John and his fix-it team started up this week. Several new volunteers came to the farm, were given a tour, and a potential to-do list for this season. Thanks, everyone, we really appreciate the extra help. Repairing the roll-up sides to the tunnels was a priority and became a reality.
Volunteers are still plugging away on starting and transplanting seedlings. Everyone has agreed the greenhouse is a pleasant place to be on these chilly and very windy April mornings. We still have thousands of seeds to plant, but we seem to be right on schedule thanks to all the extra hands.
Thank you, Lynne. Always a friend to Growing to Give. Johnny’s donated seeds to the extension office and Lynne sent us green bean and field pea seeds. The peas will be mixed with oats for our early April cover crop and planted in our expansion plots. This is a quick cool weather mix that will be cut down in June, producing a mulch that we will plant directly into with squash plants. This is part of our no-till method.
We got to see Rebecca this week. (I am sorry Rebecca that I did not take a picture of your face!) The two of us worked on extending the pussy willow windbreak with cuttings from our current stand. As everyone was in the nice warm greenhouse, Rebecca and I bundled up and worked outside. She took cuttings, I made holes with rebar, and the cuttings were tamped into the wet soil. This is what we did with elderberry slips a few weeks ago. it will be interesting to see if they take. It was great to have my partner in crime back at the farm. 🙂
We are so happy and grateful to have Paul Wang as our Bowdoin college intern for 2021. Paul officially starts in June. He has already been volunteering for a few weeks now. It has been great to have him, he is already an asset and takes on tasks that Carrie and I are not especially fond of. This week he replaced a tunnel door for us and had no problem with that darn, hard to control wiggle wire!
Looking forward to some warmer temps and drier conditions. If that is the case this week, there will be lots of cover crops being planted.
Thank you, volunteers, for making all this possible. Theda