South Fork Naturals – In the Beginning

 May 25, 2011

Our first official volunteer day was a rousing success.  We accomplished a lot even though the weather did not exactly cooperate with us, by completing 5 out of the 15 steps for the soil building process.

The day started off marvelously.  It was partly cloudy and cool.  Randy Weiss, Teresa Reed, Michael Paul and myself were the volunteers for the day. Teresa and Randy arrived with the “Barretto,” a red, 15hp, rear-tined rototiller and a new spinning drum composter and it was feeling like Christmas!

 

The Barreto

We began by marking off an area in the north pasture for the Nature Sanctuary.  This is an area that is now roped off with yellow nylon rope and is off limits to humans as it has now been dedicated to Nature.  From there we headed right in to playing with the power equipment.

Randy in the Main Garden

Randy tilled the main bed singlehandedly and Teresa and I took turns tilling the herb garden and what we call the long beds, while Michael documented the process as photographer.  It all went really well and we had a lot of fun.  We broke for lunch, which was provided by Chef Paul.  He presented us with a colorful, organic, vegan salad made with black beans, corn, and red peppers.  Spiced with cumin and lime it was served over a bed of fresh greens with tamari rice crackers.  Can you say delicious?

Randy being helpful.

Teresa having fun.

Claudia working it.

The next step was to spread around the mulch and manures.  We spread: used stall straw, fresh straw and pine shavings.  It started to rain lightly so we all put on rain gear and kept on spreading.  The subsequent layer of soil amendments, were the manures.  As it continued to rain I kept reminding myself how we would have less work to do as we no longer needed to water the beds as the weather was doing it for us.  But things were starting to get messy.  We had steer manure, bat guano and earthworm casings to spread next and we were getting colder and wetter every minute.

These pictures don’t really show the amount of rain, the amount of wet, or the amount of guano that stuck to our clothes, so use your imagination.

Bat WHAT?

These gloves used to be yellow.

Can we roto more NOW?

After all of the spreading it was time to rototill  again incorporating the whole mess into the soil.  Randy manned the Barretto while I started picking up and cleaning tools and Teresa jumped into a hot shower.  By the time we were done, Randy and I were such a mess I took the garden hose and washed us down as there was just too much mud on us to even take into the mud room!

After hot showers and dry clothes we sat down to another of Michael’s amazing meals.  But first we toasted the day with a pomegranate wine from Casa de Fruita.  Then we feasted on marinated, grilled, wild caught Ono; saffron rice; and steamed broccoli and cauliflower.  A beautiful tasting end to a beautiful, if somewhat messy, start to the South Fork Naturals project.