evan's ant village log

Thanks, Evan! Oh, I'll miss Fred's marvelous 'views' into Lab life ;) Paul and Jocelyn look such a relaxed (?) cozy couple in their own space (as opposed to running herd on a houseful! ;) And what a marvelous and so paleo dinner!! inspiration :) (Oh, and I think it's PRONOUNCED same for both spellings, one of which may be 'wrong' ;)

Day 245

Kai-Thor the Conqueror is steadily progressing on his roundwood skiddable lumber shed!

Sharla and I mailed off some postcards and a letter to our Patreon patrons. Thanks again Walter, Baxter, Jesse, and mysterious patron, for your support! We hope you enjoy the rewards!

Here's a video of the felting I did with Matt!

Here's a belated photo from when Evan and I met up with my dad. How about those mountains!

Day 246

I made a three log bench that when sat upon neither breaks nor rolls down the hill to visit the neighbors. The ones Mike Newby made were better though.

When I was hacking the logs into shape a creepy crawly crawled out and was disappointed to discover that it was still winter.

Kai found a tumbleweed!

Day 247

The road up to the lab has been icy and muddy and slippery since we got back, so moving back up there has been slow-going as we hoof our stuff up the hill. In the meantime we crashed at basecamp in the love shack for a few nights. Pretty cozy.

I burned a sign for the turkey leg of volcano road.

We stopped to take a picture with a bear made out of gears on the way to taking Kai to the airport in Missoula. You'll be missed, Kai! Thanks for everything you do to make ant village and the labs awesome! Have a great holiday and we'll see you next year!

Day 248

The first full day spent up at ant village since getting back was lovely and productive. The ground just downhill of Siesta was mostly thawed enough for me to fix a minor drainage issue, I finished taking down the Hogwarts fence and storing it nearer to where it'll become the Téjas fence, I cut and hauled some firewood and some fence poles, put up one of the new signs Sharla made, and also did some cleaning up around the Abbey.

Kai's been taking good care of the ducks in my absence, and the ducks have been doing good work fertilizing and pond-sealing. Thanks, department of ducks!

evan l pierce wrote:
When I was hacking the logs into shape a creepy crawly crawled out and was disappointed to discover that it was still winter.

Those things destroy trees, which can be good or bad depending on your desires. I see a lot of them when splitting firewood, but the chickens are now fully aware that when that motor is going there are plenty of tasty snacks, so they come running! A couple of the chickens are so brazen they will attack them before I can even get the split wood off the splitter.

Ron Helwig wrote:

evan l pierce wrote:
When I was hacking the logs into shape a creepy crawly crawled out and was disappointed to discover that it was still winter.

Those things destroy trees, which can be good or bad depending on your desires.

I found them hollowing out the rotten wood in my 100 year old apple trees. I thought "This poop sawdust looks like good potting soil." so I tried it. I later found a reference that it was used that way by early immigrants to the united states. It worked very well as potting soil and I put the unconsumed chunks of wood in a bucket with the grubs to continue their work. I need to check on how they are doing.

Day 249

Firewood day. We'll be running an experiment here at Allerton Abbey to see if we can get some data on the thermal inertia part of the wofati concept. The idea is to get the inside temperature up to 85 degrees Fahrenheit once a day for 10 days in a row, and then stop applying heat and see what happens.

So far, the warmest we've been able to get it inside is about 65, and that was with running the stove all day today. Perhaps just getting it up to 85 in the first place will take feeding the fire 24 hours a day. We'll see what it takes to overcome that inertia.

Dan installed a couple thermometer sensor dealies that record the temp every 20 minutes, one inside and one out, so it should be interesting to see the results of our efforts over the next few weeks.