So first the bad news.  Billy Bond will be unable to attend and that means two presentation slots are now unfilled.  While it is unfortunate that personal reasons are preventing Billy from coming there is something really great about those two open slots.  We are going to fill them with hands on stuff!

My original plan was to do a really basic chop and drop over view in the food forest which we likely would not have been able to complete and show you how to prep one bed for winter in our miyagi gardens.  This was all going to be one two hour session.

Well now with the extra time we will do food forest one day for 2 hours and garden prep another day for two hours.  What this means is students really should bring two things with them.

1. Pruners
2. Gloves

First let me be clear no one has to work if they don’t want to and I am sure we will have some extra pruners for those doing carry on bags only who are flying in.  Gloves are not mandatory but RECOMMENDED, we have black locust, ju jube, etc all which have THORNS.  So if space/time allows you may want to bring a pair of pruners and gloves.  If you have extra pruners and don’t mind sharing that is appreciated.

Here is a break down of the two hands on sessions…

• Food Forest Chop, Drop & Mulch – We will be dropping a lot of dead stuff from the drought, we will be dropping a lot of support and scrub too.  We will be seeding mostly with simple rye grass and mulching all the berms with straw.  We are also moving to more of a fodder forest and Nick Ferguson who will co-instruct this with me is bringing a ton of hybrid willow and popular cuttings which we will plant for coming seasons.  This will be a two hour session, right now as long as weather doesn’t screw us, we will do this day one first session before lunch.  Nick has sessions in the after noon about fodder and feeding livestock without the food store so it is a perfect fit.

• Winter Garden Prep – We will be putting all four raised bed systems in my miyagi garden area to bed for winter.  This year instead of cover cropping I will be top dressing with sweet feed, Dr. Earth and my special Johnson Sue like compost.  We will mulch with wood chips, water in and tarp with black plastic.  I will also be demonstrating the install planned for simple PVC drip irritation in the coming season for these beds.  Additionally this will include instruction on aquatic components in this area and some other goodies.

As I said losing Billy is unfortunate, however I had actually over filled the schedule with speakers a bit and this now opens things up to do more with some real hands on, specifically in areas that many of you have asked about quite often.

Any questions just comment below or email me as per usual.

~ Jack