The past few weeks have been packed full of activity as we've started harvesting and selling our New Roots produce! The first harvest was small, and only Pelagie and Aye Aye took their goods to the Quindaro Community Unity Festival.
Aye Aye and Nito salute their Bok Choy harvest
Pelagie and Aye Aye are ready to sell!
The festival was on Quindaro boulevard and featured lots of community booths and events. It was a great time for us to meet our neighbors and sell them some of our delicious veggies!
We've had lots of great volunteers over at the farm during the past few weeks. The first group was the interns from Olathe Bible Church (thanks, dad!). They spent the morning learning about refugees and growing and then pulled lots of weeds and helped me lay some drip line irrigation.
They were great help!
A group of Mennonite volunteers from Wichita came and helped us out last Friday. They were such great workers. Here they are with Pelagie and Gilbert!Our first full harvest was this past Friday. When the day started, I was unsure how much produce we would actually have. They women went to work, and brought tote after tote of beautiful vegetables to the weigh station. Here is our first crop of squash!
After the vegetables are harvested, the women bring them to the weigh station where we record what their yeilds are. This information will be helpful as we try and figure out just how much a 1/4 acre can produce, and what each woman is good at growing.
Here is Halima weighing some onions.
After everything was harvested and put into tubs, I brought them all to my house so we could keep things cold overnight. Once our farm has electricity, we will convert one of the storage sheds into cold storage, but for now its down with the AC and an extra blanket for me!
The next day was our first day at the Brookside Farmer's Market. Farmers are crazy! You have to be at the market at 6am to start setting up. I am not an early riser, so this is going to be stretching for me. The women, on the other hand, were ready to go. I picked up Dena around 5:30, and her children told me that they had been up at 4am just to make sure they didn't miss my pick up. Now that's dedication!
Here is all of us starting to set up our tents and tables.
Next comes the totes of veggies and scales.
Aye Aye and Nito start setting up their table.
Volunteers Cori and Rudy help Isha sell to a customer.
Halima, Susan and Khadijo at their table.
Pelagie's table looked great!
Wretha, the New Roots for Refugees mascot, was happy in the hot sun almost all day!
The squash made it to market.
(and one of them made it home with me and onto my grill on Saturday night...mmmmm.)
I'm already excited for this week's market. Come by and see us at the Brookside Community Market at 63rd and Wornall this Saturday from 8-1!
See what I mean? Duct Tape Irrigation Blisters. Oh man. We will miss you terribly! Good Luck with everything.