Summer Days, in a Haze

** You’re getting two from me today! This is backlogged from June due to all the website issues, but I hope you enjoy!**

Summer is in full swing and I think if I blink a little too long it will be August! May was a little slow for a minute there, but June has swept away the lazy pace and we’re only a week in! Hindman had two new interns start with us this summer. Jackie and Ashley are both rising seniors in the Knott County Central High School FFA program.

We partner with Knott Central FFA to grow our plant starts and wanted to further that partnership this year. Summer is such a busy time, it’s nice to have some extra hands around! Bobby taught them how to use the tiller, lay groundcover, put up Hortonova, tie up tomato plants, etc. Summer is certainly a time for learning in the garden!

We also hosted two rain barrel workshops down at our Extension Office recently. The time spent prepping for that workshop will have those girls hoping they never have to see another rain barrel again, I’m sure! We prepped over 40 rain barrels and had to do test runs on quite a few more before we determined the best way to piece them together. Ashley and Jackie got to try their hand at some power tools though, so I’m convinced it couldn’t have been too tedious!

Greenhouses are going up on campus as I type this. We’re hoping to have them fully up and running soon. They were equipped with aquaponics systems, so we took an office field trip up to Food Chain in Lexington to see how they run their aquaponics and to discuss what types of opportunities are available to us!

While we anxiously wait for these changes to occur, summer is plowing onward and we here at Hindman are in the midst of our 40th annual Family Folk Week! We’ve got people all over campus, and in the middle of it all we had our first Farmer’s Market of the season. Since it’s still early on, most of the produce we had included peas and rainbow chard. We also had folks selling chicken eggs, duck eggs, honey, beef, and various fruit trees/plants! Obviously Folk Week is filled with all the folky things you can imagine (think banjos, fiddles, granny-making classes, woodworking, etc.) but to me the highlight has been the food! There are too many things to talk about here, but suffice to say we’ve had everything from Greek to corn filled meals.

This is just the beginning of what is sure to be a busy summer. I am certain y’all will only see more and more pictures of the food we eat posted here!

 

*** As promised, the next post contains more food 😀