Happy Monday everyone,
I hope everyone had a great weekend and is ready to start back to school soon. Many thanks to all of you who came out in our “warm’ weather, down right hot in my book! We were joined by members of Global Leadership Initiative for Youth (GLIFY), Young Men’s Service League (YMSL), Del Arroyo 4H, National Charity League (NCL) and the Girl Scouts. The garden looks beautiful! It is getting hard to find a patch of weeds to just sit and Zen pull, we even started working on the old Bermuda grass patches. Thank you everyone!
As many of you know, it looks like our deer neighbors have found our new orchard trees to nibble on. We started building new tomato cages to put around the trees. Silly me, I was still thinking of the trees as little baby trees-nope some of them have grown six feet in every direction since we planted them in January. So we began building double sized cages to use where needed. Still have a few more trees to cage in the XXL model. Many thanks to all you cage builders and tree protectors for your hard work and patience as the plans changed.
We will also be trying some other deterrents; including coyote scented sachets to hang out in the orchard, resurrecting Marian’s scarecrow and creating some wolf shaped cutouts to join her in the orchard. One volunteer suggested hanging things that move in the evening breezes like pieces of old agri-bon and old CD’s from the cages and trees. If you have any old CDs or DVDs to share you can put them in the “CD” box up by the office and we will string them up.
The gophers continue to plague the garden and the pasture’s ground squirrels are encroaching into the orchard. We continue to trap the gophers and share them with our local predators. We are trying castor oil and moth balls in both the gopher and squirrel burrows to deter them from digging in the garden and orchard. I am willing to try any and all suggestions to control these critters and would love to hear about anything that has worked for you.
OK enough about our unintended sharing, last week we were able to harvest and share a whooping 572 pounds of harvest with our human neighbors in need. WAHOOOO! And that’s not counting the onions we shared. You all are wonderful finders of produce.
More good news! Betsy’s, the tractor, new engine was delivered late last week and SW is putting all the bits and bobs back on the engine and will soon be putting the engine into Betsy. Who knew that you basically have to split the tractor in halves to get the old engine out and the new one in. THANK YOU S.W. You are amazing! You can see pics of Betsy’s new engine below and on our Instagram and Facebook.
As always, my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to all you. You all truly make the world a better place to be. Thank you all for coming out to help the garden help feed our neighbors and keep the garden loved. Fertile GroundWorks couldn’t do what we do without each and every one of you. THANK YOU! Have a wonderful week everyone.
Until next we meet, do stay safe and keep loving the ones you are with.
Giant cosmic hugs
Brenda
