KW-34 Between two rocks

Also, welcome to Autumn.

The Collapse Laboratory is over for this year. If there is still some sort of functioning world out there next year, it will definitely happen again. How early is too early to put Early Bird tickets on sale, I wonder?

The happy faces of the Doomer crowd. What a wonderful bunch of people. Also, props to the devs of the software I used to pull the whole thing together. If you want to do a live broadcast and put it on YouTube, I can only sing its praises. Seamless integration of pre-recorded clips, multiple participants, music and banners…

I think you would have to call it a great success. I can’t put words in the mouths of anyone, but I don’t think it would be wrong to say that everyone left in some way changed. It can be hard to come up against difficult thoughts and conversations on really tough topics, but it’s strangely fulfilling and exhausting. I slept for 9 hours last night, which is probably double what I have done in a while, and I fully intend to do exactly the same tonight. Quite probably with an interstitial nap some time around 2pm. I’m already looking forward to it.

After it was all done, the last session of the event was the online Collapse Laboratory Live. A few people asked if there was going to be any sort of online session. The very best part of the Lab was actually being here, and occupying yourself with the shared experience. That would be impossible to try to replicate online, but I think we created a decent imprint of the conversations when we gathered together some of the most active and intellectually turned on members of the Barracks community in the live event.

And so, it’s undeniably autumnal out there, so for the next 4 - 6 weeks, we’re on a race to fill the stores. There are probably going to be fewer tomato sauces this year, but already in the larder are onions, garlic - never before have I grown a year’s supply of either of thoe. And wheat and rye for flour and rather a lot of cabbages and sauerkraut will also be making their first appearance in the cellars.

I have a very good feeling about the potatoes. So far, they have been delicious, and they are giving all the signs of being very heavy croppers this year.

Also, the sunflowers are doing excellently, and out of all of the pumpkin plants, the oil-seed pumpkins seem to be doing the best. We will have oil this year as well.

Today, I am going to see what I can do with over 200 ripe peaches - I strongly suspect jams. I’m taking predictions in the comments for “Peach and Aronia Berry Jam” - is it a good thing or not? I think eating them raw together would be hyper-weird, but jamming them up might just work. Apples are this year too numerous to count, and at some point I should knock up some storage boxes for them for the longest possible keeping-the-doctor-away daily apple consumption.

And that’s it for this week, although we are definitely not out of the summer water-weed-mow routine, we are mostly going to:

• make jams

• make sauces

• dry things

• fill the stores

I may do a highlights reel of the Lab Live! event, but that highly depends on how much sleep I want!

Until next week, bubbling with love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

ps: I can only apologise, but I am genuinely too tired to do the voice over today. I hope two cute AF piggie pics taken from breakfast this morning will serve in some small way to make up for it…