Hi everyone, Lori here as usual, just a little more exhausted.

This week we got a lovely surprise in the greenhouse. We haven’t been in there much since we had Reading Camp at the end of July other than to take in some bags of dirt and other things. Well while we were cleaning up around the center, picking some stragglers in the raised beds, and watering other spots, we went in there to see what else we needed to straighten up and we saw this pretty plant growing right through the gravel. I’m pretty sure that it is a squash of some sort. When we had the Reading Camp kids planting in there, several different kinds of seeds had fallen to the ground. I’m guessing conditions were right in there for some of them to sprout. There are little plants coming up all over in there! I can’t wait to see what we end up with.

My begging for money for a starter herd of goats paid off! One of our regular work groups that have been coming to the center for the past 3 years is going to buy them for us. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh is having a Blessing of the Animals in the beginning of October and are going to sell chances on naming the goats. I think they are almost more excited than we are. We will actually be going to get them Monday, one is very pregnant.  My crew spent all day doing fencing and homes for them.

Ya know, zucchini is the glitter of the vegetable world. That being said, we had several that we couldn’t give away, and I didn’t feel like making pickles or freezing them, so I made some zucchini bread and muffins. While we were doing that, I took leave of my senses and said to my Outreach Assistant/Daughter Crystal, “Ya know, we should have a bake sale.” She said, “OK, lets do this.” Our zucchini bread and muffins turned into yellow squash muffins (delicious), pumpkin pies, bread and muffins, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, with and without Hershey Kisses, oatmeal cookies, fudge, brownies, banana bread and muffins, and rice crispy treats. We advertised that we will be having said bake sale on Monday the 29th; the first piece of feedback was that we needed to do hot dogs as well, the second piece was we needed to do pasta salad. I guess we are going to be selling lunches that day! The great thing about making the pasta salad is that the only thing we have to buy for that is pasta and the dressing, we grew all the veggies that we use. I am hoping for a good turn out, half of the proceeds will go to our Grow Appalachia program and the other half will go towards the food pantry.

We had our first of 7 seven cooking classes Tuesday, I actually learned something I didn’t know. Some of the dark green vegetables have calcium, like kale. I can’t wait to see what we learn during the next 6 classes. I’m thankful that WVU has an extension in our county, it makes it so much easier to get the classes we need.

Have a great weekend y’all!

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