by Barbara Munkres
Today was a special day: the first day of Carla’s much deserved two week vacation. She will be visiting family while we will be caring for the garden. As you might guess, she was in the garden this morning helping us get started with the harvesting in spite of her mid-morning departure time.
Coordinator Amy Swanson was away with family today also, but she provided us with extra workers: there were fifteen of us altogether! One of the volunteers came all the way from Alston to help out. Thank you, Lauren. As a result of so many volunteers, the work was done quickly. Many thanks go to Mark Sandeen who weighed all the harvest in the barn, answered questions, and made sure the harvest got to the Food Pantry.
We needed a mini-van to carry all the produce to the pantry
With so many people at the garden there were some reunions of friends who had worked together in the past. I’m grateful to all the volunteers who pitched in this morning: harvesting, washing vegetables and preparing the trays of food. In addition to the crops mentioned by Mark below, we sent acorn squash, basil, beans (harvested earlier on a dry day), beets, broccoli, carrots, chard, kale, leeks, lettuce, and a beautiful tray of zinnias.
After everyone had left I went around to check on the gate to the small garden. Just as I got there, a monarch butterfly flew up from one of the flowers at the edge of the fence. It hovered briefly then fluttered across the whole garden: a very peaceful moment…..a benediction perhaps.
We are now at 1,240 pounds delivered to the food pantry this year. Well above our first year harvest of 995 pounds and we still have six weeks to go! The big winner today was Spaghetti Squash with 40 pounds.
In 2nd place we had almost 20 pounds of cucumbers.
Next up was eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini at 16 pounds each.