Winter squash!

On Saturday, I volunteered at The Food Project. On some weeks there are groups of volunteers from schools or businesses. This week there was a very good-natured group from Starbucks, who kindly brought bottled water and a nice work ethic. Some children were there, and they paired off with adults for various activities.

About 25 of us walked over to the squash fields, which had been divided into 4'-by-4' squares by little 1' paths. A bit of fertilizer had been dropped in the center of each square. Our job was to plant 4-5 seeds in the middle of each square. Since the squares were so large, each row was pretty quick. In a couple hours, we planted 3600 squares, or over 2 acres of squash. Butternut, buttercup, acorn, spaghetti, pie pumpkin. Yum!

The fields we planted should yield 32,000 pounds of squash. At a half a pound per serving, that's 64,000 servings of squash. The Food Project employees reminded us that the squash will go to local shelters and farmers markets that accept food stamps, along with some going to CSA members.

After that we did the less glamorous task of weeding 600 feet of lettuce. One family took home a bunch of the succulent weeds for salad. It's called purslane and is apparently a good source of Omega-3 fatty acid.

One of the nicer things about the day is how happy everyone was at the end. The youngest ones announced how much fun they were having and people all chatted about how they might get to harvest the squash in the fall.

In other old news, it looks like 40% more people are growing gardens due to the recession. Good times. Everyone is going to be eating way too much zucchini this year.