Total Pageviews

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Phase Two takes shape

After all the rain this week, I was not very hopeful we would have a dry Saturday to do all the work we had ambitiously planned. The garden needed some cleaning up. The bed along the fence had some more shrubs that needed to go. The big, empty, composted bed outside of room 5 and 6 was a blank canvas. Of course it was leaving little dirt marks on the library wall since every time a butterfinger ball fell in the compost, it got thrown up on the wall. Kind of like polka dots.

We were lucky with the weather, lucky with our dedicated crew of volunteers and a big group of Willamette fraternity boys. There were teams raking leaves, digging out shrubs, digging post holes, cutting boards, and more. We have the start on a grape arbor that will run just under the windows of the classrooms. There will be a short fence around the outside to keep out those errant recess balls. There will be a path through two rows of espaldier trees. We have a huge expanse of sunny dirt to plant in.

Thanks to everyone that came out today to help work. There were kids here today, but you would hardly know since they were being entertained in the gym while the adults did the messy work outside. Thank you Erica for spending the whole day with the kids. Thanks to Sigma Chi for donating their time and energy. Thanks to Erica, another Willamette student who even helped move poo around. Thanks to Cheryl for the coffee that got us going this morning. And thanks to everyone that keeps showing up and giving up their weekend time to make this project happen. We have a truly amazing school community.
Check out a few pictures from today.
More to come later in the week as we finish the support structure.
We will be planting grapes and trees in early December.
Stay tuned for more specifics.

Fence posts and arbor are up

This will be the entrance to the orchard. The winding path will have fruit trees on both sides. Cool, huh?

Have you been wondering what's happening in the garden this winter? We're putting it to sleep! There will be some hoop house for winter greens to grow and the straw is keeping the soil nice and warm for Spring. The black compost bins? Cooking up some compost for Spring!

Look at the size of that drill! Makes digging those holes a whole lot easier. Thanks to Home Depot for donating.