Volunteers Needed For Blueberry Workday!

Saturday, February 1 will be Blueberry Workday in the Forest Heights area, and we really need more volunteers this year!

We have 24 community blueberry patches to weed, mulch and fertilize, and we’ll be planting three or four new patches. If we have lots of help, we should finish around 4:30 p.m. But we need lots of people! Last year, we didn’t have enough folks, and the work fell heavily on those who showed up.

We’ll meet at 8:30 a.m. in the cul-de-sac of Landor Place towards the front of Forest Heights and split into work teams. Some people will assist Clyde Yates of Hungry Gnome Gardenscapes in planting bushes — including the first patch in Knottingham! Others will focus on weeding, mulching and fertilizing the older patches. And another group will work with Brian Choate of Gardens of the Galaxy to build the new, larger enclosures for four healthy patches that are outgrowing their cylindrical cages.

We’ll plan to take a lunch break from 12:00-1:00 and then reconvene at Landor Place. If you can only come for the morning or afternoon, that’s fine. But please do come! And please sign up on this volunteer spreadsheet so we know how many people to count on and how many trucks we’ll have at our disposal.

Kids are welcome! But they will need supervision, since we’ll be working in and around the street with tools and machinery. And bring work gloves, if you have them.

The backup rain date will be the following Saturday, February 8.

Photos from last year’s workday!

Max and Clyde work at installing a new blueberry patch across of the Festival location on Holly Lane.

Byron, Susan and Jonathan also worked on the installation crew.

Here’s the newly-installed patch.

The tiller does a lot of the hard work.

Loosening the soil for the new patch on Breckenridge.

Dave doing a bit of watering as the maintenance crew finishes up with the other patch on Holly Lane.

Laurel, David, Max, Caryn and Joe at one of the very first patches on Tara Way.

The maintenance crew finishing with the last patch of the day as it started to get chilly out.

Brian and Danielle led the building of the new cattle-panel enclosures with plenty of help.

Andy and Bart slowed down long enough to get in a picture as well.