evan's ant village log

Gary, the folks up here on the lab are staying warm and healthy. We've been kicking that cabin fever by visiting each other's cabins, bucking and splitting up firewood, and harvesting junkpoles for fencing.

For winter solstice, Paul and Jocelyn had us over for an amazing feast! And Jocelyn even provided a plethora of tasty and relatively healthy materials for a gingerbread wofati building party. Ben, Janet, Garret, and I each put our building skills to the test in the construction of edible wofatis.

My gingerbread wofati started off promising but ended up falling apart. Cutting notches in pretzel sticks is way harder than cutting notches into wood.

The next day I was picking through the ruins of my gingerbread wofati and managed to scavenge enough materials to make a scale model of the ministry of quacks, aka the duck hollow, aka the ducks' winter shelter.

After days of munching on the increasingly stale rubble,  the leftovers were finally thrown to the ravenous ducks.

Have you ever heard the legend of the mermoose? The mythical half-moose half-fish beast of generosity and flatulence?

Of course not.

But Jocelyn heard tell of the legendary mermoose and crafted a pfefferneuse sculpture in its honor. Delicious.

Lately the mermoose has been leaving stacks of bucked firewood in front of folks' cabins. What a nice mermoose.

Josh and Ben's collaborative plot development efforts are yielding some beautiful results.

And I'm pretty damn happy to be collaborating with Kai on the development of Ava.

Hello Evan,
I have been following the Ant Village logs since you all started posting. Although I do not envy the challenges all of you face, I am very interested to see how you overcome them.
Anyway, the reason I am contacting you is because you are the one who is most actively posting. I did see on Jim's log how he had a little set back with his wood stove.
To get to the point, I would like to offer him, Sean or even your Dad a free Portable Rocket Stove ( one free stove ), that one of them might like to try out.
It is an impressive working Rocket Stove, all metal on removable metal wheels. I would not recommend putting it in a permanent cob mass, but I am sure rock or brick around it would work great.
If you think one of the other Ants could and would put it to good use to help them get through the Winter let me know.
I will keep checking your log.

Ed, from conversations with the other ants that are here, we all appreciate the offer and I at least would not turn down the opportunity to play with another rocket stove,  but nobody expressed to me that they needed a new stove to get through this winter at least. Thank you thank you though, and if you do send a rocket stove someone at the lab would probably try it out and document it. What kind of metal is it made out of and what parts are made out of what? Pictures or links?

Permies, it's been a cold, snowy, busy winter and I've been neglecting to post here. I have been taking tons of pictures though. Maybe I'll get around to posting more some time.

For now check this out, (I think it's pretty neat):

An "auto-combusting" "fuel-less" wooden outdoor rocket cook stove: At least two holes augered to meet in something like an "L" or "V" shape in the core of a dry log.

One mid-winter mid-afternoon Kai and I decided to try out this idea we'd heard about. Kai brought over his badass hand-powered auger and we used it to auger into a big ~1' diameter log of dry, formerly dead-standing, ponderosa pine. We missed initially in our first attempt at augering and ended up augering three-ish ~1" holes that eventually met in the center of the log, (call one a secondary air intake.) After clearing out enough of the sawdust to create an air channel and then igniting the bit of sawdust remaining in the core, the log burned from the inside out with a fairly clean and smokefree flame rocketing out from the wood-insulated heat riser. The wood was such a good insulator that we were able to comfortably handle the outside of the stove with bare hands and adjust it in relation to the wind even as we boiled water on it. The heat output increased steadily and while we ate the food we had just cooked on the stove, the stove consumed itself, reaching the tipping point at which the growing holes in the log met, and became a campfire around which we sat and warmed ourselves, enjoying the glow of the fire through the long twilight after the sun set behind the western mountains and into the frozen starry night.

Kai Proenneke-Lawless has been at it again! Check out this amazing wooden gate he built without any metal fasteners or power tools! Not to mention that roundwood rail fence and gorgeous bird house!

When you support Ava Permaculture on Patreon, that money goes right into Kai's paypal account and helps to enable him to continue creating inspiring works of art like this! Thank you!

We are all looking forward to diversifying our duck population, Evan.

Look at this beautiful fence! Have I mentioned lately that Kai is a badass? Here's the thread he started chronicling his heroic deeds: https://permies.com/t/62917/Kai-Belated-Posts

Oh yeah, also, it's spring now!

The rain and snowmelt from up in the mountains has swollen and extended the creek, and now there's a raging torrent, complete with waterfalls, flowing through ant village!

The huge chasm of an earthworks completed last fall in Avalon is now quite a nice big pond. The Dancing Lake lives!