Down on the Farm
On Saturday I joined a group of grad students to do some volunteer work down at Miracle Farm in Floyd. It is a beautiful little and Bed & Breakfast run by a couple dedicated to organic growing and sustainability. The experience was truly enlightening and inspirational, it certainly reaffirmed my feeling that one way or another I will end up doing something similarly sustainable and back-to-naturey. If I can manage to incorporate my ECE and EE background, all the better.
Ed and Karen were exceptionally welcoming and friendly hosts, I guess to a degree you would expect that, being that they ran a B&B, but it seemed even more than that, immediately after introductions they treated us as if we were long-time friends. We all learned a lot (and yet still just a small fraction of what there is to learn) about running an organic, sustainable farm. The projects our group worked on ranged from moving fallen trees that would be used for fencing or building posts (black locust trees have especially hard, rot resistant wood that can be used untreated as fence posts and last for 30 years), to separating worms from compost in the worm bin, harvesting the wild lambsquarter (which was then made a delicious part of our potluck lunch) to preparing garden plots for planting. Throughout the day we learned about double digging and no-dig gardening techniques as well as general aspects of permaulture.
Suffice it to say, I had a great time and hope to make it a regular event.
Ed and Karen were exceptionally welcoming and friendly hosts, I guess to a degree you would expect that, being that they ran a B&B, but it seemed even more than that, immediately after introductions they treated us as if we were long-time friends. We all learned a lot (and yet still just a small fraction of what there is to learn) about running an organic, sustainable farm. The projects our group worked on ranged from moving fallen trees that would be used for fencing or building posts (black locust trees have especially hard, rot resistant wood that can be used untreated as fence posts and last for 30 years), to separating worms from compost in the worm bin, harvesting the wild lambsquarter (which was then made a delicious part of our potluck lunch) to preparing garden plots for planting. Throughout the day we learned about double digging and no-dig gardening techniques as well as general aspects of permaulture.
Suffice it to say, I had a great time and hope to make it a regular event.