Busy Spring and Volunteers

<p>Spring is here and we at Clagett Farm are in full swing with early spring activities: preparing beds, seeding trays, transplanting our first crop veggies, and on and on. By the end of March we were done with planting the potatoes but we have not yet finished mulching them. We were also busy building two greenhouses, one to be used for Clagett Farm's native trees nursery operation for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the other for some CSA crops. We are not&nbsp; yet done with the CSA&nbsp; greenhouse. There are so many things to do that we have to engage in a sort of triage. What we do in any given day depends on many variables, the weather always being one of the major ones.<br /> </p> <p>With so much work, we are fortunate to have eager and hard working volunteers--we are immensely grateful for them. Their good humored help has been crucial. To illustrate this, here are a few photos taken on Saturday, March 25, a cold and gray day that did not deter them.</p> <p> <br /><a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/don_and_nina.jpg"><img width="350" height="268" border="0" src="http://kolya.typepad.com/clagettfarm/images/don_and_nina.jpg" title="Don_and_nina" alt="Don_and_nina" /></a> </p> <p>The photo above shows volunteers Don Edwards and Nina Yu carrying rafters that were assembled a few dozen yards away from the greenhouse site. </p> <p><a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/rob_nina_josh_and.jpg"><img width="350" height="231" border="0" src="http://kolya.typepad.com/clagettfarm/images/rob_nina_josh_and.jpg" title="Rob_nina_josh_and" alt="Rob_nina_josh_and" /></a> </p> <p> Clagett Farm's Rob Vaughn and volunteers Nina Yu, Dione Elmendorf and Josh Riesler Cohn pounding the ground posts into place and making sure that they are lined up just right. <em>(Photo by Barbara L. Salisbury/The Gazette)</em></p> <p><em><a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/curtis_rob_and.jpg"><img width="350" height="233" border="0" alt="Curtis_rob_and" title="Curtis_rob_and" src="http://kolya.typepad.com/clagettfarm/images/curtis_rob_and.jpg" /></a> </em></p> <p>Curtis Elmendorf, Rob Vaughn and Dione Elmendorf placing the rafters onto the posts. <em>(Photo by Barbara L. Salisbury/The Gazette). </em>About two hours before this picture was taken Dione was still high up in the air, flying from warm and sunny Florida to cold and damp Washington, DC. She was flying for a weekend visit. Her brother Curtis picked her up at the airport and headed straight to the farm to help us out for a few hours. This was news to Dione, but she jumped into the work with gusto.</p> <p><em><a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/nina_and_curtis.jpg"><img width="350" height="228" border="0" alt="Nina_and_curtis" title="Nina_and_curtis" src="http://kolya.typepad.com/clagettfarm/images/nina_and_curtis.jpg" /></a> </em></p> <p>Nina and Curtis atop step ladders attaching purlins to the greenhouse rafters. <em>(Photo by Barbara L. Salisbury/The Gazette)</em></p> <p>For a couple additional pictures, check out the just started <a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/clagett_farm_photos_2005/">Clagett Farm Photos: 2005</a> album.&nbsp; As in the previous two years, more photos will be added to the album as the season progresses.</p>