week 2: the week of extracurriculars

Week 2 is coming to an end, and we've packed a lot in.  A new WWOOFer named Hannah showed up on Sunday and will be here for two weeks.  She just left her full-time, long-term gig at a bakery in Jacksonville Florida to travel and get in touch with local agriculture.  It's great to have an extra pair of hands and someone to chat with.  With the three of us working, projects (particularly weeding) seem to fly by.

Our hut's window view

This week's projects

Created garden bed
Ken laid the foundation of cardboard on the grass, upon which we threw a bunch of soil.  After working the soil into shape, we planted about 35 lavender seedlings.

Planted in stone garden
The stone garden that we weeded out last week was looking pretty blank, so we planted some Astilbe.  This is a perennial with showy flowers and waxy fern-like leaves.  It's more of a late-spring/early summer bloomer, but Ken is hoping for a second bloom within the next week or so.

Harvesting
Garlic

cutting the stem off

This year was extremely prolific for Chanticleer's garlic.  Ken planted 1,000 cloves and we pulled up roughly 900 heads, which took around 3 hours.  To harvest garlic you simply pull up on the shoot.  The garlic head comes out of the soil with a satisfying *pop!*.  You snip off the shoot, and if there is a seed pod at the top of the shoot, save it for future use.

Garlic is typically grown from a clove (asexual reproduction), but it's good practice to save your seeds anyways.  Some people like to grow every new round of garlic from seed (sexual reproduction), but it can be more difficult and take a longer time to mature.  Growing from clove ensures that you have a uniform crop since you're essentially cloning your last plant, but over time you lose genetic diversity and adaptation is highly constrained, which puts your crop at risk.

Brussel sprouts

I don’t think I had ever seen Brussel Sprouts still on their plant.  They’re kind of strange looking.  The sprouts are picked directly off of the stem, toward the bottom.  We found that slugs are very fond of sprouts, so we spent some time opening up the florets and picking out the slimy slugs.  Later that night we roasted them with green beans from the garden, bacon, and balsamic vinegar.  Mmmmm!

Flowers

 As usual, we harvested flowers a few times this week and practiced arranging them.  We’re all starting to get the hang of it, but Sean seems to have a particular knack for it.  His arrangements are definitely the most popular among Chanticleer’s customers.

Elementary School Garden
The Dunbarton Elementary School has a large garden for an after-school "garden club".  The kids actually apply to the program, and due to so much interest, some students get turned away.  I hope in the future, all the kids at Dunbarton with an interest in gardening can participate... it seems a shame that they don't have the opportunity.

lettuce, sage, oregano, dill 

strawberries, tomatos, beans, pumpkin

In the summertime the students take a break from the garden and the responsibility falls onto the parent volunteers.  Unfortunately, there hasn't been a lot of volunteering this summer, so Ken asked us to go do a "blitz weeding" session for an hour.  We only got about half of the garden done during the first session, but the three of us really wanted to see the finished product, so we went back the next morning to complete the project.

Shaker Village garden 

Yet another one of Ken’s volunteer projects…

I had actually never heard of the Shakers until Ken brought them up, so taking a little field trip to the village was quite enlightening.  As our tour guide said, “The Shakers are most influential group of people you’ve probably never heard of”.  They are a Christian sect originally formed in the 18^th century England.  They called themselves “The United Society of Believers”, but were known as “Shakers” due to the crazy dancing and ecstatic behavior during worship.  The Shakers came together under a mutual belief in communal ownership, equality (yet separation) between sexes, celibacy, and simplicity of life.   They believed that living a celibate life allowed them to reduce distractions and devote their entire self to spiritual focus.

Canterbury Shaker Village dates back to 1792 and was active for around 200 years.  Nowadays most of the buildings are open for tours, and many of them have a museum-like feel.  What stuck with me the most about the Shakers was how organized they were.  Everything had labels – buildings, rooms, and cabinets/drawers/shelves.  Every single item, from tools to cooking supplies, were labeled with their corresponding drawer or shelf (1A.14 would mean building 1, room A, shelf 14).  The community members were rotated through various jobs (washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, building, gardening) so that nobody got bored.  The jobs gender-specific so that males and females didn’t spend too much time together.  Once a week, however, there would be a “social hour” in which every male would be paired with a female.  They would face each other sitting in chairs about 6 feet apart, and talk for one hour.  The elders would oversee and watch for any special connections or chemistry happening.  If they thought any interaction got too flirty, those two people would never be paired together again for social hour.  

Tucked behind the village buildings is a very large garden, and Ken is in charge of the herb area.  The goal is to showcase herbs that were beneficial to the Shakers and are still used today.  Weeds had started to take over some of the plots, so we spent a couple hours cleaning them out.  A big beautiful mulberry tree shaded the area, and at the end we snacked on the delicious berries.  I’d never had mulberries before and was amazed at their sweetness and flavor!  I wonder why we don’t eat more of them since the trees are very hardy and grow well throughout many climates.  After lunch we got a tour of the village from a man who used to live in it.  Fun field trip!  I left my phone behind, so no photos.

Old Home Day: Basket Making

Saturday was “Dunbarton Old Home Day” which is the annual town fair.  Its name comes from the fact that many of the people who moved out of town come back one day a year to get in touch with their roots.  There’s a parade, music, food, and lots of artisan tents where you can learn traditional crafts.  Ken is always on the Home Day Committee, and he was in charge of putting together demonstrations for spinning wool, basketry, and rock work.  Us WWOOFers volunteered to do basket making, so we spent an afternoon practicing since none of us had ever done it before.  Ken and Susan have collected a bunch of reeds of varying width, which were then soaked in water to prevent breakage.  Ken decided a simple rounded basket was the easiest prototype.

my first attempt

so much focus

Once at the fair, it was obvious that spinning wool was the most attention-drawing.  Ken’s granddaughter, Hadley, is a pro at spinning and brought all of her toys to play with.  The easiest way to get started spinning wool is to use a drop-spindle, which she brought to let people practice with, but she also brought her wheel to demonstrate the more advanced version.

spindle-spinning wool (poor example)

Hadley with her wheel

Only one kid was interested in making a basket, but he did a great job!  Meanwhile Sean, Hannah, and I practiced our own skills and I started on a square basket.

Hannah and Sean demonstrating basketry

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On Monday we met up with three fellow Bear Brookers (Christie, Marissa, Ethan) for a mini reunion-hike.  We did the Welch-Dickey loop which is on the south side of the White Mountain National Forest.

And, of course, we made it back to Ilsley's Ice Cream for another round of delicious cow-to-table dessert.  The cows were out in the pasture right next to the ice cream stand this time, so we watched the cows grazing as we waited for our dessert to be served.  I snagged a quick photo as one cow meandered away from the herd and toward the fence, and later realized that the name tag in her ear read "Renee"!