Local News: Grass-clippings drop-off, volunteering, gratitude

This post features locally relevant news: Where to bring your grass-clippings, how to volunteer in the gardens and continued gratitude for the support we feel from our local community. Much thanks!

Grass clippings: Thank you to our neighbors, the Dillards for having their yard work guy - Chuey - bring us their surplus grass-clippings. And thank you Chuey for bringing those, and from your other local clients as well. This is a real win-win because in our small rural town, there is no yard-waste pick-up service. Many people have no way of disposing of grass-clippings on their own land and so without our drop-off site it ends up in landfills, burn piles or must be driven 30-miles to the nearest urban large-scale composting site and "donated" for a fee.  

Thank you too, to the mystery people who have begun to bring us your bagged grass-clippings this season. Grass clippings are a major source of garden mulch and fertility. Here's Donn (left) spreading them in our Sunship greenhouse paths.

Grass-clipping donations: We have a drop-off site under the big hickory tree in front of the gardens. Please, no sticks, loose weeds, trash or thorny-plants. Don't fill the bags too full or tie them. We hang the used bags to dry and re-distribute them for free (in the trashcan at the base of the hickory). Feel free to take as many recycled bags as you can use.

Our drop-off site for leaves and grass.

People have begun to ask us about helping in the gardens this summer. Because of the cool, wet spring, all our garden activity has been confined to our greenhouses and we've been able to manage them ourselves, with the wonderful committed help of Donn and Jewels who have come almost weekly throughout the late fall and winter. If joining in the fun of growing food and learning gardening methods that are light on the Earth; sharing in the harvest and helping us to grow food to give away to local food charities sounds like something you'd enjoy, send us an email and we'll let you know when there's more to do in the gardens, later in the spring. LINK to volunteer info

We want to extend a special thanks to our friend Rook (right), who's been participating in the gardens as a share-giver since 2016 and who works at  Safeway's deli in nearby Junction City has made it a point to collect clean, food-grade 5-gallon buckets for us. These are great for collecting rain-water as we can be sure there are no harmful residues in the buckets. Rook has also been collecting used coffee-grounds from the coffee-shop at his work and completely filled both our 30-gallon bins this winter. We use the coffee-grounds as a soil amendment (Coffee Grounds and Wood Ash for Soil Fertility).