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

Well, a year long seems a pretty good run for those fences to go unscathed, and it was very windy earlier this week: gusting up to over 30MPH in some places, from reports. It was looking like the Dustbowl Era out there a few times.

And as a fellow boot has said, "They don't call it junkpole for nothin'."

BRK #43

It's been a wonderful Sunday round here. A new boot arrived in the midst of our afternoon bocce game, but I was able to snag a couple photos before we put it on hold.

Here are Grey and Cory, both sizing up our next target in "Full Field Bocce."



Hao came from behind in our first match, and snatched victory after a four-point rally pushed him ahead of both Cory and Grey's scores of 4 each. Next time we play, he'll be defending his title.



Later in the afternoon, I spent some quality time with my rag rug project, and watched a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front and Daniel McGowan. Plenty of food for thought provided there.



Finally: here's my hand-crafted version of SKIP: Space Kitties In Peril. It's a custom re-themed version of my favourite group board game, Incan Gold. We'll be breaking this out on Thursday evening for our game night.



Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #44

This has been an enjoyable start to the week for me, here at Wheaton Labs. In the afternoon, in particular, we jumped in on a plumbing project. As many of you know, this is the driest time of the season in this region, and we've gone at least a month and a half with no rain. So to make water harvesting more approachable from a local, natural source we've modified our water pumps.

Here's a shot of Dez's afternoon assembly. Lots of angles and joints for 1.5" pipe sections.



Here's a creative piece of plumbing technology that four of us put together today. Dez. Cory, new boot Joseph, and myself were huddled round a pile of plumbing components for a good half-hour. I busied myself by adding plumbers tape to any exposed threads, and occasionally holding things still while Cory wrenched on them. The end result is now known as The Apparatus.



Finally: here's an action shot of Cory, Hao, and Dez while the new pipe was test-fit on Judy (the main water-hauling truck). I think the teamwork speaks for itself here.



Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #45

I look back on last week and I had a good chuckle with my comments about thinking the heat wave had broken... It ended up with a high of 107F today. It was still enjoyable, though...! We were up at the Lab today, focusing on gardening in the first half of the day, then some woodland-related projects in the second half (as well as more watering!).

I looked up this little guy in a caterpillar database, and it seems like a Fall Webworm was visiting one of the hugels I'm assigned to work.



Speaking of woodland projects, here's a shot I snapped of Hao, Grey, and me hauling a peeled log into the Abbey for later use in the wing-wall maintenance.



Back to Basecamp: After this evening's Taco Tuesday meal and meeting, these little sprouts and growies on my mini-terraces had me pleasantly-surprised. Let's hope the cats stay away from them now.



Finally: this is actually sundown from yesterday, but I didn't have a chance to post it until now. Kind of reminds me of something you'd see in E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind... But no, I was just heading up to my tent.



Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #46

Satisfying day with unexpected weather. It was over 60F when I woke up today, along with being rather humid. The humidity didn't let up, while the temp didn't go far beyond a measly 86F...! Totally out of character for the self-cleaning temps we've had round here lately.

Meanwhile, I was still able to grab a few photographs today. First, here's a shot of The Apparatus hard at work. We're still tweaking how it can operate most efficiently, however with the larger intake that Dez installed yesterday things are looking pretty quick.



While at the Basecamp 1 hugel today, I was observing some of the cover crop I'd planted not too long ago. Here's a rather vibrant daikon from the birds' eye view:



Finally: wrapped up the day with some small construction projects. One of these boxes had walls, but no bottom or top. I found the pieces to assemble the other two, including walls, bottoms, and custom lids. There was a bunch of tongue-and-groove scraps in the workshop, which made this pretty easy. The intent for these boxes is long-term food storage, so I wanted to make them without any access points for rodents for when the cats take the day off. I'm pleased with the final result of these.



Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!