4 1/2 hours at Pickering Barn in Issaquah - that's where they have the Issaquah Farmer's Market.
Oh how I love farmer's markets!
Just walking around and looking at the stalls overflowing with fresh produce and beautiful flowers.....
...... can think of a lot worse places to be bright and early on a Saturday morning!
I showed up a little after 9:00am and our tent was already set up. Signs out and everything ready to go! The farmers market staff do the heavy lifting.... can't complain about that!
Take a look at this little set up....... it's our reference/resource center on wheels..... very spiffy!
Roll it out to where you need it, unfold it and set up the extension table.....
Tucked in the back is a little library of reference material for us to use.
.... and in the top, this nifty filing system chock full of reference sheets and other supplies.
Wasn't long before folks were coming up to ask us questions. Stuff was all across the board (no surprise there)...... how do I prune this, when to plant so and so, how do I get rid of the deer (I feel their pain....we have open woodland all around our home.... deer are regular visitors.... I sometimes wonder if I have a garden or am salad central to these critters) and we had about 1/2 a dozen or so samples of sick plants to diagnose.
When a question was thrown at me I found myself thinking:
a) oooh, I learned this one in class....(smile!) and the answer is ....... (wow, all that effort is paying off!).....
or,
b) been there, done that, know that answer........
or,
c) OK, here's one I don't know..... time for one of my buddies to pitch in and/or to hit the reference material to find an answer.
I was expecting it to be a lot harder/intimidating than it was...... sure, there were many questions I didn't know the answers to, but it's just a matter of jumping in and giving it a whirl...... lean on a seasoned MG when you need to, use the reference materials if that helps.... the customers are so appreciative of the help we provide.... we get to have a nice chat while we look things up and I come away a little wiser (and a better gardener) for the experience!
So.... did we have any interesting Q and As?
Here's one that we couldn't definitively resolve....... what would you have said?
Q. We have a bunch of mature (40yr) conifers (spruces of some sort) dying from the base up. About 2/3 of many of the trees are brown. Started happening about 6 months ago. No changes/activity in area (ie. construction etc).
A. Could be a nutritional issue or could be the effects from last summer's heat wave and warm/not-so-wet winter taking its toll...... we suggested they take site photos and bring them in, along with a quality sample for us to look at. May require a trained arborist to properly diagnose. Cautioned customer to get a definitive answer soon as it might affect entire grove. Trees may have been weakened enough to now be hazard in the next storm - they may have to come down anyway.
Any negatives to this clinic thing?
1. I HATE sitting/waiting..... I'm terrible at it. Waiting rooms, planes, slow traffic, those long cashier lines at Christmas time..... and now slow clinics.... just feels like I'm wasting time.... should be doing something, anything! During slow spots we got to take a few breaks to warm up (it was a bit chilly Saturday) and being at the market, we could walk around and enjoy the action elsewhere. I guess when the market really cranks up as the weather warms, our MG stuff will get busy, and the time will fly by and I won't be sitting and waiting.
2. I'd much prefer to provide hands on support than fire off text book answers. I think I'll dream up little activities to do at future clinics to keep things entertaining and more hands on..... pick a topic for the day and demo something. I remember getting some ideas in a presentation during training..... or maybe one of those teaching kits has a cool thing I could do.....I'll refer back to that stuff and see what I can drum up.
Stay tuned for more clinic adventures!
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