This June was an intense month. Temperatures are rising so we invested a lot of time watering the plants in the gardens and orchards. For the house garden, we prepared the irrigation system so the water from the river reaches every corner where it’s needed. At the second garden, we created the channels from 0, and now it’s very easy to water the whole place, just takes a bit of pacience.
The orchards, however, take a longer time and a bigger effort. For some of them we just have to move the pipe from tree to tree every 5 to 10 minutes, but for others we have to manually fill the buckets at the river and take them to every tree. Also, to protect them, we sprayed the leaves with a wetting agent so the insects don’t eat them and mulched around them.
There was, as well, construction work. We sieved the clay from an outside wall to reuse it in the future, painted the wood in the shed and outside shower to protect it from insects and humidity. Also inside the house we prepared the dining room to have a new floor and one of the bedrooms to have a better window for next winter.
Also, summer time is the moment for harvesting lots of fruits and herbs, and freezing some of them so they last all year. We havervested mint, lemon balm, elderflower, onions, lettuce, parsley, vine leaves, basil, celery… Everything we need to have a healthy balanced diet and to share it with our friends and neighbours. Moreover, we planted beans, carrots, kale, tomatoes and brussels sprouts so the next group of volunteers will enjoy them. In adition, we went through several interviews to choose these next volunteers that will arrive in July! This was a nice collaboratibe project where us, the current volunteers, could give our opinion on what’s important to ask and what habilities and background experiences they should have.
This was the last month where we went to the local highschool. We prepared the coolest games we could think of, talked about sustainability, yoga and team building. Now it’s summer so everyone gets a break, but next year we will go further and think about more ways to introduce a healthy lifestyle to the youth around and have fun in the middle of school hours.
Finally, at our last week together, Tirsa and Boudica organized the Summer Olympics 2025. This consisted of a series of games and competitions, like modeling, pit spiting, baby photo recognition, archery and seagull calling. In addition, every country prepared a national dish to share, so we enjoyed capresse, gazpacho, french (belgian) fries, pancakes, lemon brownies, pies… It was a lovely evening we all Open Mind team shared for the last time (yet).