Tag: volunteer

Garden Fest


There are many Garden Fest Preparations. Each year we save seeds, then plant the garden starts in order to be ready for the growing season. We plant 1/3 acre, help with The Pantry Garden, and also Garden Fest. The North County Food Pantry in Elk WA is a wonderful place to volunteer. Our growing season is short so starting plants ahead of the last frost lets us be able to transplant directly in the garden when the weather warms up enough. There have been many generous volunteers doing this for lots of years before Pete and I started.Pumpkin & Blue Hubbard Squash 01

Here are two of the biggest squash from last year. The one on the left is a blue Hubbard squash and the one on the right is a monster-sized pumpkin from The Pantry Garden. We won this pumpkin because Peter guessed the weight the closest, a whopping 119 pounds. A lot of seeds from both of these were shared to plant this spring.

Plant Starts 01Set up

We plant a large abundance of seeds in the first step. Then, transplant them into smaller single containers for the people that come to Garden Fest to pick up starts. At the same time plant in a larger tray (rows) so we can easily transplant directly into the Pantry Garden. We have a community of happy farmers. In the picture below you can see broccoli starts growing and getting ready for the Garden Fest giveaways.Plant Starts 02

We planted seeds in trays placed on radiant-heated floors, purchasing grow lights to turn on as they started to peek out of the ground. It has been successful! There are starts for the hot peppers, spices, tomatoes, broccoli, squash, Wallawalla onion, and much more. Below is a tray of broccoli getting ready for planting directly into the Pantry garden soon.Broccoli Calabrese Start 01

Pete and I spend time almost every day doing this kind of transplanting and watering stuff before the garden even goes in. Blue Hubbard Squash 01

These Blue Hubbard squash sprang up and grew like the dickens, Wow. We are hoping to get good peppers this year too.Blue Hubbard Squash 02

Onward We Go!

glean 05Onward we go! On Friday morning three people and two trucks met in Ritzville at 9 am.  Going south on 395 just beyond the Coyote Ridge Correctional Facility we turned and proceeded to the Eltopia Post Office to meet a farmland owner that Terri knows.

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We drive to a nearby field that had just been harvested and stop at a big pile of sweet corn sitting on the side of the field. He asked what else we could use. We told him about the potato shortage at the food bank, and you could see the gears in his mind start to turn. Saying, “Take as much as you can use, of this corn,” he turned to Terri saying, “Come see where the other fields are”.  So, Pete and I got busy filling 8-grain bags with corn (90 lbs each approx) by the time she returned.

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Our next stop was at a potato field that had just finished being harvested. The crew was waiting for us by their Spudnik Potato Harvester. Wow! I want to drive a Spudnik someday. Look at the size of that machine!

glean 04They motioned for us to pull up beside them, saying they would load our pickup till we say stop. It took about 2 seconds to fill the bed completely up with potatoes.

We drive very carefully on some dirt roads to where the onion field is next. We get to pick from the field before they harvest it this afternoon. Before we can start to pick, we must bag up 4 bags of potatoes out of our truck and transfer them to Terri’s truck. Otherwise, we don’t have enough room to haul any onions and corn.

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You can see how the onion is planted about 4 across in a 12-16 inch row. They have let the tops dry and the picking is very easy. We quickly add 6 more bags of onions (75 lbs each) to the harvest today.
Picking Onions

2,411 Pounds

glean 08Thanks to the generosity of the farm landowner and the farmers that lease his land, we just unloaded 2,411 lbs of beautiful fresh produce at the Food Pantry this morning.

glean 07This is only what we brought back home, Terri had a full truckload that she took to her church.

292 pounds of corn
1,815 pounds of potatoes
304 pounds of onion

The three of us who volunteered, had a blast doing this. It was a beautiful drive and the whole day was full of smiles and laughter for us all. It feels good to respond to the opportunities presented to us. GIG! Hopefully, others will see what a joy it is to participate in this kind of activity making the next opportunity even more fun.