Catherine's Perspective on Her Southwestern College Workshop

I had two roles in our Southwestern College workshop day: explaining the work of Legacy Ministries in SoCe, and working with our neighbor “Larry” (from my March 17 blog) to help students build more garden boxes.

After lunch, Cody (a dedicated Garden Works volunteer) and I gave the students an introduction to Legacy Ministries projects in SoCe - Garden Works and Pottery Works. We had hoped to do some work sifting new garden beds and weeding, but the ground was too wet. Instead, we picked some lettuce at the community garden and then went over to the greenhouse. There we sampled some spinach and kale flowers. The students helped Cody and I rescue some plants which were drowning from all the rain.

We followed up the community garden discussion by building raised-bed garden boxes in our workshop. Larry did a great job preparing for the workshop. On Friday he built 4 box frames so that students would just have to nail the boards onto the sides. On Sunday morning I heard Larry’s saw again. This time he was pre-cutting 2-foot long boards to nail on the sides of the boxes. After a quick trip to the hardware store for a box of nails, we were ready!

The students were interested to learn the story of the garden boxes. After talking about how the program began and our plans for equipping people throughout SoCe to grow organic food, we gave each student a hammer and put them to work. It was wonderful to see the way they worked together. Students helped each other by holding boards in place or by taking turns bashing in the contrary nails. Larry was on hand to encourage the students and to assist in straightening wayward nails. He also taught us about different types of hammers and their uses. We all enjoyed taking a turn with the shingling hammer - it was very light and easy to swing (no two-handed swings with that one!). By the end of three workshop rotations, we had three boxes completed.