Community Collaboration
Enjoy this photo essay depicting our end-of-summer collaborations with Blue Hill Heritage Trust!
Walking the John H. Murphy Memorial Trail…
This August, Blue Hill Heritage Trust celebrated the opening of their newest, age-friendly, in-town John H. Murphy Memorial Trail. We chose to walk this wide, even path as our first socially distant Nature Links outing. Though I’ve been teaching Nature Links classes since May, this was my first time meeting some of our local participants in person!
Participants Gabe and Brianna, and me, emerging from the woods into a field of roadside goldenrod. Our walk brought us to the Blue Hill Co-op, where we enjoyed a well-earned rest & picnic!
Tucking in the Community Garden…
Landere, outreach coordinator for Blue Hill Heritage Trust and friend of Nature Links, invited us to their community garden to help tuck it in for the winter. Our tasks were to harvest the remaining vegetables, move all the plant matter to the compost, and to sow a winter cover crop of oats.
Left to right: Landere, Paula, Gabe and Greg. The bucket in front of Gabe is full of oat seed, to be spread on the newly turned soil.
The last of the summer crop! The Blue Hill Heritage Trust community garden distributes their harvest between the Tree of Life Food Pantry, Healthy Peninsula’s Magic Food Bus and Simmering Pot community dinners.
Harvesting PotatoEs at the Salt Pond…
This beautiful, crisp fall morning was well spent among community volunteers at the BHHT Salt Pond property. This special piece of land in Sedgwick was seeded with potatoes in the early spring. This harvest will be given back to the community, again through the work of Tree of Life and Healthy Peninsula.
Gabe loosens the soil with a pitchfork before going in after the little golden potatoes.
Eva the German Shepherd made a welcome appearance! Behind her, Nature Links participant Brianna is hard at work.
Many hands make light work! We all expected the harvest to take several hours, and found ourselves done in just one. After the hard work was over, we enjoyed peaches, good company and conversation, and then all made our ways home for lunch.
Thanks so much to Landere and Chrissy from the Blue Hill Heritage Trust for inviting us into these opportunities!
