Jon arranges an expedition to the grove of weirwoods two hours' ride north of the wall so that six men can make their vows. A band of half-dead wildlings and a giant are there already, but the situation is diffused and in the end the wildlings come back with the watch. More mouths to feed but more hands to fight, perhaps. The giant could be useful.
Jon is planning to open more castles, including one manned entirely by women. He daydreams about building greenhouses to grow veggies, if only he had enough gold to buy the glass. I'm not sure the comparative advantage is there, to be honest. It would take a lot of glass to grow enough veg to feed the watch. Food can be grown more cheaply further south. The problem is trade is being disrupted and supply lines are unreliable. And people do not value the wall enough to pay for more than a handful of men. As soon as people realise the men are needed to fend off a real threat, then the watch will be able to charge a decent amount of money for their services and buy enough food.
Jon seems to be collecting dead bodies. I have no idea why. Is in league with Qyburn? No, he wanted live bodies. Probably this is something for Melisandre.
Stannis sends Jon a lengthy intelligence report, the gist of which is that he's taken Deepwood Motte (we know), has destroyed or captured all the ironmen's ships (bad luck, Asha) and is now going to attack the Boltons at Winterfell (or, as they would have it , take the bait). He's also planning to rescue fake-Arya, thinking her to be real-Arya. Jon feels bad for caring about his sister and also for sending off Mance Rayder to rescue her, given that he can't really trust Mance or Melisandre and it might all go very wrong and he shouldn't really be trying to save his sister anyway, given his vows.
