first CRAFT day etc

What an awesomely busy week this has been! Lots of good things happened. Since we finally had a few days of nice weather we were able to transplant alot of the seedlings that have been taking up all the greenhouse space. We planted cabbage, broccoli, leeks, onions and some greens out in the CSA fields. We were also able to finish uncovering the strawberries (LOTS of raking) and since some room was freed up in the greenhouse, we seeded some more.

heading out for our first day transplanting

First cabbages in the ground!

Last week we also took advantage of a sunny morning and relocated some small cedar trees. There used to be a dam on the property that created a pond in the midst of the marden river, and the dam was demolished last year, so the creek has found its original path again. There are huge mud flats now where the water was contained when the dam was in place, and the property has an old growth forest project in the works, part of which is to restore the mud flats to a vegetated area.

We also had our first CRAFT day on Wednesday! The internship I’m doing is part of the CRAFT program, which includes regular education days in the form of workshops or trips to other farms and food-related places. This week we all piled into the farm van and headed out to St Thomas to visit Orchard Hill farm. It was beautiful, and we got to spend the whole day with about 70 other CRAFT interns and farmers, which was really amazing!

some of Orchard Hill’s lettuces in one of the hoop houses

The intern accomodations: a beautiful straw bale house. Contains zero nails, made with straw and timber from the farm:

Inside the house – the plaster is more visible here.

some of my fellow interns:

Ken and Tony showing the group how to cultivate with two of the horses. Orchard Hill uses horses as much as possible when working the land. After this demonstration, they unhitched the plow and tied 2 ropes to it, and the visiting interns had to pull it across the field on foot.

Walking through a field of rye. This was planted as a cover crop to enrich the soil and prevent weeds from growing:

their beautiful little cow, Mabel:

All in all an awesome day.

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