We’ve been very busy at Debbie’s for the past few days building, gardening and doing some general clean up. We’ll give you more details about all of that later.
We decided to give Abigail and Jesse a call on Tuesday morning (Family Day for them) in the hopes of hearing and seeing the latest Eleanor updates. Our call was interrupted by a call from Debbie inviting us to a meeting at the Franklin Food Forest. We, of course said yes. We ate a quick breakfast (oatmeal, fruit and yoghurt) and hit the road.
The details of the FFF were scant, but Debbie really wanted to give us an outing. She knew that the FFF was associated with the local high school, so it was right up our alley. We arrived at about 9:30 and no one was there. Debbie’s attempts to contact the organizers through email had been ineffective, so there were a few awkward minutes roaming in the forest.
Not long after, Graham arrived. He explained that the “meeting” was really a 2 hour work bee. Despite this he was a gracious host who gave us a tour or the forest and to talk about its history.
The school owned the plot, which is located just outside the rugby field, and over the years it had fallen out of use in the curriculum and had become over grown. Several years ago, volunteers began to reclaim and rejuvenate the space as a food forest. (There are notable similarities with some of our high school green houses).
The group has made a real effort to make this project a success and now there is just about every type of fruit tree you can think of: apples, plums, citrus, avacado, kiwi, figs, passion fruit to name a few. There are also “dye’ plans which can be used to extract pigments.
After touring with Graham, other volunteers arrived and we learned even more. They have been able to rekindle the interest in the forest at the school and on Thursday, a class will be coming to visit.
Some of the highlights for us included:
The banana flower:
The Swanweed which is planted to attract Monarchs. While it appears different that our Milkweed, the seeds are remarkably similar.
