Tag Archives: garden

day 3683: odin doesn’t know it but he’s learning lessons from The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective.

day3638 - odin doesn't know it but he's learning lessons from The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective. I.

over the years odin has learned a lot of things in the employee garden we tend at organic valley. we’ve been kite flying and planting and hoeing and weeding since he was barely old enough to push a wheelbarrow and it’s neat to know he thinks it’s normal that people grow food where they work and lots of folks we work with care about where there food comes from.

and now, since we joined The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective, he gets to see how great it is when a group of people get together to share in the effort.

holy cow we have a whole lotta of food! the plot is on the right and goes all the way back to where the guy is watering in the background. and we’ve started take over another plot across the path that he’s watering in photo.

and i have to say another fun part of the story of The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective is the nice man in the background is our vice president of sales, eric newman and the woman in front is theresa marquez our chief mission executive ( so now i don’t have steal theresa’s green beans because they’re our green beens 🙂 ). i don’t know about you but other companies i’ve worked for the “c-suite” executives didn’t hang out with employees and certainly didn’t get their hands dirty in the garden!

day3638 - odin doesn't know it but he's learning lessons from The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective. II.

odin doesn’t know it yet, but he’s also learning that working at organic valley really is quite different than many other companies in a lot of ways.

who knows maybe someday he’ll have his own employee plot and join the garden collective.

day3638 - odin doesn't know it but he's learning lessons from The Cosmos Organicos Garden Collective. III.

side note, i can’t even begin to describe how gorgeous a day it was in the rolling hills of the driftless region.

Behold The Strawberry Pyramid!

Behold The Strawberry Pyramid!

the home garden is coming along. i decided to build kris a “strawberry pyramid” for mother’s day. it’s built out of three tiers of squares built from 1×6 boards. the bottom layer is 6’x6′, middle is 4’x4′ and the top is 2’x2′.

sixteen wheelbarrow loads of soil and compost later and it’s ready for planting!

blueberries are in the upper right, with a rhubarb plant between the blueberries and strawberries. there’s a new apple tree behind the strawberries and raspberries in the back of the photo.

i’m not sure what the plan is for the two beds between the strawberries and raspberries but i’m sure the plan will be revealed to me soon 🙂

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities.

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. I.

exactly one year after the fire at the organic valley headquarters, we re-opened the rebuilt section of the building. hurray! and a few days after that cosmos organicos garden collective was in the garden preparing beds and planting. it’s great to get out and get your hands dirty and even more so when you’re doing it in the “shadow” of a rebuilt headquarters ( big shout-out to everyone who made it happen )!

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. II.

working in the healthy organic soil you find lots of friends like this toad and many, many earthworms.

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. III.

and even more fun – one of the collective found a four leaf clover! which got me to wondering what are the odds? turns out, it’s about 1 in 10,000 clovers which is a square of 100×100 clovers. assuming there are about 4 clovers in an inch, that’s a square of 33″x33″ or almost 3’x3′. so in every 3 foot square you should find a 4 leaf clover. that sounds relatively trivial, but the way my eyes work, i’ll never find the four leaf clover. they all look the same. the odds of me actually finding a 4 leaf clover in a 3 foot patch are small.

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. IV.

odin helped out in the garden which is always fun and reminded me of just how many years he’s been toiling away in our garden plot, since well before the formation of the collective! in fact, i think that yellow wheel barrow is the same from the photos taken five years ago. it’s amazing how time flies.

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. V.

work break! don’t tell The Suits odin was running around on the roof of the tool shed. haha. just kidding. there are no suits.

day 3505: hanging out with the cosmos organicos garden collective contemplating probabilities. VI.

amazingly enough, just a bit after finding a a four leaf clover the same person found a five leaf clover! this hurts my brain a bit. the odds of finding it are about 1 in 1,000,000 clovers which is a square of about 1,000×1,000 clovers which is about 333″x333″ or 27’x27′. so that’s a manageable amount of search space but still, IT’S A MILLION CLOVERS! i mean, the actual odds of me picking put a 5 leaf clover out of a million clovers is nill. nada. zip. and yet i’m working side by side with someone who can do it like it’s a parlor trick.

i asked him how he does it.

“i dunno, the irregularity sticks out.”

so we’ve got a four and five leaf clover finding savant in the collective. my question is what are the odds of finding a 4 leaf clover and then a 5 leaf clover? it feels like a similar calculating the odds of rolling two successive yahtzees in two rolls but how do you factor in the visual heuristic?

The Great Brussels Sprouts Harvest!

The Great Brussels Sprouts Harvest!

up until about 10 years ago you couldn’t pay me to eat brussels sprouts but for whatever reason my taste buds changed and now they’re one of my favorite vegetables. fresh from the garden, steamed with a generous dollop of organic valley pasture butter.

kris and odin do not share my love of brussels sprouts which means i get them all 🙂

and, yes, they really did get their name purportedly because of their popularity in .

frida surveys the splendor of the cosmos organicos garden plot.

frida surveys the splendor of the cosmos organicos garden plot. I.

we’re still harvesting the bounty from the labors of the cosmos organicos garden collective so frida had her first chance to survey the splendor!

you can see ongoing work after the fire on the organic valley headquarters in the background. hopefully when we plant next year all the work will be done!

frida surveys the splendor of the cosmos organicos garden plot. II.

you see this face? that’s frida being super happy that i won’t let her about and half eat all the bell peppers while i’m trying ot pick them 🙂