We are in the midst of our Saturday volunteering activities, and always looking for more helpers. If you are interested in making connections within your community, looking to help support a small farm, and free on Saturdays, please consider volunteering! We are currently looking for volunteers to help us establish our native plant nursery, which will be used to grow native plants and seeds.
Elderberry Wisdom Farm is planning volunteer opportunities on Saturday, February 24 and Saturday, March 9. We are continuing to construct raised and recessed garden beds in our native plant nursery on February 24. Once invasives have been reduced we will use the beds for growing native seeds.
Several hundred native plant starts arrive on March 7, so we are scheduling volunteer sessions on Saturday morning, March 9 from 10:00 – 1:00 pm.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact our volunteer coordinator Shannon Chinnock at: shannonc@elderberrywisdom.org.
We started off the new year hosting Saturday volunteer activities as we continue construction of our Native American Plant Nursery. The nursery is a large project we have been working on since the summer internship of 2023 on our two-acre easement in back of our farm. We plan to place 24 garden beds for growing native seeds for our community, with focus primarily on traditional First Foods crops that may be threatened or endangered.
Our first group of volunteers came out to the farm mid-January to help our team measure out and treat the cedarwood planks being used to build our garden beds. We were able to get a lot accomplished in a few hours, and make a lot of progress in order to prepare the assembly of the raised and recessed beds.
Towards the end of January, we hosted the women's soccer team from Willamette University. 19 students spent a few hours helping. Some were digging and leveling the plots where the garden beds were placed. The others spent their time assembling the last piece of the beds, and moving them into place in our crop area. A total of four large garden beds (between 16 and 18 feet each!) were able to be assembled and put into place within several hours. Only 19 more beds to go! We all got muddy and had a lot of fun, and by some miracle, there was no rain.
We were blessed to have had so many January volunteers and greatly appreciate all of the time and hard work volunteers have put in. We have been able to make significant progress on our native nursery. Thank you to all who have volunteered!