Good Evening Y’all.  Lori here from McDowell County. Things here are cruising right along finally.

The plow has been fixed and we got the last few spots plowed, All participants have their plants and seeds in the ground, and life is good.  I shouldn’t have spoke so soon. No sooner did I get that typed and it said connection lost and saving was disabled. It’s back up now. Sheesh.

Looking at our featured image provided by one of our Mercer County participants makes us thankful for this program. This is Ms. Shrewsberry and her 22 month old grandson working together in their family garden.  She also sent a few more photos that I will include with this post.

One of our McDowell County participants had her bees swarm late last month, her and her son caught them and transferred them in to a hive.  She is hoping they like their accommodations and will stay.

With they few heavy rain storms we have had in the past couple weeks I got called to action to help a participant dig trenches around her garden. It was quite hilarious. It was spur of the moment and since she is my neighbor she hollered at me to come help. Keep in mind that all the tools we have for such an occasion was at the center so we had to wing it. Thankfully we had a work group in the week before the weather decided to overwater her tomato plants. The skinniest kid in the group sat on the end of a table while sorting donations in a mobile home right next to hers and the legs broke off. Since we didn’t have a pick or shovel, she grabbed a stick and I grabbed the broken table leg and we set to digging a trench. It was going well and the water was flowing away from her plants. My graceful self took a step in the wrong direction and I sunk up to mid calf and lost a shoe in her garden. She was laughing so hard that she couldn’t pull me out of the mud. Once I got myself out and recovered my mud filled shoe, we continued to dig. It turns out she is just as graceful as I am and got sucked into the mud too. I at least pulled her out before I started laughing. It was all the funnier to me because she only had on flip flops! Unfortunately we were the only two braving the rain so there are no photos or videos of this.

Looking towards September, we were invited to set up a booth at the Harvest Festival in Mercer County. Depending on their schedule and that of our participants, as well as the cost, we may do that.  We are also planning a video and information packet to present to folks that are interested in joining us next year.

We have our Diocese Convention in October this year and we will be taking some value added products that our participants are going to be making.

We are planning a garden maintenance class here in the next week or so, It would have been done sooner but we had work groups in each week for the past month and a half and the center was full to capacity the whole time.

Let’s all hope things continue to go smoothly and we have lots and lots of tasty food.

Until next time, Happy Growing!