What is Spring without some snow?

Cairn mentors, students, and their friends/ family braved a rainy and snowy Final Project at The Urban Farm last Saturday! This Final Project was a culmination of all the monthly events throughout the Cairn Program in order to prepare them to lead their own stewardship project, including: attending other stewardship projects throughout the Front Range, selecting their Final Project site, training on how to be a Crew Leader, and conducting a site visit for their Final Project. All students also assumed different leadership roles throughout the process similar to VOC’s own volunteer leadership positions such as crew chef, photographer, crew leader, etc. En lieu of the impending weather conditions, the project work was shifted to helping The Urban Farm remove invasive plants from their Food Forest. This Food Forest is one of the farm’s sources for the 14,000 pounds of produce they donate to the community annually.

Our group weathered the storm while removing invasive Curly Dock in order to give the Food Forest better access to nutrients and resources without having to compete alongside the non-native plants. The Curly Dock also needed to be removed as it can be toxic to their resident livestock. This was no easy task with tap roots as long as 10 feet, along with the snow quickly covering the landscape by the end of the work. Student Crew Leaders led the rest of the group in different sections of the Food Forest, covering about 2,000 sq ft of land and removing an estimated 400 pounds of invasive plants!

Photography by Heidi Hartman.