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

BEL #639

Here's a very brief update regarding the GAMCOD hugel project over at Allerton Abbey, started by the Boots this past Spring.



I'm picking up SEPPers at the airport at a bit after 1am. So I need to take a nap ASAP.

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

It would be handy in my mind to document how much food in pounds comes out of each hugel. Perhaps the hugels can be named/numbered with a location map? David the Good has a system with a chalk board, all the harvested food is brought to a weight scale and the pounds totaled throughout the year. Maybe a produce scale in the library/pantry area? There are plenty of online list giving calories per pound, so this would make it easier in my mind to keep track of the GAMCOD objectives. It would also help to compare say the sun chokes/squash that are harvested this year, vs what regrows in the same bed next year.

BEL #640

Fare thee well, Brian. Make sure you and your lady (oh, and Randy the Perma-gnome, too) stop by every once in a while.



Here's a tabletop game I designed: "Coal n' Write." Brian, summer event guest Jason, and I had an enchanted evening throwing dice, digging up silver, gamblin', carrying mail for the Pony Express, and fending off bandits.



Deer and elk frequent the "Deer Highway," one of the areas we monitor with our trail cameras.



I had a chance to look closely at the center of a squash plant's flower. Looks kinda like a mass of fingers from old-skool kitchen rubber gloves...



A ladybug and some other flitting insect hang out on a squash leaf.



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

BEL #641

An undeniably hot day in Missoula, but still a satisfying one. We have three new Boots scheduled to arrive tomorrow, plus three more SEPPers to arrive on Monday (while we already have two on-site), so I suspect that after a brief lull we'll be back into a decent clip of activity once again.

While wrapping-up things on Friday, here's event guest Jason showing me the current progress of the yurt floor. It's air drying, after 10 coats of raw linseed oil. Maybe we'll add a couple more, since PTJ facilitator Michael O suggested 9 to 12 coats would be sufficient.



These look like tiny honeysuckle flowers (roughly the same diameter as a quarter). Very, very small, compared to what I'd seen in the past. Might they be something else?



Here's a surprising find at a local Little Free Library. It was written inside the cover of a quotation anthology called Harvest of Gold. I think it's important that everyone has people like both Sam and Marie in their lives. Regardless, I think I'll be hanging on to this book for quite a while. There's a tremendous amount of inspirational material inside.



And now for something completely different... At Goodwill, I noticed some truly bizarre back-of-box copy on this "Tiny Dinosaurs" toy assembly kit...



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

Glad to hear more boots and SEPPers are making their way to Wheaton Labs!

Hard to tell without seeing more of the plant, but those flowers look very similar to the field bindweed which loves to engulf … well everything else in my yard.