Volunteer Day!

Volunteer day was a great success! We had such a great time and got SO much done thanks to our tireless volunteers.
We started out the day with several tasks in mind, but the most important was getting the potatoes planted.

We started around 9:00am with 140lbs of seed potatoes, a few rakes, hoes, shovels and a lot of lemonade. Sharon started us off and Linda came down shortly after. The four of us managed to plant 15 50 foot rows of potatoes in just a few hours!

On the left, you can see Sharon placing the potatoes down the trench Shawn made in one of the beds. Josie is raking the soil up and over the potatoes to create a bit of a hill.

It was a beautiful day for working outside! The wind was persistent but the temperature and off-and-on sun were really nice.

After lunch, Lauren, Shelley, Daniel, and Abby all came out to help. It is amazing how fast everything gets done with 8 people! We are so used to it just being the two of us.



Here, Daniel and Shawn are digging trenches for the potatoes. Then, after placing the potatoes, Abby and Lauren raked the soil back over the top.

Dig, dig, dig!

We planted 33 50 foot rows of potatoes - four different varieties - amazing!

We also managed to transplant some greens. We planted 3 rows of pak choi, 3 rows of red mizuna, 3 rows of green mizuna, and 3 rows of toraziroh mustard greens! (Mizuna is a type of mild mustard green as well.) Here is Linda digging the holes for the transplants (no fancy machinery here, just a good old fashioned trowel :) )After the holes were dug, we would come behind and place the transplants in each hole and gently cover up their roots.

Sharon with a beautiful flat of green mizuna.

Look at those roots!

Volunteer day is clearly a very serious day. VERY serious.

Photo by Lauren Bland

Photo by Lauren Bland

Shawn with his leg in a groundhog hole - yikes!

Photo by Lauren Bland

Photo by Lauren Bland

And no volunteer day is complete without a moment with the chickens.

Photo by Lauren Bland

Photo courtesy of Lauren Bland

Thank you so much to everyone who helped out yesterday, we got so much work done and had so much fun doing it!

The Acre: Take Two

I meant to post these photos a few weeks ago when we finished the second till on the acre. We took turns tilling, Shawn spread some lime because the soil was a little too acidic, and Jack came over to supervise. We got all the tilling done and the beds formed all in one day! We only formed beds on half of the acre, the other half got a cover crop since we won't be planting crops in it until the summer planting.