My experience at wheaton labs

I cant figure out how to make a new post on this thread, but i did want to add this photo before zzzzzzz. i would love to spearhead the project of adding bitteroot to the menagerie of plants being grown at wheaton labs.

Hello Andrew!  

I am so glad you had such a good time at Wheaton Labs.  I find it rejuvenating there too!   There is something so special about being part of the permaculture experiments and lifestyle there!


I have lots of bitterroot where I live.  They are a beautiful pink flower in early spring and are pretty much invisible in summer.  I will bring some out to Wheaton Labs and try to get them started.  

Andrew Greaves wrote:I must admit that i feel this is about the billionth time that i have said i will incorporate more permaculture and the natural world into my life, so i feel very hesitant in staking a claim that i will post here daily/hourly or in any specific time period, because dammit i just dont want to fail.

I think the only failure is to give up trying. I suggest start small. Permaculture is not all about hugelculture and rocket mass heaters but also doing little things every day to close the wheel of life and reduce our collective impact on the world. Try smiling at everyone you meet for a day, or cooking a new meal from scratch.

Samantha Lewis wrote:Hello Andrew!  

I am so glad you had such a good time at Wheaton Labs.  I find it rejuvenating there too!   There is something so special about being part of the permaculture experiments and lifestyle there!


I have lots of bitterroot where I live.  They are a beautiful pink flower in early spring and are pretty much invisible in summer.  I will bring some out to Wheaton Labs and try to get them started.  

Thank you samantha! I find it quite encouraging to see a few responses here to my post, and i have a slice of pie!i almost forgot to post here before zzzz, well i was watching a video ona neo victorian neo nazi lesbian bdsm sex cult and school in burtonport ireland on yourube! Channel tor's cabinet of curiosities. priorities! I took the best pic of my life today! Its attached! G'nite yall

Nancy Reading wrote:

Andrew Greaves wrote:I must admit that i feel this is about the billionth time that i have said i will incorporate more permaculture and the natural world into my life, so i feel very hesitant in staking a claim that i will post here daily/hourly or in any specific time period, because dammit i just dont want to fail.

I think the only failure is to give up trying. I suggest start small. Permaculture is not all about hugelculture and rocket mass heaters but also doing little things every day to close the wheel of life and reduce our collective impact on the world. Try smiling at everyone you meet for a day, or cooking a new meal from scratch.

Thank you so much! The encouragement is heartwarming!

Unsurprisingly, i couldnt sleep very well last night, so many emotions keeping me up, anxiety, happiness, sadness, frustration.  I spent my very last moments at wheaton labs today and we did some road building with a 32 ton excavator. I spent approximately half an hour in the seat, and i had a blast! I was treated to some country music on the way to the airport by my friendly driver, stephen. we enjoyed some pizza in missoula right before we came here to the airport.  we had a pleasant conversation on the way here, talked about mostly music and a little AI, I have got about an hour to wait here for my flight at the missoula airport, listening to a pandora station inspired by stephen thomas, back at the garden, roger miller, willie nelson, merle haggard, waylon jennings in my ears. Tex cherry and luke gordon didnt show up  on pandora, sorry steve not the biggest names ever in country music haha!  Roger miller did make it to pandora though!   [just boarded plane] .
I am thinking about moringa trees, how viable are they REALLYas a MIRACLE tree? I can remember Jack Spirko talking about superfood plants that have  such grandiose claims, and saying that  you could make such claims about any old plant, like, for example, basil. Back home in phoenix, we have had a moringa tree in a planter [plane is taking off] for so many years  and it just doesnt grow any more.  

Welp! I keep looking and looking for direct flights from phoenix to missoula! .... but they just dont seem to exist!

Andrew Greaves wrote:Welp! I keep looking and looking for direct flights from phoenix to missoula! .... but they just dont seem to exist!

Check https://www.allegiantair.com/interactive-routemap

Jeff Bosch wrote:

Andrew Greaves wrote:Welp! I keep looking and looking for direct flights from phoenix to missoula! .... but they just dont seem to exist!

Check https://www.allegiantair.com/interactive-routemap

Thanks! They do seem to be a bit cheaper than the competition at $138 compared to $167 and i think its direct much appreciated!

Quick note here to remind me to write some sort of critique abt the hugel berms at wheaton labs.

Its a feeble attempt but it still counts as an attempt. Im trying to post something here everyday, and today i would like to critique the hugel mounds at wheaton labs. Some of the mounds are shaped as keyhole gardens which makes sense and i understand some of the physics of why people shape their gardens this way, and some of the hugels at the lab and base camp are shaped in order to funnel the cold air down and out of the area the hugels are in. My main criticism of the hugels out there is that many of them are exceedingly difficult to climb, but some of them have easy to follow paths and some of them have "stairs". I will include pictures. The other thing that i would like to see out there at the lab and base camp is a hugel mound that has a path which starts at the bottom of a circular mound and the path follows the mound in concentric circles all the way around until you get to the top.  I know this type of structure has a name in permie circles, and i could probably find it but its late, i got to get upand work SUPER early! Laterzzzzzz

No time to post, sorry to bother you with this meaningless post, but this is just here for me.

I am back in the concrete jungle, fighting to get back out. Im using reddit  to find  some companies  that would hire me. Subreddits like r/remote jobs r/customerservice. Should i get a job in missoula and then commute back and forth from my job to pauls land? The cheapest accomodations at pauls are $300 per month. Scenarios that keep running through my head are, for example, working at the missoula airport wednesday through sunday snd then i could work monday and tuesday on the farm. What car should i buy? Would fred like to sell me his red truck? Should i buy a vehicle in missoula or arizona? Is this blog helping me stay on track?

Andrew Greaves wrote:The other thing that i would like to see out there at the lab and base camp is a hugel mound that has a path which starts at the bottom of a circular mound and the path follows the mound in concentric circles all the way around until you get to the top.  I know this type of structure has a name in permie circles

A bit like a herb spiral.... or Stephen's Growcano ?

Is there anyway a draft can be saved here?  i had a post going to reply to nancy, went to google something, and now its gone.  Anyway, yes exactly like an herb spiral, and yes much like the grow cano. Be back later to comment more.

Andrew Greaves wrote:I am back in the concrete jungle, fighting to get back out. Im using reddit  to find  some companies  that would hire me. Subreddits like r/remote jobs r/customerservice. Should i get a job in missoula and then commute back and forth from my job to pauls land? The cheapest accomodations at pauls are $300 per month. Scenarios that keep running through my head are, for example, working at the missoula airport wednesday through sunday snd then i could work monday and tuesday on the farm.

I think Paul doesn't want people to commute to worky jobs from his place. I understand that the WiFi at basecamp is good, though.

Im listening to podcast 684, and salivating over stevens proposal of how to propel the bootcamp forward. A gamcod at wheaton labs. Stephen starts talking about this at 21:17 and  He wants 3 people to be there for the growing season, presumably 2025. Was it successful? Was there any cash exchanged, the original camcod was $100,000/yr/ per person....... What happened to this? I would love to participate in something like this.

Yes, Steven released weekly updates on the 2025 GAMCOD project last year. They are all on youtube.

https://youtube.com/shorts/NYxWRVQblOo?is=cUIbvh28VADtkBGs Well, here gos a shot at trying toshare a video. Let me know if it works on yourend. Watch especially if you are investigating different chicken management systems.

Listening everyday to podcasts by paul and the gang (683-690) and youtube videos about gardening, I couldnt figure out how to quote nancy about her comment and question about the herb spiral and stephens growcano, but yes exactly like an herb spiral but something that makes it feasible to walk up to the top. would it be possible to make a structure that enriches the soil and also provides easy access to the top of the mound, How high could I get the hugelkultur bed? 100 feet?!?!? I checked out stephens growcano, and yes I did like it. Me and stephen think alot alike, and have similar life experiences.
I have found a youtube channel that I really like called something like silas mercer farmstead, the channel has really good new ideas, lots of ideas that I have never heard of before. My wife has land in Mexico.......and we dream alot about growing a farmstead  down there. She only has .02 acres from my calculations, on the documents it says 150 square meters. Please let me know if you calculate something different. Her sister has another .02 acres which borders my wifes land and her cousin has another.02 so that is a total of .06 which is not much land. I looked up the climate that it is in (subtropical highland climate) elevation 8,000 ft, In the pictures that she showed me, I see some prickly pear and something that looks like joshua tree. It is pretty exciting but also kind of disappointing because if I am not mistaken, If we build a house that is 1200 square feet. Our current condo is 1,200 sq feet and we have 3 bedrooms 2 baths, that gives us room to have a 1,200 sq ft garden, which is a fairly good size garden, so thank goodness I put this here in words, because I feel better about the situation now. I gotta get to work now.  I will write more later.

It sucks to get all sentimental but how does one shake the feeling that they dont want to be in the place they are in doing the things they do when they could be off somewhere else doing what they really want to do..... at the drop of a hat? Yet this one (me) also recognizes that life is pretty damn good the way it is.

Andrew Greaves wrote:I couldnt figure out how to quote nancy about her comment and question about the herb spiral and stephens growcano,

check out how permies works There are links there on how to make posts, publishing standards and lots more. There should be a 'quote' button next to my post which will copy my whole post in a new box for you (you can delete out the irrelevant parts.)
Text may be quoted like this:

[quote=name of person being quoted]Text that is being quoted.[/quote]

Here is a tutorial on how to post on Permies. This thread goes into a bit more detail on quoting. If you still have problems, ask in the Tinkering With This Site forum.

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