Despite all of the cold weather we have stayed very busy at Lotts Creek. Before I get to the title of this blog, I will talk about the positives that have been going on.

We survived the first round of paperwork! Honestly compared to the other grants we have, the paperwork was very logical and easy to fill in- nothing redundant. It was intimidating at first, but all worked out.

Eddie also completed all of the garden plans for our folks, and the soil samples have came back in. We are meeting with our Ag agent next week to talk soil. We also have all of our seeds in, and divided for the folks. We plan to distribute them at our 2 nd group meeting.

We also got a local farmer who is the son of the karate teacher to turn the garden at my house. He is also going to turn the ground at the school and another garden. He is working very cheap to help us, and is excited to get gardening back in the community. The rest of the gardens will be raised, the people can till themselves, or are small enough we can till them for them with our equipment.

Some of the issues we are having. We are down to 18 or so folks. So many people just either think we are trying to mortgage their land or don’t want us to take pictures or come to meetings. We have our nets out looking for 2 or 3 more, and we still have time. Like I have posted before we are just trying to win these people over with kindness!

We also started work on our chicken coop. The design we liked came from a gentlemen eddie knows in Manchester. He is- best guess- 90% off the grid. What we liked about his design was anyone can move it. That led me to go online on a link David sent me where I found a PVC pipe tractor like our friend from Clay County. Our hopes is that my 85 year old dad can move it with one hand- and that it hold 8 chickens. As soon as the rest of the PVC comes in we will know.

The downside to this design is it is a little pricier where we cant use a LOT of salvage. But we are doing what we can. Our community members that want chickens we will give them several options and run with it. I also ordered our baby chickens and they will be here at the first of May- so I hope it is warm then. Our local community mart has expressed potential interest in buying our eggs- so that may be our profit from the Grow funds.

But, as my title suggested the mighty Hercules- the first seedling I started that actually grew, has died. We are not sure what happened. All we know is that Eddie and I left the plants in the greenhouse last Thursday and when we came back Saturday the plans looked like someone had pulled them all up by the roots!!!! Our greenhouse is near the baseball field away from the school and behind a gate- and no one saw anyone near the green house 🙁

Luckily we had split the tomato seeds. My dad was growing half and I was growing half. Sort of a competition- so we only lost half…. We are just in awe of anyone doing this to us!!! Needless to say I am buying 2 padlocks ASAP!

Hopefully next time we will have more good news with lots of growing and plowing to report, and not the death of our hero!