We have been busy this week cleaning and breaking new garden ground at Rural Resources, Greeneville, TN.  Service Learning Students from Tusculum College have been coming this week to help with a variety of projects around the farm.  They helped with some clean up in the barn so we can expand some of our working space, prepare for field trips and our Summer Farm Day Camp, and safely put our fair display barn in the rafters.  They also helped to reset up Ms. Piggy!

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Ms. Piggy needs some new ears, and I need to find her litter!  I hope they are not running around and rooting up the barn!  A group of our teenagers made her about 4 years ago to be a part of our Christmas Parade float.  We also made Bella, our milk cow, but she needs to have some welding done and she will be added as art around the farm.   A different group of Service Learning Students at Tusculum College built the raised bed so Ms. Piggy would have a home.  When they did this our real Ms. Piggy, a Hereford, had her first litter of cute little munchkins!  They decided tin Ms. Piggy needed some too!  They did not want her getting lonely.

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We also have been watching our food grow!  The red lettuce and strawberries that our Grow Appalachia teen group, Food Commanders, planted a month ago are doing wonderfully.  The strawberries are beginning to bloom and the red lettuce has about tripled in size!  That horse manure really has made a difference.  The green head lettuce is growing beautifully in our high tunnel, and maybe in another week or two, it will be ready to eat.  The big blue tractor was out yesterday and plowed up a larger garden space than was there last year.  Last year we planted squash and watermelon in it.  I wonder what the plan is this year?  We shall see….

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Tomorrow we meet with Food Commanders to tour a local recycled community garden, and decide what their dreams are for their backyard garden.  Our local FSA office donated a variety of seeds for the teens to begin their garden planting.  We are very excited to get these teens started, and all the support that the FSA is giving to help these low-income families supply fresh vegetables to their tables.

I look forward to sharing more progress, stories, and pictures.  Don’t worry, when I find the litter of pigs, I will get them with mom, and all will be happy!