In the spirit of the holidays, I’d like to sincerely ask for your help in acquiring some much needed supplies for the upcoming season. We like to do this periodically in case there is anyone out there who is able to help the farm through monetary donations, or who knows of a place we can get these things donated or used.
You can buy these items from the vendor website if listed, donate them used, or purchase them from a local store. You can also write a check to Veggielution or donate through our website and we will purchase them ourselves. We greatly appreciate the commitment and energy of everyone in our community, and we thank you in advance for any help.
Take a look at the Farm crew’s wishlist:
Storage / Volunteer Safety / Kitchen Supplies
- Shelving Units ($180, 4 needed) – Our shipping container storage shed can use more shelving. Sometimes people get rid of these units when they are moving.
- Hardware Storage Unit ($20-50 each, 2-3 needed) H – We have all kinds of screws, nails, bolts, nuts, washers, etc. that have no specific home in our shed.
- Boot Scraper / Brush ($?) – During the rainy season staff and volunteer boots get muddy, and we don’t want to be tramping that all over the office, in our cars etc.
- Wide-brimmed hats for volunteers (50 small and large) – Volunteers need hats once the warm weather rolls along. Wide brimmed straw hats of any style are preferred. Sombreros, conical Asian farmer hats (also known as the dǒulì, sugegasa, caping, satgat or nón lá), cowboy hats, straw gardening hats from a local nursery or hardware store, they all work
- Aluminum Sautee Pan and Stock Pots - ($60-100)
- Aluminum Gourmet Sautee Pan – ($20-50)
Children / Family Day Supplies - for on the farm and at our school garden sites
- Child-sized gardening gloves (30 pairs needed, $4 each)
- Elementary Garden Tools Set (5 sets needed, $40 each)
- Magnifying Lenses – ($2 each, 30 needed)
- Bug Boxes – ($10-12 each, 15 needed)
Hardware / Materials / Other Supplies
- Duct Tape (10 rolls) – We always need it, if you have extra rolls bring them by.
- Exterior Flat Paint (Various Colors) – we paint signs and buildings, so if you have extra cans of exterior flat paint, bring them over. If you are buying them, we need large cans of white primer and small cans of the primary colors in addition to black. Extra paintbrushes are also welcome
- Butane Gas Cartridges for campstoves - we use these for cooking workshops, we like to have a large package of these onsite at all times
- Large Propane Tanks – our main burners in the kitchen run on large propane tanks, and each time we fill them it costs $15-20. If your at the farm, a nice thing to do would be to run over to a gas station with our empty tanks.
- Bags of Concrete ($10 each, 20 needed) – Next year, we’ll be building gates, shade houses and other structures that require concrete.
- Bags of Perlite ($15 each, 30 needed) – We use this material in our greenhouse mix. Though purists would say this is not a very sustainable material, we factor that into our decision to use it. On the other hand, we substitute coconut peat for peat moss, and use a soil blocking system to minimize our use of plastics.
- Tarps of various sizes – We use tarps to cover lumber, compost piles, straw bales. 10×10 and 20×20 are useful sizes
- 4″ Wood Screws and Nails (Large boxes) – we constantly build stuff out of wood, mostly 2×4′s, and the cost of these fasteners adds up.
- Staples for Staple guns (Large boxes)
Hand Tools
- Ladders – We need a 12′ and 6′ A-frame ladder for working on our greenhouse and other building projects.
- Bypass Pruners and Sheaths ($30 each, 3 needed) – As far as hand tools, bypass pruners are one of those things that we can never have enough of. With sheaths, volunteers can carry them safely and not lose them, which is a major problem with this small tool. One night out in the dew and these thing get rusty and much less usable.
- Heavy Bypass Loppers ($25 each, 3 needed) – We have tree and bushes to maintain, but no loppers!
- Steel Rakes ( $20 each – 5 needed) - Regular steel rakes used for leveling, bed shaping, gathering debris, and other daily farm tasks. A better quality rake will last much longer. They can be bought at any hardware store.
- T-Post Driver ($40-50) – Needed to pound in t-stakes and other stakes.
- Mattock ($20 each / 3 needed) – What you would generally think of as our heavy pick, this tool that has played an important role in the creation of Veggielution, this is what we turn to when the soil is hardest and most compacted, and what we used in the early days to break ground on the Original plot. We need about 5 more these for jobs likes soil prep and weeding mallow. A heavy-duty mattock from Home Depot does the trick
- Digging Fork ($60 each – 12 needed) – Since we have committed to using hand labor as often as possible. We sometimes field up to 15 volunteers turning a plot of soil at a time. The best tool for this job is generally a sturdy digging fork that kills fewer earthworms and does not create compacted layers in the soil. We’re currently down to 4 digging forks so we will have to replenish our stock for the Spring. There are cheap forks out there, but buying a high quality forged tool pays off in the long run.
- Compost Fork ($40 each – 4 needed) – Our compost team does a great job of turning our large piles regularly in order to keep them active, but we’re sometimes limited in how much work we can do by the number of compost forks we currently have. A set of 4 new forks will enable an extra team to get going on this each workday.
- Garden Carts ($200) – We’ve gotten very good use out of our big garden carts, but we can use an additional two for next season.
Power Tools / Equipment and other Bigger Ticket Items
- 25-gallon trailer sprayer ($550) – We regularly apply fish fertilizer and compost tea to our crops, but its currently a labor intensive process of mixing fertilizer and spreading it using watering cans. This high capacity, battery powered sprayer will make the task much more efficient
- Tractor Tune-up or Volunteer Mechanic ($500 donation) – Our 1970′s International Harvest Tractor has been sitting patiently at the farm, waiting for a tune-up, ever since the Blommer Chocolate Company donated it to us over the summer. Volunteer mechanic Bill Odea has done a great job flushing the fuel lines, checking the electrical systems, and other tasks. We still need to replace fuel filter, clean out the fuel tank, check the hydraulic system, and grease the thing everywhere. If you can sponsor this tune-up, or know of a mechanic who would donate their time, you will be putting us far ahead for the 2012 season
- Electronic Projector ($200-600) - for workshops, presentations, community meetings or are youth program, an electronic projector would be very helpful.
- Circular Saw ($100)
- Miter Saw ($180)
- Air Compressor ($180)
