Build Day Success!

Thanks to a hardy bunch of volunteers we had an amazingly successful build day today.  We completed 44 of our planed 46 beds, and we stopped short only because we had some cracked boards in the mix that we had to discard.  I was so busy throughout the day I wasn't able to take any pictures, so with a little narcissism thrown in you get the one David took of me at the end of build day.

The build day started with plenty of chaos as we quickly realized that our cordless drill battery packs weren't going to get us through the build.  Quick work by Jim got us a generator to charge batteries on, and access to outlets at the King St. concession stand to charge more.  With ratchets, and a cycle of battery packs we put together around twenty of the beds by lunch.

I'd like to thank the town for helping get our compost and loam into the garden this morning for easier access.  We managed to fill a few of the boxes with compost and loam thanks to our volunteer bobcat driver, but a prior commitment meant he had to leave early.  We will finish filling the rest sometime in the coming week.  Once we have more details we'll be looking for a few brave souls to help us finish the beds off.  It'll be an exciting couple of hours of raised bed jigsaw as we move them around to make room for the bobcat and then move them back into their final positions to be filled in turn. 

I'd like to call out the ingenuity of our team leaders in coming up with modifications to optimize the build process from pre-drilling and setting up screws ahead of time to standing the raised beds on edge to ease lining up the boards.  I've always considered genius the ability to adapt to any situation to produce excellent results, and our team leaders and volunteers certainly did so with flourish.

The afternoon saw the addition of another generator and corded drills which provided a steady addition to the cordless drills.  It also heralded an amazing thunderstorm with driving rain and hail!  Huddled under our tents our roaring laughter at a steady stream of jokes and physical comedy was something I'll never forget.

Once the sky cleared we quickly finished off the last of the beds, and called it a day and started breaking down almost an hour ahead of schedule.

Once again a great big thank you to all of our volunteers!  The various levels of compression mangled my time lapse images of the build day somewhat, but my first render is up on youtube.  You can see the whole day unfold in about ten minutes.

Sincerely,

Chris Clay, The Franklin Community Garden Committee, and Friends of Franklin Community Gardens, Inc.

PS. Sorry Ryan and Carlos for driving my car on your fields, but it was the only way to get the big generator to its needed location!