First Event!

First, I would like to thank my best friend, who is my first follower. Yay, Linda. Leave me a comment and I'll buy you lunch next week.

And on to business: We are hosting our first "event" at the Market House (106 E. Apache/Aquarium Pl. - Jenks has just changed the street name). On March 24, we will offer a free plasticulture demonstration. It's a method of growing vegetables that uses less water. Yeah, kind of a special niche group event. It's actually just us having a pasticulture garden planted and making it available as a demonstration to interested people, namely Master Gardeners, our Great Gardeners program members and the attendees of Tulsa Garden Center's Vegetable Symposium the week before.

The demonstration takes place on the afternoon of an annual Southwood event of which I'm particularly proud - Plant a Row for the Hungry. Primarily, it's a food drive for the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. People bring non-perishable foods, and in exchange they will receive a free 3-pack of tomato plants per donated item. We also let them know that if they harvest more fruits or vegetables than they need, they can bring the extras to the Food Bank for distribution. We always get a great response, and it's a fun and community-oriented way to start the spring season.

So hopefully between the Southwood event and our selective marketing effort to people who are already engaged in vegetable gardens, we'll get the information about our project out, and a few people will come out and watch the demonstration. We're going to treat it as a mini-open house, with the house's history that I put together on the wall, and some information about our plans. I might even tell people about my new blog. Maybe.

On the farm itself, we're still working on some basic infrastructure, which is important but not very exciting. First, starting next week, the water line will be laid into the property, and then we'll get going on the fencing. We're still working on a plan for the remodel of the house - what we're leaning towards is a bunk house for people who work on the farm (essentially a caretakers' residence) with a staging area for workers to meet in the morning, and a break area for them to have lunch. Also this year, we are going to plant watermelons and pumpkins out there, to see how they do.

Spring planting season is coming up - hopefully Southwood will be busy this year!