As usual I’m way behind on updating things. I could never recap everything that’s happened but I’ll try and get some info up so people know what we’re up to if they’re interested. Kat and I visited Hawaii in early March this year where we were fortunate enough to get engaged! Upon returning to Birmingham we were immediately swamped with work. I imagine there’s a time in every small business where it seems like everyone calls at once and that’s how it went for us. We had several private gardens to put in along with a couple of positive public projects.
The two public projects have led us in a more educational direction. The SPROUTS garden (which already looks better than the picture but I haven’t uploaded the pics yet) is part of a summer program at Tarrant Middle School where some of the curriculum involves getting kids out in the garden and educating them about where and how their food is produced.
The other is the Rosedale Youth garden right outside Homewood. We are working with a Christian group that is doing charity work in the area, part of which is providing a safe/constructive place for youth to hang out on some days of the week after school. The facility they use for this includes a very nice stone garden which we’ve recently helped them prepare for summer/fall. For each of these projects we’ve been hired on a “Maintenance/Education Contract” which involves us coming in and teaching the kids for a few hours a month. While this wasn’t our original intention when starting the business we think this is an important idea worth pursuing and we’ll give it a shot for a few months.
REV – We’ve also begun working with REV Birmingham’s Urban Food Project. REV is a non profit which is trying to revitalize the Birmingham area in a number of different ways. One of those avenues is the Urban Food Project where they connect local growers with local restaurant owners. The profit they themselves make goes towards setting up budget produce stands in specific food deserts in the area. We’re early in our relationship with them but we were able to get them ~36lbs of arugula that will be distributed to many local restaurants. We’re very excited because that’s actually a significant amount of arugula. It’s not just a little bag for a private residence; it’s not out of the question to think that hundreds of people have ate our produce in the last few weeks which is a very exciting prospect. We’re going to be kind of off and on with REV because of our client schedule but it’s certainly a budding relationship.
The last picture I’ve attached is one of a private residence we did. I only post it because I think it shows how far Kat and I have come in the last couple years in regards to raised bed construction. This client wanted nine 4’X14′ raised beds and Kat and I were able to deliver. Had we done this a couple years ago this would likely have taken a month to complete but we were able to get it done in a little over a week and a half of working on it.
Anyway, as usual I should probably post more but I’m going to take a break for now.
