Week One

The Garden

Deconstruction of the Pavilion
Old Building 
Back side of HERO

Plants

My first week at HERO was exhausting but worthwhile. Waking up at 7 AM has been an adjustment but I have learned a great deal about the world thanks to NPR on the way to and from the HERO office. I come home exhausted every day, which is a nice feeling.

On my first day, I was given a grand tour of the HERO campus and the surrounding HERO houses like the Rammed Earth house. I learned there are three main restaurants in town: a pancake house named Flava, Mustang Oil (a gas station + restaurant), and a Mexican restaurant. 

There are many more interns and workers at HERO than I expected. There are five VISTAs (I still don't really know what they do), one girl from Michigan, Rennie, who is also working on the garden, and four boys from Brooklyn working on the Pie Lab. The Pie Lab is located on the HERO campus and these students are working with Project M and HERO to create a delicious way for the residents of Greensboro to discuss crucial town tensions over pie. The guys have done a great job creating an aesthetically pleasing place to eat and work in the community.

The home of the garden rests over a former home/trailer. We began the week by hoeing the area for the sunken beds while watching for old sewage pipes,crumbling bricks, and bits of broken glass. It took all last week to ensure the garden was thoroughly hoed and glass-free. It was unfortunate we could not use a tiller but the local urban cowboy, Johnny Parker, informed us his tractor wasn't getting anywhere near the bricks in that garden. I guess I don't blame him, it was time consuming none the less. 

This garden will provide food to the HERO workers, VISTAs, interns, and I am assuming a small percentage of the Greensboro community. 

We have the following vegetables, flowers, herbs:

• rosemary
• 2 types of basil
• corn
• sunflowers
• arugula
• collard greens
• zucchini
• squash
• 3 types of tomatoes
• 2 types of peas
• hot peppers
• sweet peppers
• and more...

Meanwhile, there is a large pavilion to the left of the sunken beds that needed to be deconstructed. We began to deconstruct the building by removing the metal roof and removing the supporting beams for the roof. Removing each nail and screw from each piece of wood from the supporting beams took ages. Some of these materials will be used to build a community kitchen where the HERO staff and friends can have a place to cook together with the vegetables.

Today, I incorporated a half of a pickup truck bed of manure into the three sunken beds and cultivated the previous dirt and manure together. With the great deal of rain the great state of Alabama has seen lately the beds needed the extra support and the sand I added as well. 

There will be a five-six raised beds behind the sunken beds that have been created thus far that will house the rest of the vegetables. We have not begun building these beds yet, but hope to do so soon... We hope to create the beds out of charred cedar. This will repel insects and avoid unnecessary wood treatment.

Tomorrow, I began my work with JJ, a UA PhD student who is examining water quality in Hale County. I am anxious to learn more about what she is doing...

I will try to add some pictures and the plans for the garden/community kitchen soon... I will update as soon as I can.

-Justinn