Happy Monday everyone,
I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day, however you were able to celebrate your mom by zoom or in person. Wow! what a busy couple weeks we’ve had out in the garden. Together we have been able to harvest 846 pounds of fresh produce to share with local pantries, plus we gleaned 31 pounds of fava beans to taste test and 104 pounds of hardneck and soft neck garlics to start storing for our seed stock next fall. That’s 981 pounds of produce that our little garden produced! Many thanks to everyone who helped find all the lady bugs in the fava beans and create garlic drying racks.
On top of all that harvesting, I am truly indebted to BC and SW for giving us lessons and guidance on the Kubota tractor and its chipper and mower and to JL and Aw for putting those lessons to work. JL and Aw made quick work of the giant pile of garden fodder, all those plants that we have pulled out of the garden over the last several months. JL and AW worked under the watchful eyes of our safety officers, DG and VJ. I learned a lot about the workings of the chipper thanks to JL and AW’s ingenious wrenching skills. It was amazing to see a house size pile of plant material be reduced to a pile barely as big as a dog house. THANKS! After we finished chipping SW came by to help swap the chipper for the mower and on Monday BC took on the task of mowing the 3.5 acre pasture. Thanks BC, for giving me the time to finally put in the rest of my home garden! It feels so good to have that chore done too. BC and I also had help from DD and RE, who helped trouble shoot the tractor overheating and gave it some love and took it for a mowing spin around the pasture. I am so happy that so many folks love our little tractor.
While all that chipper and tractor based work was happening, the rest of us filled four dumpsters with weeds that we pulled out of the garden and we have another dumpster full of pulled weeds waiting for us to move out of the orchard. WAHOO! We also re-planted a couple seedlings into holes where some of our transplants did not thrive and planted out some elephant garlic and started 690 summer cucurbit seeds (cucumber, melons and squash) to put out in the garden in a few weeks. The peppers and tomato seeds we started a couple weeks ago are germinating and will soon be ready to plant. Yes, we have lots of bed preparation to do in the coming weeks.
As always, my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to all you essential and extraordinary heroes! Thank you all for coming out to help the garden take care of so many of our neighbors. It is heartening to know that there are so many folks who are willing to give of themselves to take care of their neighbors, especially in these trying times. Fertile GroundWorks couldn’t do what we do without each and every one of you. THANK YOU!
Until next we meet, do stay safe and keep loving the ones you are with.
Giant cosmic hugs
Brenda
