Friday September 30^, 2016

After a breathtaking and berry eating field trip to Hawk Ridge Cliff thanks in part to our friends at the Thames Talbot Land Trust who have recently purchased the area, we arrived to the farm at 2:00 we assembled a few carts and organized hoop house three, by clearing off and organizing many different varieties of hostas into Nate’s said pattern. We than took apart some of the metal tables to move in the wooden benches for the upcoming CLT examinations. We finished off the day by cleaning up and preparing for the work of the weekend.

Saturday October 1, 2016

We arrived to a misty overcast early morning start at 7:50. This day had one grueling task for the proud members of the Core (Horticulture Technicians), we were playing with compost mud in the rain, general’s orders. The rain held off most of the day, but the compost was already wet. We pushed Kubota technology to our limits as we dug all 4 wheels into the mud to dig our compost, making great friends with the wasps who live there. Towards the end of the day the Kubota tractor didn’t want to drive more than two feet at a time this made us finish a little bit later than anticipated. As we slowly came across the laneway we came to conclusion that the seat wasn’t completely going down - a slight adjustment to the seat, it ran excellent.  Although we didn’t fully accomplish our task today we will try to finish the last corner tomorrow weather depending we finished the long day off by hosing off the equipment and tools.

Sunday October 2, 2016

Today we arrived at 7:50 The sun wanted to peak out but then changed to rain for the most part of the day we we’re planning on finishing top dressing the hosta garden from Saturday but the wet ground made it impossible to drive across the turf without leaving some large ruts. We then chose our next important task of weeding in front of the Cuddy hatchery which was loaded with weeds, it did look 100 times better once we finished up. Next Mr. Pascoe dropped by to give us some tasks he would like to be done. Starting we began to weed the pots in the hoop houses removing any dead wilted plants that didn’t quite make it. One large batch of day lilies was then cut down to an inch in length to encourage a stronger plant.  We smoothed the pathways of the Woodland garden and Rock garden as well as some of the ruts caused by our big tires at the compost pile. We toured the premises looking for fallen limbs from the high winds and storm that blew through overnight there was quite a few down hopefully this will give James an easier time on Monday when the turf gets cut. Towards the end of the day the sun finally started to peak out but didn’t quite dry much out for us. We finished off the day by cleaning off our tools and equipment then nicely placing each piece in its place in the tool shed.

 

** notes for Nate** black dump trailer one of the pins sheared off we flipped the tailgate around so we could still use it for the day. Kubota RTV park brake is finicky may need some attention. We left the tags of the wilted plants on the table beside the tractor keys.