Rock of ages

Today at the Veggielution work day, we picked up rocks.

We found a ceramic nose.

Amie and Mark on Thursday signed an agreement with the city, so now we have what we’ve been calling “the acre,” but is, evidently, somewhat less. (See Amie’s comment!) The park staff disked the weeds, and we tried to remove at least the larger rocks today. San José doesn’t experience frost heave, so we won’t be harvesting rocks forever after. Several of us want to build a dry stone wall with what we gathered today; it would be about six inches tall. There’s a lot to do to get even less than an acre ready for planting. Next will be fixing the existing irrigation lines (we found a leaking pipe today, which is mysterious, because this old system should not still be under pressure.) and preparing planting areas. The groundbreaking will be near the summer solstice; I hope we get the draft horses there to plow.

This morning, I also mixed up some potting soil from compost, worm castings and commercial potting mix, then I did some light weeding and harvested, yes, more fava beans. I’m going to have to go back and edit that post where I talked about their brief season.

The original Veggielution plot is looking lush and active.

I managed to cook an impressive fraction of my CSA box yesterday, making greens-stuffed pasta, a salad with grilled fennel bulbs, fava bean spread and summer pudding with strawberries. The leftover pasta filling and fava spread went into lavosh bread for wraps today, which I brought to Veggielution. I like feeding people.