Busy, busy

Greetings all:

Just taking a moment to try and catch up on our blog (which I apologize has been somewhat neglected as of late with this amazing weather - great time to be in the garden!). I hope to catch up some more because we've got lots of photos and videos as well and with our great team of apprentices this season we're making some great strides.

Here is Martin pointing out one such successfully completed project.


Tim, Julie and Ish have been working diligently to clean up our raspberry patch and transplant out several rows and suckers to our new pick-your-own project (hopefully first crop will be in a couple of years). Here is the already existing patch newly renovated. It's amazing. This photo doesn't do it justice, especially if you don't know what it was like before! Great, great, great work by our three apprentices, including the new trellises by Ish. They look amazing and I cannot wait to host our annual picnic so our members can get a first-hand look!

And here is one pile of what didn't make the cut (pun intended) to get into our new patch. Where did I put that chipper/shredder?

These fine spring days have triggered another yearly tradition - the moving of the hoop houses. Her I am inside the Quonset Hut just prior to the move. Please disregard the pastiness of my legs. I still have my 'winter tan'. I'm working on it!

Here is the first one just as it slid into the new home for the summer. Martin approves.

And here is some of what it took to get it there. Our newest tractor, Tim on the left and Ish on the right. (I took a turn too - I promise).

But in the meantime I was making the fall's work easier by putting a little grease on the rails (they will come apart more easily when the hoop house is moved in the fall.

In all it's glory. The Cathedral is still awaiting a move in this photo but by the end of the day we had moved both to their summer digs. Very cool! It is always a great event and when you are finished it looks like a whole new garden because everything is in a different place when you come around the corner of the barn.

Here is our cheering section! Em, Liz and Martin along with Julie (one of our other apprentices) and Evelyn who had the day off but didn't want to miss this event.

And here is what I was doing the day before. Getting some of the garden beds tilled to begin the process of bed prep.

And here is Lizzie participating. She is barefoot here. It is one of my greatest pleasures in life to garden with bare feet. Glad to see my girl sees it that way as well!

Mars at the play-set looks on.

Here I am explaining the 3020 to Tim and Julie. They both took it for a spin as we got it ready for one of its biggest jobs of the year, the annual plowing. They both did a fantastic job dealing with a large machine that can be quite intimidating the first few times you use it.

That's all for now but again, hope to have more up here soon.