by Antonio Zodda ’14
School may have been out but the Ploughmen stayed hard at work in maintaining their garden this summer. Club members made the drive to campus to regularly water, weed, and harvest the crops. Due to a hefty yield, the Ploughmen were able to make several trips to both St. Herman’s House of Hospitality and the West Side Catholic Center for donations.
This year’s harvest has been the most bountiful in the club’s history, and the harvest is still increasing. This season’s specialty crops included lunchbox peppers, purple green beans, heirloom Swiss chard and black cherry tomatoes,a Ploughmen favorite.
Due to a recently acquired grant, the club is now in possession of three new compost tumbler bins, designed to expedite the composting process. Current sources of compost include a daily delivery of food scraps from the cafeteria, fall foliage from the on-campus trees, and the occasional batch of spent grains from Great Lakes Brewery. The group hopes to make composting a significantly more widespread effort across campus in the coming years.
Two new rooftop bee colonies, which replaced those lost during Hurricane Sandy, were able to settle over the summer and begin the long and arduous process of honey-making.
To what extent these bees have succeeded will be determined when the Ploughmen extract their honey early this fall.
