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

BRK #378

A Happy Taco Tuesday to you...!

The Boot team had some success today. There was a loose pin in the treads of the excavator, and today we re-inserted the pin. Liam, Dez, and I went up to the Lab with a host of tools at our disposal.



One thing that's interesting about excavators is that the treads are held in place with fluid pressure. There's a one-way grease valve that allows you to squirt lubricant into a piston at immense pressures (up to 10,000PSI, if the specs on the grease gun are to be believed), and this extends the distance between the two outer "wheels" of the tread mechanism.

Anyway, while I was lubricating the joints connecting the bucket to the excavator arm (another "related, belated" task), Liam and Dez loosened the grease intake for the treads. They used a massive spanner/socket set to loosen the grease valve, and gobs of white lithium grease were ejected as the piston retracted.





All three of us worked together to cinch the tread links together, then hammer the pin back in place.



With the pin in place, the three of us again worked together to squirt grease back into the piston chamber. After a little test drive, the excavator was ready to roll.



Dez moved the excavator to the next work site: the Lab pump house. While the vehicle is mostly stationary, we'll be studying up and practicing our gas welding skills so we can more-permanently fix the pin in place. That's coming up later this season, hopefully before the snow.

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

BRK #379

It's official: the cold season is here! Here's Paul coaching Liam in his first lighting of a rocket mass heater, this one in the house.



In the first half of the day, we were up at the Lab taking care of some building materials. Here's Dez wrapping up a bark-peeling job. The best time to do this work, by the way, is in April and May, when the sap begins flowing in the trees. We felled these late in the season and although it was tough it wasn't the worst time to attempt peeling.



In the second half of the day, Liam and I were up at the Abbey, along with SEPPer Lisa. We're laying mulch with chop n' drop, doing our last few watering rounds, and then pulling in some harvest. Here's our bin of last-chance cover crops we're sprinkling here and there.



This is most definitely not an eggplant, so its label was just a bit inaccurate. Oh well. It might make us a nice zucchini before the frost comes for it.



Some of the sunchoke plants I attempted to resurrect didn't quite make it much longer than a week or so. That meant it was time to harvest before the plants went completely out, and the bugs moved in. It was quite a haul. I estimate it was eight or more pounds. Plenty of healthy sunchoke plants remain.



Finally: we collected several of the plant labels today. I think these are effective in helping us with maintaining organization. We'll stick with them into next season, re-using what we can.



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

BRK #380

Today was action-packed. For the majority of the day, we practiced gas welding (acetylene and oxygen) in preparation for a repair project (scheduled for tomorrow). Dez, Liam, and myself all had a chance to perform tack welds, troubleshoot operations issues, and prep materials for tomorrow.

Here are Dez and Liam:



I also had a few opportunities to learn to use this torch for welding. Up until now, I'd only used it as a cutting torch, and beyond that only MIG welding. So this was an excellent opportunity to pick up new skills.



Here are my first gas tack welds. I'm pleased with these.



Here, Liam tests the integrity of his full weld...



We first practiced welding washers onto rebar to learn the technique, then prepped washers for tomorrow's job.



Once these washers are welded in place, we'll cut them from the scrap all-thread they're connected to and then the job will be finished.



None of us had done any gas welding before today, and as a team we succeeded. Everyone felt positive and empowered after this experience, confident that the excavator will be fully-repaired tomorrow before lunch.

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

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:BRK #372
...

Methods of storing the potatoes we'll try this year include:
- Slicing and freezing
- Pickling in salt brine
- Root cellaring (we tried this last year and weren't successful, so we're tweaking our process a bit)
- Mashing and freezing

We may also attempt some drying of sliced potatoes and see how that turns out. Personally, I'm most excited about pickling them. Those, and the sunchokes - which are also prolific.
...

My tip: cook and mash potatoes and dry them in food dehydrator, in thin layers. When totally dry you can make it into a kind of powder you can use later as 'instant potato purée'.
That's what I did, to take it with me on camping trips.

BRK #381

It was a rainy Friday and we ended up holding off on the welding job. That's likely Monday. Meanwhile, we ended up experimenting with a few methods of preserving sunchokes (and cooking them for dinner later). We were heavily inspired by Prepper Potpourri and the Maritime Gardening Podcast for today's activities.

First we wanted to dehydrate sunchokes. Step one was to clean and then slice them.



Next, you parboil them in lemon water for one minute.



After cooling them in cold water, we took them down to the rocket-boosted dehydrator, behind the Classroom. Here's Liam prepping the fire. Soon everything was cooking like we needed.



I lined the sliced sunchokes on the drying racks, here.



So we had a fire earlier this afternoon. I'll stoke another one tonight, and then another one tomorrow morning.

In the afternoon, we went up to the Lab to store sunchokes underground. Paul suggested that the Truly Passive Greenhouse might become too warm, so we attempted a different method. Our first step was to select a location. We chose the "endcap" of one of the sun-scoops within the perimeter fence at Allerton Abbey. Here, we raked-away the mulch and marked-out the corners of our rudimentary passive heater.



The next step was to agitate the space a bit, then combine the soil with a bit more sand to provide additional drainage.



We then began filling in the location with sunchokes. We followed Liam's idea of digging out a shallow trench, then arranging the sunchokes so they wouldn't touch one another prior to being buried.



To wrap this method, we placed a surplus window over the spot. This effects a micro-climate that helps keep the sunchokes from freezing.



We'll see how these sunchokes do in about a week. If all seems well, we'll try doing this with more of the sunchokes we harvest (there are so many this year...!). I'm also still fairly hopeful that the pickled sunchokes are all right. After a few checks this week they still seem in good shape, so after a taste-test I might go for a larger jar or two to pickle more of them.

Liam and I topped off the day with some air-fried and pan-fried sunchokes, wild onions, and greens for dinner. Not a bad Friday at all.

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