KW-03 Slow progress is still progress

Healthy, happy and well fed. Pick two.

This week at the barracks, I have mostly been confined to the Tomato House Fabrication Suite. Sadly, for fans of lighting quick progress, I have a lot of new tools to try out. I’ve spent the last 5 years acquiring them through donation, purchase, junk shops and a few which came to me dug up from the very soil of the barracks.

top shelf: 20 degree jig, hand drills, squares, mallets and hammers, staples. Hanging: saws. Lower shelf: sharpening stone, ryoba saw, froe, carving axe, chisels, screwdrivers, scribes, rules, draw knives, surform, planes

The draw knife was the first to complete its journey to the barracks, and I’ve been using it for debarking felled trees for as long as I have been here. Just in this last week, though, I have been discovering the subtleties of the Swedish draw knife as a precision piece of kit. I had been using it as a scraping, cutting tool for pulling and levering bark from the outside of a log. In reality, it is far happier being used almost as a carving knife, for shaping and forming base roundwood. Hacking away with it might remove a lot of material, but in the best operation, you hardly notice the slender whispers of lignin being teased away, instead observing the smoothing and rounding of the form revealing itself from beneath the tool. It’s beautiful, very time consuming, and I’m at the very start of my journey with it.

On the other hand, cutting the tenons is turning out to be considerably faster than I thought it would be. At the moment, I am cutting very basic ones, to be sited in wood-end mortices, but they are going surprisingly well. I shall move on to more complex joints when the job calls for it, but at the moment, I am super happy with slow progress.

big fat tenons for big fat joints. This tomato house is going to be solid. Sadly, now that I have decided to spend a lot more time with preparation, these “finished” sections need to be gone back over and smoothed, rounded and tiuched up a lot before assembly.

Winter Pigs are the urRu

Do you remember the Dark Crystal? Well, remember is probably the wrong word for well over half of you reading this. It was a Jim Henson film from 1982. Jim Henson was the guy that created the Muppets, Sesame Street and, my favourite, Fraggle Rock. He also did the puppets for this very weird 80s film where two facially unexpressive Gelflings for reasons I can’t remember, have to go on a dangerous adventure beset with trials.

The baddies of the film are the Skeksis - nasty, greedy reptilian types - and the counterpart good guys are the urRu - calm, ancient, furry things with a penchant for lowing at the sky.

For a substantial portion of the film, we see the urRu plodding slowly and deliberately through the wilderness, approaching the dark castle, and their destiny, with a silent and dedicated cautious monotony.

Anyway, when the pigs come out of their home for breakfast, they look just like the urRu.

I don’t know why I told you that.

This week in the garden

It is still only half way through January, so for those of us north of the Tropic of Cancer, stay on the sofa a little while longer, we’re quite a long way from getting our hands into the soil and the compost. But there is no time like the present to get the books out, look over the notes we made last year (or the photos we took), and to try to figure out what we can do better.

Don’t be in too much of a rush to get seeds in pots just yet, but there’s nothing wrong with checking on your tomato seeds that you saved from last year (you did save some, didn’t you? Oh ok then, go and order them from your favourite seed-monger) and before you know it, it will be the middle-to-end of February, and we will be happy enough to risk some early tomatoes and winter lettuce.

This week at The Barracks

In the last week, I didn’t bring any firewood inside, and it looks like the supplies need some heavy restocking, so we shall do that.

I was going to start to write handouts for the pirate gardening courses that I will be running later in the year, but I decided to make my office more snug. I’ll finish that off, and show you next week. Hopefully, with some handout teasers as well.

Mostly, though, I will be in the Fab, and trying not to think too much on the ridiculous Maslov’s sandwich that I have gotten myself into.

And Finally, I was going to end on a mild, well referenced rant about the climate, but it’s already pig food time, and I don’t really have the energy for editing it, so I’ve copied it over somewhere else. It’s probably better as a blog post anyway, so I shall nip off and feed the porkers, and come back and do the voice over in a mo.

As for all of you, thank you for being here. Three subscribers decided that one of their new year’s resolutions was to stop wasting the heinous 5 bucks a month they were pouring down the throat of an ungrateful pirate, so I’m sorry I didn’t manage to provide commensurate entertainment for them, I value all feedback, and would love to hear if there is anything that you feel I should change or improve.

See you in the comments, and please do your best to be lovely to each other,

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

(doing the voice over just now, and this last paragraph sounds way more angry and upset than I am. On the page, I thought it sounded self deprecating and whimsical. It really doesn’t. I’ve not had my breakfast. Sorry again!)