Construction proceeds

We had some help in the forms of beautiful weather, Grandmaster J. and Sir C. Thanks guys! this Thanksgiving weekend and I’m now feeling pretty good that the bunkie might get done before winter.

This is where we are now:

My hope is to finish the wall with the door in it and maybe the back wall. If I can get that done I can put a tarp on the frame by the just started wall and light the wood stove and extend the building season.

The bad news is one of my window boxes went out of square while we were building so it’s going to be tough to get that window in. i’m going to have the brace the remaining window boxes better.

This is the offending box (and a close up look at what the walls look like) :

And I forgot to post a picture of Shed Bee:

Pretty good eh, almost looks store bought!

Will Feral Cat

Some of you may have heard tales of the elusive Will Feral Cat. At long last your correspondent has obtained photographic evidence of his existence. And here it is:

I’m assuming Will is feral because he has no tag and is very skittish, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to him.

We’ve also started work on the cordwood bunkie / practice building. We are trying out three different mortar mixes and are now thinking to do a test patch of poplar wood. The experts say it’s good for cordwood building but the wood itself is rather unimpressive to us.

Here’s a shot of the worksite:

And another from later on in the process:

It has become a race against the frost as most of the week we had taken off work to work on the bunkie was raining. the humidity of many days of rain made it impossible to do mortar work even though the worksite is covered. Stay tuned.

It’s a lot more fun than even the best office job. Even with the chill and the damp.

That said, this is this year’s squash harvest:

So I won’t be quitting that office job just yet.

Of stars and grasses

The other night I stepped out the trailer. It was clear and I could see lots of stars, a hint of the milky way and the lights of an airplane far above and I wondered, can I see the flicker of light from the dual star system that supposedly has a Tatooine like planet in their orbit?

Then I thought, “this is crazy”. I know enough to wonder about a distant planet but not enough to identify the plants at my feet. It’s kind of strange when you think about it. We know so much that we know almost nothing.

In contrast, for most of human existence my counterpart would have had no idea of a Tatooine-like planet but would have know most every plant at his feet and what uses it has. His wonder and amazement at the beauty of the night sky would have been truly complete and in stark contrast to the in depth knowledge of his everyday world.

I’m jealous of that contrast.

Ethnographical studies have shown that a hunter-gather society will know every plant and animal in their range and what it can be used for, if anything. They live in a world they truly know and understand through common knowledge. I think this must be very grounding for the individual, the combination of of a sense of belonging but also the confidence that comes with knowing what you are dealing with on a day to day basis.

We live in a world of selective knowledge where there is so much known the individual has to pick and choose what they will know and most of us don’t seem to, we get lost in the array of choice. We end up knowing very little about a lot of subjects and maybe enough to fake expertise in a few areas. Thanks to a few real experts we all benefit but most of us seem spend our whole lives adrift in a sea choice and questioning? The right partner? Right career? Right shoes? A world where even what is real is unsure and ultimately unknowable. (A solid table is actually mostly empty space and little bits flying about? Really?)

For most people the benefits of our world are hard to question, who wouldn’t want to complete a three day journey in an hour? (Forget the wider consequences) We’ve made survival easy but there seems to be an undefined cost we’ve yet to figure out.