hear from you, man. Not sure where it ran off to, but I was eating my morning oatmeal with my first-ever wooden spoon until I lost track of it...! Keep a close eye on yours.

BRK #217

It was a packed house for tonight's Taco Tuesday dinner. Two new Boots joined us and this was their inaugural session of copious tacos and a bit o' community business. Pictured below: SEPPer Jeff, new Boot Wesley, Reid, Paul, Grey, Moto Jeff. Not pictured: SEPPer Julia, new Boot Sarah, Caleb, and yours truly.



Today's snow seemed to come at us from out of nowhere (well, it came from the sky, but, you know...). Forecasts predicted "up to an inch," and by the time lunch rolled around there were easily six inches of snow on the ground at Basecamp. I drove to the Lab to retrieve the tractor, and up there I'd say it was closer to 8. Definitely an unexpected windfall.



For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Library has a large work table in it, called the Dock. Here's what it looked like this morning: a typical work day.



Finally: earlier this week there'd been another sighting of the elusive Rocky Mountain Hirsute Dipshit. This time, it was performing some sort of repetitive pacing ritual. It finally concluded its ceremony inexplicably, though sources indicated that when the device it had been pushing was no longer with power, it packed up and left the site. Note its ceremonial garb covering eyes, hands, and ears: ostensibly to appear more fearsome and intimidating to potential predators.



(thanks to Wesley for capturing this on video)

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

I was wondering about how much snow you were getting!
And you look good in the wild. It suits you. <3 Bill's germinating his seeds in his preferred spot behind the tv, the rhubarb is up, and the daffodils are completely up!

BRK #218

Happy Fukuoka Day to you...!!!

Another exhausted evening...! The day was so full. Made seed bombs for the first time today as part of the holiday. Ate a lot of delectable, homemade, vegan sushi, thanks to Reid and Moto Jeff.

Before our holiday activities started I had a chance to finally harvest the seeds from one of the sunflowers I'd cultivated over at Swamp Castle: one of the hugels I was responsible for over at the Lab. They even made it into some seed bombs today.





There were also some plants still drying in the solar dehydrator. I packed up some mint, wild peas, sage, and then some kind of mystery herb I didn't recognize and couldn't ID from fragrance.



And I apologize about making this just another photo dump, but I don't have it in me tonight to do much else. Here are photos of Grey, Sarah, Wesley, Reid, and I as we made a bunch of seed bombs in the Library.









Personal tally of Seed Bombs: 105. Contents (at least the ones I recall): sunflowers, daikon radish, wild peas, red and gold clover, vetch.

I'll close by stating that Paul has mentioned a number of times regarding his fond memories of Boots in times past harvesting turnips all along Volcano Road. Hopefully we can use this batch of seed bombs to provide him with more.

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

Thanks again Stephen for bringing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to the not-so-big screen for us to watch after dinner. This little anime impressed me even more than it did a decade ago when I first saw it. For anyone who has seen it and kinda liked it but felt overwhelmed by the plot, I'd encourage multiple viewings as the story was adapted from a longer manga version and crammed into just 2 hours. I'd hope that the layers of permaculture themes I see in it would eventually unfold for others like seeds maturing from a seed bomb.

I'll leave the overarching themes of working with nature rather than against it and using appropriate technology for viewers' discovery and interpretation. However, since it seems like such a fantastical world being presented I figure it could give it more weight to point out one specific part of the story's connection to actual environmental events. The poisoning symptoms experienced by some of the people of the valley in the movie were based on the real world Minamata Disease, as was the author's portrayal of insects and trees in the toxic jungle based on his observation of how some plants and animals were able to adapt and thrive in the deadly toxic environment created by wastewater pollution around the town of Minamata. I'm always disgusted to find out how poisonings like this are practically ubiquitous throughout industrial culture but they rarely reach the greater social conscience because they don't get the PR that nuclear incidents do...