Milton, FL: CWG Week 2

L2R: Preston, Pete, Claire, Leigh, Nick, Curt, Ryan.  Sunset over the peanut field.

Here we are at the end of our second week at Coldwater Gardens.  We've been eating great, working hard, and learning A LOT!

This past week, two new WWOOF'ers arrived from Portland, Oregon. Pete and Claire arrived in their sketchy black van...haha well that's exactly the way to describe it so you can visually picture what we're talking about. Aside from the sketchy van, these two are not sketchy at all. We are excited to have them around teaching us various things from Claire's knowledge of cooking gluten free to Pete's knowledge in soil building and gardening.

On monday, Pete wasted no time in instructing and motivating us all to start brewing some compost tea.  It was really exciting to learn a new way of enriching the soil and plants in a way we had never seen before. He compiled the materials:

• 5 gallon bucket
• 4 cups worm castings (the nutrient rich soil worms make from breaking down food scraps and garden compost)
• mesh screen to make a "tea bag" to hold the worm castings
• molasses
• Aerator and heater (bought from a pet store in the fish tank section)
• nylon panty hose (for straining the mixture into the garden sprayer)
• backpack sprayer

He put the worm castings in the "tea bag" and attached it to a string and had it dangle on the inside of the bucket. Then, he filled the bucket with water and added a couple Tablespoons of Molasses to activate the bacteria. After, he weighed the aerators down with rocks and inserted the heater (set to 80 degrees) and turned them on. After 24-72 hours, the "Tea" is strained through the nylon panty hose into the backpack sprayer. When sprayed on the soil or onto the plant itself, the compost tea acts as a natural fertilizer and disease control agent. PRETTY COOL STUFF!

Pete and the Compost Tea

On Tuesday and Wednesday,  we helped the lumberjacks Preston and Ryan organize and clear the area they had been thinning out. This included putting oak logs suitable for mushroom inoculation in the inoculation pile, firewood into the firewood pile, brush into burning and wood chip piles and so on. We definitely built up some arm muscles and had nice bonfire materials for the rest of the week!

Curt and Ryan and Preston and Leigh

Throughout the week, Curt got inspired to tackle and master the large food dehydrator in the smaller greenhouse. He was a CHIP MAKING MACHINE this past week. He processed WELL over 100 Kale, Chard, Mustard, Collard, Cabbage, and Broccoli leaves and made different seasoning mixes for all of them. So far, the Siracha/soy sauce seasoning was the biggest hit. Everyone was happy to shovel these nutritious chips into their mouths during breaks and the best part was how many green things stuck in people's teeth! Green things stuck in teeth are just plain FUNNY.

Dehydrator

Thursday we were able to ride along with Nick into Pensacola to deliver the weekly harvest to Global Grill. It's a very upscale $20-$30 a plate restaurant. We met Frank the Chef who was really adamant we stay around to collect the scraps from the fish he was in the middle of processing so we could add them to our compost pile (VERY HIGH in Nitrogen which is always needed in compost and soil). We even took a trip back into Pensacola with the van on Saturday (NOTE: it takes over an hour to drive into Pensacola from CWG) to experience the farmers market and CO-OP and get some groceries. We were able to fit 4 extra people in the van with 3 drums and a deck of cards- THINGS GOT FUN in the ZINGER...a mini drum circle and a few games of slap-it and go fish!

Leigh, Ryan, Preston, Nick and a good game of SLAP IT going on!

And finally, Friday we spent the morning adding to the Windrow Compost Pile (click on the link to learn more about small scale Windrow Composting) which is a long narrow compost pile with intentional layering and aeration tubes which give the pile the ability to break down compost into nutrient rich soils without turning. After that, we BUILT THE COB EARTH OVEN (in our most fanciest attire)!!! We'll update you on the specifics of the Cob Oven in a few days (We're still building)!  We ended the day with an awesome potluck that everyone participated in and included dishes such as nettle pesto, homemade hummus, cream cheese stuffed poblano peppers, grilled chicken and sausage, yummy kale, chili, and chocolate covered strawberries, with lots of ingredients fresh from the garden.  We're looking forward to next week's adventures where we'll get to meet project managers Mike and Natalia.  LOTS of new pics on Facebook!  And our movie recommendation of the week is Farmageddon (find it on Netflix) it's a real eye opener.

Milton, FL: CWG 1 Week

We've been at Coldwater Gardens about exactly one week now and we can safely say we love it here! We've continued to learn a lot during our weekly activities and have started to get comfortable in our new environment. Kim got creative with her first self-motivated project of building a plastic bag recycling rack (out of a cut down tree limb) and we spruced up the Volunteer Village by creating a compost area and planting some new plants in the garden. Now that it's Saturday we've built a rather large pile of sticks for a bonfire tonight. Work hard, play hard seems to be the motto of this crew! And just to make a note, the crew here is really what makes this place so amazing. During the week everyone gets down to business but keeps a positive relaxed attitude and enthusiasm is never lacking. It is a joy to wake up to work in the mornings and we feel very lucky to have found yet another awesome spot to be a part of!

Milton, FL: Coldwater Gardens Introduction

It's only midweek here at CWG and we already know we're really going to enjoy this place! The staff is great and there's tons of interesting projects to keep us busy.  Coldwater Gardens is in the beginning stages of creating an agro-tourism resort.  While they're not fully up and running yet they already have an aquaponics greenhouse, a second smaller greenhouse, a high tunnel greenhouse, a diverse garden, a mushroom cultivation set-up, chicken and quail coops, beehives, and a worm composting area.  They've also got a great staff on hand lead by our day-to-day manager Ashley.  There's currently LOTS of projects going on to keep us busy, which when co-existing will create the best teaching environment for future guests who will pay to stay on site and learn through workshops and tours. As volunteers we are here to help with these projects as well as maintain the already established aspects of the farm.

So far we've been busy with projects like inoculating mushroom logs, harvesting garden greens, making potting soil, starting seeds, and feeding bees.  We've also been entertained by the all the staff and other WWOOFers.  We hiked to the creek for a swim and a bonfire, slaughtered quail and made a stew, and have even kept up our exercise routine (somewhat).

Today's been kind of cold and mostly rainy so we've been able to update the blog and get a bunch of pictures up.  Check out all the pictures from CWG so far on Facebook.
Here's some pictures from our travels to get from Fort Pierce to Milton.
And for all you diehard TVFTV fans out there (and we know you're out there) here's the last few pictures from Fort Pierce.  Talk to you soon!  - K&C

Milton, FL: CWG grabbing the handle of the pan

It's been a jam packed end of the week from leaving grandpa chuck's on Wednesday, to the VW garage in Sarasota, to a couple nights of visiting Simonton Farms, and finally the 8 hour drive up to Florida's panhandle where Coldwater Gardens is located in Milton Florida!
While back at Simonton Farms we had fun revisiting the projects we had started and got to see new projects others have been working on like putting together a new hoop greenhouse! We also stayed up Friday night playing a jovial game of Chocolate Trivial Pursuit (thank you Prestash family) where teams tried answering questions in order to win the piece of chocolate wrapped in that question!
We got up early Saturday morning thinking it would be a 5 hour drive up to Milton but as we opted for the back roads, it took us 8 and landed in another time zone as well! So far, Coldwater Gardens looks amazing and we can't wait to update you on what we learn here! Looks like we'll be getting a little of everything: aquaponics, mushroom cultivation, chickens, quail, veggies, vermiculture, trail maintenance and more! The site caretaker Juan and his friend Olga treated us to a welcome dinner which included lots of stuff from the garden, mushrooms and rice!
It's nice getting here on the weekend as it allows us to set up camp and check things out! We're excited for the next month of adventure learning to begin!

Sarasota FL: The Adventure Continues

Wednesday morning we were back on the road and feeling good! After watching a VW Bus documentary (thanks Emma!) we were psyched to be cruising again. Our next destination was the Sunshine Auto Garage in Sarasota to give the Zinger a quick check-up before heading up to our next farm. Well the Zinger had other plans and decided to break down 5 miles from the garage. And then again 2 miles from the garage... And then once more as we were pulling into the garage. We coasted in just in the nick of time. Thanks for hanging in there Zinger, we love you! Our amateur diagnosis was over heating but it turned out our fuel pump filter was completely clogged and was burning out the fuel pump. Our mechanic Ron was very helpful and friendly and had the new pump overnighted to keep us on schedule. After looking around for a place to stay the night and being turned down by a Moose Lodge for not being members and experiencing auto discrimination from several RV parks we eventually snagged the last campsite at Oscar Scherer State Park. After being welcomed by an overly curious raccoon (check our videos page) we ended up having a nice evening cooking and camping in the van, breaking in our deck of National Parks playing cards! We're currently hanging out back at Sunshine while we wait for the Zinger to get fixed up. Tonight we'll head back up to Simonton Farms to see how they're doing and then on Saturday we'll be arriving at our next farm destination, Coldwater Gardens. The adventure is back on and boy does it feel good!

Leaving Fort Pierce

After about a month and a half of vacation time in Fort Pierce with Grandpa Chuck it was finally time to get back on the road. It was hard to say goodbye, we had such a relaxing time to regroup, recharge, and plan the rest of our trip. We started eating healthier, exercising, and reading more. We also enjoyed our Seinfeld after dinner and Law & Order marathons, farmer's market Saturdays and football Sundays. And we finally finished our project of sprucing up the patio room just in time to enjoy it for a day! We're gonna miss Grandpa Chuck and Maggie but we're glad we were able to spend the holidays with them and make Fort Pierce part of our trip.