Volunteer Event with CEFS Interns!

Volunteer Group Shot (Click image to make larger)

Hello Readers!

This past Friday, we hosted a volunteer event at the farm! Our volunteers were all interns from the Center for Environmental FarmingSystems (CEFS) plus one local resident.  There were 16 CEFS interns totaled who contributed greatly to our progress. It was an awesome time during which we made progress on quite a bit of work before the much needed rain began to pour.

We started the day off with staff introductions and a brief intro to the farm. After that, we went right into working! There were three work groups:

More Weeding (Click image to make larger)

- Group 1: Weeding in Green Planet Catering's plot.

- Group 2: Weeding in the student plots.
- Group 3: Weeding, clearing brush, and tree removal in our future picnic area. 

Volunteers Weeding (Click image to make larger)

The groups weeding in the farm plots did an excellent job! It was such a relief to see 90% of the plots completely weeded. As most of you know, one of our biggest problems is weeds. A weed is what we call any wild plant that is growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants. Weeds are, simply put, opportunistic and must be dealt with in order to preserve and encourage the growth of our crops. Some of the more common weeds found on our farm are pigweed, Johnson grass, and Bermuda grass. If these types of plants are not managed in a swift manner, they can grow uncontrollably and really get out of hand. The hard work put in by our volunteers is definitely appreciated!

Timber! (Click image to make larger)

The other task that day was, generally, clearing out an area that we plan to turn into a picnic/gathering space. We had about 8 people on this job doing everything from pulling weeds, sawing down small trees, pruning branches, to cutting down medium size trees. All of this debris was piled in the back of a very large dump truck!! The area is looks much better now and only requires a bit more work until it is functional.

Hard working volunteer

We, at the NCSU Agroecology Education Farm, would really like to thank all of our volunteers for donating their time and energy! We’ve made a lot more progress with the farm overall and we have you to thank for it! We’d also like to send out a special show of gratitude to CEFS!

Clearing the brush

If you are reading this and think that you and/or your company, organization, class, church or any other group would like to take part in a volunteer day then contact us at:

agro.edu.lab@gmail.com.

We’d be glad to have you out at the farm!

Also be sure to:

Find us on Facebook:      https://www.facebook.com/NCSUagroedu

Follow us on twitter:        https://twitter.com/#!/NCSUAgroFieldLa

Thanks for your support!

-Agroecology Education Farm Staff