I usually make a weekly trip to our partner Eleanor’s Persephone Farm to check on our 200+ elderberry starts that we planted last fall. I have been unable to do that for the last two weeks due to flooding on the farm from heavy rainfall. I was able to go before the multiple consecutive days of heavy rain and several of the trees were standing in 2-3 inches of water. I guess Mother Nature wanted to see if the trees knew how to tread water. :)
Traditional Ecological Knowledge Specialist, Dr. Aaronda Mayo is sharing photos in a series of monthly updates showing ongoing development of the Elderberry Wisdom Farm infrastructure, especially including our two-acre Native American Plant Nursery.
The greenhouse east driveway has been graveled to prevent vehicles from getting stuck in our Jory soil with its higher proportion of clay soil. It took several trips to pick up gravel and 1.5 days to complete, but it has made a big difference. Our east driveway was vastly improved.
Habitat Restoration and Nursery Coordinator Shannon Chinnock in front of the new portable garage.
Shannon is really good at oiling the cedar planks for use on the raised beds. After she oils them, they look like they have been stained with some expensive stain but olive oil protects the wood and is safe for the environment so that’s what we used. We are grateful for the two volunteers who helped out for a few hours one Saturday morning in January. We then used those cedar planks and built the raised and recessed beds.
Our first row of six raised and recessed plant nursery beds are now completed and in place, thanks to our team and a group of volunteers. with two more rows to complete. Shannon has more details of the volunteers that helped us get them in the ground.
We were able to work more on the greenhouse. We constructed two platform steps to prevent loss of gravel down the ramp.
We also got the metal table rust scraped off and the table painted.