Soul Food Farm

About two dozen people got up at the crack of dawn yesterday and today and made the trip up to Soul Food Farm to wield screwguns, nailguns, and plain old hammers in the hot sun. They had heard about the farm’s fire on Facebook, various San Francisco blogs, Twitter, and Slow Food’s newsletter; some were neighbors in surrounding Vacaville. Saturday’s crew of semi-professionals blew through the work so fast that Eric decided to go for four chicken houses instead of the two they needed immediately, to replace the two destroyed in the fire. Six hundred baby chicks arrive at Soul Food every week and these 32-by-12 foot hoop houses — with doors that lower into ramps so the chicks can go outside during the day and be closed up tight against predators at night — are their homes until they move into the teenager meat-bird corrals after a couple of weeks.

We built the components to erect all four houses. This represents a HUGE savings of time and labor for Eric and the farm. Sunday’s crew took the 32 blanks that Saturday’s team had started and added the doors (with hinges and latches) and the end pieces, headers, etc. Then we loaded up the components for one whole house, took it into the front pasture and put it together so that one was ready to go for the baby chicks arriving this week (once the hoop struts arrive and the plastic roof can be put on).

And while all THAT was happening, a whole other crew of folks were gathering and washing eggs (in the automatic egg washer and by hand), getting the laying houses ready to withstand the coming heat wave ( with big water troughs and fans), scrubbing just about every water can and chicken feeder on the property, and even shredding dried lavender for a little side project Alexis is working on with pet beds. Meanwhile, master blacksmith Jefferson Mack, who met Alexis at an 18 Reasons farmer-dinner a few months ago, turned what was once the information booth for Slow Food Nation last year that Alexis bought several months ago into a workable and exquisite office for Alexis. Jefferson and his two lovely kids campe out overnight to finish this huge pro-bono welding job in a mere two days. Amazing.

A big thank you to all our worker bees before I crash for the night:

Saturday’s team: Contractor Joe and Erica Howard, Chris Bjuhr, Paul Fielding, Hannah and Super Kirsty, Bart Nagel, Levy, and Kelly and the Nutrition Shoppe folks (who donated and delivered lunch for us hungry workers)
Sunday: Cameron and Anita (check out the full Flickr slide show), Arthur Perley (of Slow Food Berkeley and Vino), Bart, Elanor, Sandy and D (who both came last weekend too!), Molly (who saw the workdays on a friend’s Facebook page and came), Karimah and Ed, Nanda, and sweet Sara the neighbor who made a pasta salad for everybody.
Hope I haven’t left anybody out. You guys were amazing. Our hearts are full.

Lots more pictures after the jump! (Click image to enlarge; photos by Bart, Anita, Elanor, and Bonnie)