Shelly, Julia and Brianna to the rescue!

by Andy

Last Saturday was our first official member work day since early June.

A little after eight in the morning a car pulled up and out popped Shelly, Julia and Brianna. Shelly has adopted a special project at the Land School. She weeds and thins carrots! Every year. She is truly incredible. We know that sometime in early July Shelly will show up and bring her own work gloves and knee pad and just go to work on the carrots. Usually when a person comes to work on a Saturday they are requested to show up between 9 and 10 am. Shelly knows that it is most pleasant to work in the garden before the heat of the day hits, so she arrives at or before 8 am. Sometimes I have not even left the house to feed the animals and I see a car parked on the road. Shelly has just arrived and quietly gone up to the garden in search of carrots. It is pure bliss for me.

Weeding and thinning carrots is absolutely necessary for us to have a viable carrot crop. Carrots are slow to grow at first, so the weeds are very quickly shading them out. Unless the field has no weed seeds at all to begin with (yeah, right!), then at some point a crew has to get down on their hands and knees and weed and thin the row. It is not unpleasant work, just time consuming. Some people enjoy the process of liberating the plants. I enjoy the feeling I get when they are all clear. Sometimes weeding carrots gets put off until the weeds are so big that the work is very slow and also their removal brings a bunch of baby carrots with them. That is unfortunate. However, on Saturday Shelly came out at just the perfect time and she saved the entire second bed of carrots. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! We have many people who have adopted a little part of the Land School and we encourage you to do the same.

While Shelly was enjoying her carrot work, her daughter Julia and friend Brianna helped by hoeing in the garden, weeding onions, caring for Pippa, and planting transplants of chard, bok choy, napa cabbage, lettuce and bunch onions. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! Our lunch and conversation was fabulous. A great start to our season of member work days. Thank you!