On June 29, the AYLUS Chapel Hill Branch volunteered at the “Wildflower Lane Farm”. This was our third time already of volunteering here, so it was fairly straight forward. When we arrived, the farm owner Jim assigned us multiple different tasks to complete. The first task was to put the already harvested vegetables into bags for them to be picked up by TABLE, an organization that donates food to the community. The second task was to plant the tomatoes. The process of planting tomatoes was divided into different steps: first we would dig a hole that was roughly 6 inches deep and 6-8 inches apart, and in total we made 3 rows of holes (around 30 holes in total). The second step was to plant the tomato seedlings along with some fertilizer into the hole, and then spread some tomato plant food on top. The final step of planting the tomato was to water them, which was done quickly. The third task was to harvest some cherry tomatoes and it was very straightforward and was finished in no time. When all of those tasks were completed it was already very hot in the morning, but Jim told us that the weed in his pepper farm was growing out of hand to the point that the actual pepper is almost impossible to find. He asked us if we can help, and we didn’t hesitate to start. To our surprise, this task wasn’t at all easy, as we had to be very careful to not get rid of the pepper that was “buried” within the weeds on accident. Also, there were a lot of ant hills that we need to be on the watch for. With all the people’s help, we finished cleaning up the pepper farm in around half an hour. In the end, everyone was exhausted not only because of the heat, but also the non-stop work we did in the course of the morning. We will try our best to keep this good momentum and will proceed to seek more volunteer opportunities. We hope that our effort will make the community a better place. Keep up with the good work ALYUS!
Volunteers who participated in this event are Zian Chen (2.5 hrs), Zhiyuan (Jack) Xu (2.5 hrs), Karen Lin (2.5 hrs), Kayla Lin (2.5 hrs), and Kasi Lin (2.5 hrs)
Reported by Jack Xu