Hanks Fox Hollow Farm Trip Blog

 Today we did more exploring of Detroit. We went to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. The village had a replica of Henry Ford's childhood house as well as houses and labs from Thomas Edison and other famous American Inventors. The Henry Ford museum was my favorite part. They had old presidential cars including the one that JFK was assassinated in. They also had all kinds of cars and the chair that Lincoln was shot in. They also had a NASCAR exhibit that I liked.  5/23/22

Hank McCabe       Today we were in Detroit since we finished our work hours. We started our day with some breakfast and then headed to the Detroit Institute of Art. We saw all kinds of cool art there. They had old swords, firearms, and suits of armor. They also had cool indigenous sculptures and masks that were very old. There was a lot of cool stuff, but my favorite was the "Spirit of Detroit" car exhibit. They had a bunch of cars from over the years that were manufactured in Detroit.  5/22/22

 Hank McCabe Senior Project This week, we changed it up a little bit and started with some landscaping. We did a lot of weeding in the flower beds around the property and then put down fresh mulch when we were done with that. We also raked up dead leaves and moved them into the woods and off of the grass.  My favorite part of the workweek was working on the shed in front of the neighbor's house because Morgan helps him out too. The shed started out looking pretty bad, with a bunch of prickly weeds growing around it. We dug all around the shed, making a big circle of dirt. We had to haul heavy wheel barrels full of dirt and weeds into the woods and dump them. After that, we took the truck and filled it up with the rocks we picked from the field at the farm last week. We had to make three or four trips because we needed so many rocks. After we made the rock wall, we took flat sheetrock and made a path for the door of the shed. Lastly, Moran came over with a trailer full of mulch...

 Today was our final day of work on the farm. We were working with Farmer Jim again. We started our day in the chicken coop. We were tasked with collecting eggs. I was hesitant to do this at first because I don't really like chickens, but once we started collecting eggs it was not as bad as I thought it would be. After we collected the eggs, we headed over to the pigpen. The pigpen was pretty dirty and needed some TLC, so we got right to work. We cleaned up the dirty hay from the pen and then spread clean hay around the pen. After that, we cleaned up the horse and cow stalls and put fresh hay down for the animals to enjoy. To finish off the day, we thanked Jim for letting us help him out and for all that he taught us.  5/20/2022 10 Hours

 Today we started our day at the sister property of Fox Hollow Farms. We had a couple of tasks to take care of helping out the land manager there. One thing that we did was evening out the dips on either side of the road because they just put down fresh asphalt. To do this, we filled up a John Deer with dirt and brought it to the strip of asphalt and then we filled in the trenches on either side of the road. We had to take a few trips on the John Deer to get enough dirt to fill in the sides. After that, we split a big woodpile with the wood splitter they had on the property. It was fun operating the wood splitter and splitting up logs of all different shapes and sizes. As we split the wood, we also had to stack it, so we all took turns splitting, stacking, and running the wood splitter. Once we were done with that, we got some food and headed back to the farm to help out farmer Jim with a few things around the farm, and then we were done for the day,  5/19/2022 10 Hours

Hank McCabe       Today, we were back on the farm helping out John, the head land manager. We started the day by stacking wood into trailers. The wood that we stacked is used at Brick's Pizzeria near Connor's house to fuel the pizza oven. After we stacked wood, we were tasked with spreading minerals around the property for the deer. Minerals are like supplements for deer that make their antlers healthier and stronger. This was fun because we got to ride on ATVs so that we could go deeper into the woods. I enjoyed getting to explore more of the property today.  5/18/22 10 Hours

 Today we woke up, had some breakfast, and then went right to work. We had to finish mulching all of the flower beds at the event bar. In the end, we used two more trailer fulls of mulch. After that, we started a new project at a neighbor's house. They had a shed that we build a stone wall around and then filled in the stone wall with mulch. We started by digging around the shed and taking out all of the weeds so that the bed was clean. After that, we took the truck and filled it with stones from the farm to build a wall. We had to take four trips worth of stones to make the wall. Once we finished the wall, Morgan came over with some mulch to fill in the wall. Finally, we took some sand and larger flat stones to make walkways from the doors. This project took us a while but it was really rewarding to see the final product.  5/17/22 10 Hours

 Today, we met Morgan Matthews who is the head landscaper for the farm and property. We are going to be helping him landscape for the next couple of days. We started out by weeding and raking out the dead flowers from the flower beds. While doing this we found a nest of goose eggs. We ended up raking and weeding three flower beds. We also raked up leaves that the other landscapers blew out of the grass and flower beds. After that, we had lunch and then got right back to work. Since we were done weeding Morgan brought over a trailer full of mulch and we started mulching the flower beds so that they look pretty. We ended our day mulching.  5/16/2022 10 Hours

  Hank McCabe Going into this week, I was not really sure what to expect working on the farm. I had never been to the farm before and I didn't know exactly what kind of work we would be doing. When we arrived at the farm, we met farmer Jim, who is a 77-year-old retired engineer who designed chassis for Chevrolet and is now in charge of the farm. He showed us around the farm, where we saw the garden that is full of vegetables like potatoes, onions, garlic, and horseradish along with flowers and spices like mint. Then, we went to the barn where we saw the highlander cows, horses, and pigs. Next to the barn was the chicken coop and the ducks and geese. I enjoyed looking around the farm and I was surprised to see how much they do. After our tour, we got right to work. Throughout the week, we did all kinds of different chores around the farm and got to see what it takes to run a place like that. We weeded, harvested some crops, spread a lot of compost, cleared fields of rocks to g...

 Today we started by digging a big trench that was 2 feet deep and around 120ft long. Because the garden is on a pitch, and it tends to rain in Michigan pretty hard in the spring, we dug the trench so that the water would collect there and run off into the pond instead of just making a big puddle in the middle of the garden. Digging the trench took a while because after we dug it, we had to flatten out the edges and then re-dig all of the dirt that fell into the trench. After that, we weeded a few beds of different plants to get them ready for more planting and tilling.  5/13/2022 10 hours. 

 Today we started out by picking rocks from the wheat field to get it ready for planting. The four of us walked the field and picked rocks while one of the farmers followed us in a tractor. We had to dig up a bunch of the rocks and a lot of them were a lot bigger than they looked on the surface. This task took us until lunch. After lunch, we returned to the farm to plant our final row of onions. We ran out of onions and finished the row with leeks. Once we finally finished all of the onions, we were assigned one more task for the day. The farm is going to be planting grapes and starting a vineyard, so we had to dig the holes to plant the grapes. We dug around 20 2 by 2-foot holes and we are going to plant the grapes with compost tomorrow. After that, we went to Hunters Creek Hunting Club to meet the owner because we will be doing some work for him next week.  5/12/22 12 hours

 Today we went to the farm in the morning and started by trimming some dead plants. Geroge and I learned about perennials, which come back every year without having to re plant. We found this out because we ripped them from the ground instead of just trimming the plants. This task took a little longer than we thought it would because we had to re plant the roots we ripped out of the ground. After that, we put compost on some more beds to get ready to plant more stuff. We then took a lunch break to make some sandwiches. When we returned, we planted another row of onions, this time a variety called "red zeppelin". Planting all of the onions took a while because we had to make sure they were all in a straight line unlike last time.  5/11/22

 Today we woke up and headed to the farm to get to work. When we arrived we started by removing sun roots from the tilled garden rows. Jim was teaching us about how sun root used to be a very popular root with local Native American tribes and that it tastes like a water chestnut. It was hard sorting through the dirt to find all of the little chunks. After that, we went to the barn and we had to move a large pile of hay to the compost bin. The hay was covered in cow waste so it smelled really bad and it was wet and heavy. We loaded up a wheel barrel and went back and forth a bunch of times. After that, we had some lunch. To finish off the day, we planted a row of onions, which in the end amounted to a few hundred onions. Lastly, we trimmed and weeded some dead plants from one of the gardening beds.  5/10/22 10 hours

 Today we arrived at the farm after a fun weekend exploring Detriot. When we got there, we got right into working. We began by meeting farmer Jim, who showed us around the farm and showed us what we were going to be doing. We met the cows and the pigs and all of the chickens and ducks. After that, we began to spread compost on the gardening rows to get ready to plant onions. This took a while to break up big chunks of compost. After that, we harvested some horseradish to get ready to plant new stuff. To finish things off, we weeded in between the garlic plants to make sure they are healthy.  5/9/22 8 hours