Catching up!

My apologies for not blogging for a while. Plenty has been going on, and I will try to give a little overview of more important happenings.

For the third year in a row STARworks Garden, with the help of Greg Bender and Hugh Martin, held Shiitake and Oyster mushroom cultivation workshops. 

Hugh first guided us through some basics via Power Point presentation.

Then it was time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.

Alice Clemens here, having fun drilling the logs.

Women with power tools!

Looks like these guys could be at home in the kitchen!

Waxing the logs, after inoculation. 

It's easy enough for kids! Hugh's youngest son, Daniel helping Jeff Boothby inoculate the logs.

 I have mentioned before that Eddie and Angela, the owners of Wet Dog Glass, offered us a piece of their land to turn into a garden for STARworks. Adam named it "the East College Street Garden Complex". Adam and I went last Friday, and started to spread out the big pile of cow manure compost we had ordered from Mr. Brown.

 One wheelbarrow load at a time...

 After a few hours of shoveling and hauling we had about half of the pile spread, and decided it had been enough for the day.

 On Saturday we got going about 9 am. Eddie, Angela and Nancy all shoveled and raked.

 Santiago brought his two tillers, but we soon discovered - those were not going to help us much. Luckily Eddie has a great neighbor Kenneth, who owns a tractor (or 2) and farm equipment! Thanks Kenneth! Power tools can be very nice, when used well... and not abused. For instance - after the initial plowing and tilling, if you mulch well - you really shouldn't need to use a tractor, or a tiller again!
Being able to use a tractor really helped us to get a lot of work done at no time!

 And Andreas, who had a birthday that day - got to ride the tractor back to Kenneth's house.

 I don't have a final picture of the new garden complex yet. We ended up using up all the cardboard that needed to be recycled at Wet Dog Glass, to mulch over some of the beds. Once more cardboard piles up, we can mulch between the beds as well, and finish mulching all the beds.
Between plowing and tilling, Eddie put up a rain water catchment system with the help of Adam, Everett, Zack; and Phil helped build the platforms to raise the cisterns up.

Huge thanks to Eddie, who is always ready to lend a hand, and has great ideas of how to get things done!
This morning, for instance, he helped me prune and train the fruit trees in the garden. They ended up looking real nice!
Also Great Thanks to: Adam, Phil, Santiago, Everett, Zack, Angela, Nancy, Anna for all the help!