KW-32 Busy in the buildings

And preparing for guests.

I don’t usually spend a great deal of time inside and not asleep, but this week, in the final push for the One Week to Save the World (excitement it growing!), we decided to make the guest rooms just a little bit more homely.

Sawn, planed, shaped and sized planks from trees from the barracks. Now, becoming skirting boards.

Two of the most rewarding things at the barracks are making things out of wood from your own trees, and harvesting grains.

I think I’ve been growing my own vegetables for so long now that is is just normal. I still get the seasonal thrills of the first asparagus, and the joy of digging up a parsnip and it being fat and juicy having been hidden below ground for the last 6 months or so. I’m not even sure if I haven’t ruined my taste buds a little bit. Feed me food you grew yourself, and it tastes just how food is supposed to taste. Restaurants (especially out of season) are almost always a disappointment. Well, not quite. I still love going out to eat for the experience. The food is almost never the best part of that experience.

But the joy of growing a tree; harvesting it (or, more commonly, removing it from the forest because it is dangerous, dead, or full of bark beetle), taking it to the sawmill and coming back with planks, stacking them carefully, watching them dry straight and true for a year or so, and then forming them into something practical, useful, beautiful and new is the slowest of pleasures, and therefore one of the best.

Straight and true after 2 years of standing around doing nothing very much.

This week, I made a shoe rack, cladding for a room, and skirting boards.

I was talking to Child #2 recently, who is developing something of a passion and talent for DIY and she had to rue the barracks and our relationship with wood. I have a lot of it. It grows on trees around here. Sure, I have to go through all the cutting, seasoning, planing and shaping before I can use it for making things, but what I can make then is in no way restricted by the quantity of wood required. If I pay 200 euros at the sawmill, I come back with planks and battens that would easily have cost 4000 euros. And that’s just the pine. I have some beechwood slabs here which would cost scores of eurodollars individually, and larch fence posts that go for 25 notes each.

It’s so nice to be using the dining room again. Every year, it gets a bit more practical, a bit more colourful.

I get to make solid wood bookshelves, skirting boards, beds and cabinets more or less for free. Most people have to go and buy them from shops. I kinda like this.

One day, if I make enough of them, they might stop falling to pieces as well!

There really isn’t very much else to report from the barracks. Just getting ready for the Collapse Laboratory, and looking forward to the guests arriving.

Until then, for all time, and next week

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

This is me, harvesting grains and stream-of-consciousness narrating the process.

What would you like to see on the youtubes? It’s a great format for rambling with pictures. What would you like me to ramble about? :)