KW-33 A different kind of black

and tales of wasps

Good morning, Pirates, and welcome to the newsletter of a packed Barracks. There has been some coming and going of volunteers and guests. Our tousle-haired Australian left after nearly two months, and we have been missing her since we said goodbye at the station, and a Canadian has moved in for a few weeks! We are nothing if not international!

This year has seen record quantities of slugs, wasps and summer rain. We had a two night downpour, at the end of which every single outdoors tomato plant was dead. We’ve taken all the semi-good tomatoes off, to try to ripen them inside, but it looks like they are gone. They were growing on the very weakest of all 6 sectors in the potager, and this was not to their advantage, but being outside is clearly not great for tomatoes around here. Good years are rarer than bad ones.

Two positives from this, though. The ones in the polytunnel are doing great, and the tomato house will be finished for next year. Surely!

I don’t think there was any progress on it in this last week. It might be very important for the vegetal success of the barracks, but it has a zero priority for the Collapse Laboratory. Those priorities have not changed much from last week, but all have come along. Oh, and we added to it:

• Create an entirely new dining experience where the tools are currently kept.

  • Move the tools to the room where the assorted crap and nonsense is being kept. One of the several rooms with this description. Obviously, clear it out and clean it first. Probably build some racks and things.

  • Hardcore clean

  • Paint the walls

  • Source a bunch of tables

  • Sew tablecloths

  • Clean a bunch of chairs

  • Bring over the big oak table for putting things on

  • Clean the pig room, the hallway, the stairs…

It will look lovely. And we can all eat more or less together. Which is nice. I think there might be 16 of us for the Lab now. Tickets are, of course, still available. I’m still not sure why you don’t have yours yet!

The list from last week has both contracted and expanded since last week. What does that mean? Well - here is the list from KW-32, annotated

• Paint the walls, scrub the floors, install lighting in the cellar

  • done, but we decided to also paint the floor, so add that

• Make two big solar collectors for the hot showers

  • we’re going to make three or four smaller ones, and they are going to be fully servicable.

• Pot up 15 trees, one per attendee

  • Done! Except it doesn’t seem like enough, so I’m going to go for another 15

• Weed all the edges, mow all the grass

  • a constant thing, but looking good!

• Dig up a literal tonne of clay and clad the pizza oven

  • dug up, and prepped and well over 80% done.

• Make the solar oven

  • we might not have enough mirrors. Coming along nicely though!

• Weed the firepit

  • mostly done!

• Harvest all the potatoes and all the wheat

  • 5 rows of spuds and half of the wheat done!

I have an excellent bunch of people here, all working hard and with dedication. I wish we had another two. Or three. No more than that. Maybe four.

We decided to clean the doors first. There was a chance that just doing them might provide enough Clean to work as a proxy for the whole space. It didn’t, so we cleaned the walls as well. And the ceiling and the pipes. And then we decided to paint the floor. Now, when you stand at the entrance to the cellar with the lights off (the fact that this is an option should also be taken as proof of progress), the absolutely light-free space has a different quality of blackness to it. It used to be a dirty black void. Now it is a warm and inviting totality of night.

Five Years Ago

This was a day that will always remain in the anecdotes. Christian and John (Deere) came around to help pull out some trees from the forest down the back, past where the pigs are now. I think I was planning on chainsawing them in situ, and manhandling them back to the wood store, but we had a family visiting, with awesome kids, and kids like tractors, so this happened.

I was walking just a pace behind the tractor as he ran over a very large nest of particularly aggressive digger wasps, somewhat aggravated that they had had their home destroyed by a thundering beast above them. I was in shorts, and I got stung over 100 times in a thimbleful of seconds. I may have made an ungentlemanly screech, and peppered the sky with sincerely-meant expletives.

I hope that doesn’t put you off your breakfast. Talking of which, I had better hit send so that I can go and get my oats and toast and get into the wood shop. Solar collectors will be made!

Next time, from the Lab.

Be wonderful, my friends

Your loving

Pirate Ben

xoxo