This blog post is one week late...

HIIII :D! My name is Nico and I am from Weslaco, TX. I am a sophomore Geology and Biology double major. This summer I am a sustainability intern for Albion CSE Americorps! Through Americorps, the Center for Sustainability and the Environment hopes to support the community of Albion through various environmental and sustainability focused projects, most notably providing organic free produce from the student farm and volunteering at the Albion community garden! 

This week was tough. A mysterious varmint wreaks havoc, surprise critter litters, and of course, gardening! Although there were some rough times throughout the week, the team still managed to pull through and find the best in all situations.

here is a toad jumping out of my hand after having peed on me :[

Monday: I was unable to attend service on Monday because of some personal matters but my coworkers Bonnie, Emma, and Curtis alongside CSE Director Thom were able to get a ton of work done! They planted squash, onions, tomatoes, zucchini, collards, and kale! This was a considerable amount of work and they did an amazing job!!

Tuesday: On Tuesday morning we worked the community garden and planted sweet and hot peppers and tons of tomatoes. We also harvested strawberries which were super yummy! After lunch we helped out at the community table, my main job was unboxing food as well as loading food into peoples cars, i would've have enjoyed this kind of mindless work had it not been extremely hot.

Wednesday: We were back on the student farm and excited after so much work had been done on Monday. However, we noticed much of what had been planted seemed to have been snapped at the stem. The parts of the plants that had been broken off just laid on the ground around them. What kind of critter destroys a plant to not even eat it? This was a devastating discovery as so much of my friends’ work had been destroyed. We began plotting ways to prevent further destruction from the mysterious beast… 

I also caught a snake which is always super fun :3

Thursday: On Thursday, we worked the community garden and after lunch headed to distribute food door to door. This was a fun experience for me because my main job was unboxing blocks of cheese as well as sorting and stacking boxes that went to specific households. It was generally an easy going day but  It was super hot and kind of eventful so we headed to Frosty Dans as a way to cool off. I got a hot dog and a swirl ice cream cup which definitely helped me cool off :-) Afterwards, we headed back to the farm to check up on the farm and we found a litter of voles! this was the second litter we had found and replacing them is always a little stressful because we never know if the mother would come back for them D:

So cute :D

Friday: Finally, it was Friday! This was probably the most exciting day of the week for me. Our most important goal for the day was to set up some kind of defense against whatever it was that was destroying our plants (presumably cutworms or a racoon). We began the day by cleaning out the hoop house as best we could. This called for a ton of raking and weeding. The dead grass never ended. Afterward we set off to prep the raised beds for pumpkins! Before we could get any real work done, I got distracted because of how many slugs there were. My team and I started a slug pit which I thought was kind of funny. After we were done with the slugs we spread manure and created mountains for the pumpkin seeds to be planted in. While doing this it dawned on me that I was basically playing in horse poop. I wasn't doing it willingly as it was part of my service but it reminded me of making mud pies as a kid. Afterwards we focused on defense for the plants. Through some research we found that placing nails around the stems of the plants should discourage cutworms from destroying anymore plants. This was my favorite day mainly because of how silly/absurd it was xD

slug pit..