End of July Musings - By Evan Lewarch, Summer Intern 2015

The past three months have flown by! I'll save all the soppy stuff for my next post, but I'll just say that it's been an honor and a privilege to live and work with the wonderful people in this community.
 
The time since my last post has been full of the daily tasks that keep the garden running; pulling the ever-present bindweed, adding mulch, watering thirsty plants, planting soon-to-be-thirsty plants, and harvesting the bountiful food from the garden.

The foundation for the cob oven takes shape.

There has been plenty of berry picking, jam making, cooking, cleaning, and other weekly tasks that have kept us busy too.  I even braided up a bunch of garlic for storage.  What a wonderful month!

Making jam.

Three of the hugelkulturs have a wood chip layer now.

Something that stands out this past month has been the work on the cob oven.  We've excavated the site, started construction on a retaining wall, changed the plans in the middle of it all several times, and measured everything several more.  Brian has been amazing to work with on this project.  

When we were trying to get ideas for the shelter structure, we took a trip down to the Beacon Hill Food Forest.  They have an amazing gathering place at the top of the hill overlooking their garden.  If we hadn't had a field trip there earlier in the summer, I never would have known about it.  The design we ended up using has a lot of elements from Beacon Hill.  It was great to contribute a little sketch of our plans- meanwhile, Steven and Brian hashed out the carpentry side of things for the roof structure.

Braids of garlic hung in the pantry.