The farm is always full of surprises and on Saturday we had a pop-up birthday celebration. Before cutting and sharing, I held the delicious lemon cake as ransom. We all know food is a powerful motivator–I think that was the fastest lettuce planting ever 🙂 Thank you Genny for the delicious cake, Amy for your thoughtfulness, and to everyone else for all the birthday wishes and helping by eating a piece of cake.
A crew of volunteers went to dig the 20 mature blueberries out of Jim and Terry Howell’s backyard garden on a rainy Tuesday morning. We are holding them in a soil/compost trench until next Friday’s Earth Day celebration at the farm. David Handley will be on hand to teach us more about the planting and care of blueberries. Thanks to the Howells, we will have a blueberry orchard!
Starting and transplanting seedlings is an ongoing project this time of year. We have several volunteers who tackle this every week. B.J. is one of these volunteers, and this week she teamed up with Will. They cranked out 266 soil blocks of Capture cabbage, and it sounded from all the chatting that a new friendship was formed. That was the first time Will had come to the farm, and it looked like he was totally enjoying himself as B.J. taught him the fine art of soil block making. Our G2G volunteers are so welcoming to everyone, helping us to build such a strong community.
This was week 2 for the Farm Skills Training Team. We concentrated on “flipping” a bed for planting Swiss Chard seedlings. The broadfork was a new tool for most of them and was introduced just in time for our tool presentation by Jack Kertesz from MOFGA. Jack shared his love of creating tools from found objects. I especially liked the telescoping weeder handle made from an old painting tool. It was good for all of us to see how to save money by not buying off the rack. Jack also spoke about the ergonomics of tools and how designing your own tools to fit your body allows you to work longer and smarter. Thanks Jack!
This week we had lots of kids on the farm again: big kids (our Bowdoin friends and a group of Colby students who are in the midst of a course on food justice), medium sized kids (Harpswell Coastal Academy students), and little kids (our neighbors down the road). All these “kids” helped us get another 720 lettuces planted in the beds and almost 500 Swiss chard plants into the ground.
I want to also mention Grady, our April intern from the Waldorf High School in Freeport. Grady is doing his senior internship and has been so helpful this Spring working with Carrie and me to get the farm up and running. He takes on any task with a smile–even mowing! We love having so much kid power!
Barbara Shinn came on Saturday and instructed us on how to create a biodynamic 500 preparation with composted horn manure. After being diluted in water, the manure tea needs to be stirred for an hour to aerate it which encourages the organisms to multiply. It is then sprinkled on the beds and the field to enhance the life in the soil.
As I said earlier, the farm is always full of surprises as well as interesting diverse people, bringing their knowledge and expertise to share with us.
Thank you for your interest and support.
Theda