Hi All,
Got to see my Hawaii friends this past Saturday! They are here visiting for the holidays and it was so wonderful to be with them for a while. Along with my bestie, we all got together for our annual white elephant gift exchange and as always it was fun! Yesterday Tod and I went chasing Mountain Plovers up in Rio Vista. We did not see them but did get to see this gorgeous Great Horned Owl! There were plenty of Meadowlarks to see and we also got to see Horned Larks! We had gone early in the morning so of course later Tod found out that another Birder saw the flock around 1:30pm! Guess they are not early birds, lol!!! If you are wanting the coordinates to try to see for yourself let me know, Tod just sent them to me.
Everyone, we did it, we finished prepping & planting all the beds we needed to before Holiday Break!
Kaiser crew of 4 came out to the garden on Wednesday to help the Wednesday crew to finish weeding the last of the P beds and got another one prepped for planting! Two of the crew went straight to work on it as soon as they got to the garden and two of the crew helped CL with harvesting the garden for pantry deliveries. Once they were done harvesting they joined in helping to finish up the weeding! Go Kaiser Crew Go!
During Kaleidoscope’s day in the garden one part of the crew helped Kelly to plant 60 fava beans in the East half of bed A01. They needed to weed it out a bit but JG had already gleaned out the veggies the other day freeing them up to concentrate more on planting! The rest of the Kaleidoscope Crew headed out to P bed land and forked the entire 65” of bed P14! That helped us to get ahead of schedule which set us up for finishing the bed prep on Friday! Go Kaleidoscope Crew Go!!!
All week long we were gearing up for the Holiday Break. Lance went Mallow hunting around the garden before they had a chance to grow taller than him! Kelly surveyed and marked the field for Trex to come in and dig the ditches for the new water lines for the New Expansions!!! He also took his truck over to grab the garden a load of straw to cover the P beds. Tree covers were fixed in the Orchard, garlic sorted, sent out and some held back for planting. EL kindly sorted the box shed-we do not need boxes for when we come back to the garden in January! The Big Hoop House was organized and the outside of the East and South side were weeded by Lance. Enrique G, Brenda and Lance made sure all the hoses were disconnected and watering was taken back to once a week with the rain, hopefully, coming in! Garden Wide leaks were fixed and gopher traps laid-with some getting trapped during the week!
The garlic that was held back for planting was planted! The Tuesday Crew got busy and planted over 900 garlic cloves! Friday newbie PO and regulars SM & SM planted the rest of bed A01 in another 60 fava beans! Afterwards they joined the rest of the Friday crew in P bed land to help finish up the plating that was started!
P bed land:
All week long everyone helped to set us up for success in completing the bed prep in the New Expansion-AKA, P beds! Friday’s crew, which also included a Little:) and a Little Little:), got to work a bit earlier than normal and by the time sunset rolled around the beds were finished being prepped! They were also able to plant 2 of the P beds and then Saturday crew came in and finished the planting! Everyone kept going in the Little Hoop House to plant more of what we had leftover-cauliflowers, broccolis, arugula and cilantro-and everything went in to the P beds-over 600 more transplants were planted for future harvests between Friday and Saturday! Friday crew continued sheet mulching the paths between the P beds that CL had started on Tuesday and again Saturday’s crew came in to finish it up!
For the Year you all helped to move over 248,000# of compost-that is 829 wheelbarrows FULL, equivalent to almost 4 wheelbarrows per day each day we were in the garden!!! That is a lot of heavy lifting you all participated in!
On top of that over 30,000# of produce was harvested and sent in to our local food pantries!!!
Thank you one and all! You all continue to make this work!!! We are so appreciative of EVERYONE who shows up to help us, in both BIG and small ways, keep getting the produce out to our community. Every chore counts no matter the size, it is always one less chore at the end of the day that got completed and moved us toward our goal of continuing to grow and send produce to our local food pantries to provide for our neighbors!
Happy Holidays to One and All!
Take care
Lori
P.S. Here are some photos Enrique Garcia, AKA Our Animal Whisperer, took on Saturday:
North Hive, they will be active during a cloudy day as long as it is warm out and I think Saturday got up to at least 61*
