Yummmy - garden delights !

The garden is exploding !!! We picked our first crop on June 30 - zucchini squash, yellow squash and cucumber - and then proceeded to make a salad with a side of fresh buttered, cornmeal'd & lightly pan friedsquash for the evening meal! Ohhh yummmm !!! Then several days later ... I picked more squash & cut the green tops of several onion plants, BV steamed n' buttered them & used one of Deanna's new recipes.... boneless baked chicken covered with french onions. Not a bite was left !!

The photo below shows the garden right behind the trailer -tomatoes (cherry & beefy) and onions.

In the other photos you can see the pepper plants, onions, tomatoes and squash. We also have cucumber, cantalope, jalapeno pepper & okra.These squash plants will be loaded with veggies, they are huge ! We might have to open our own farmers market. And HELP ... we need some good recipes .....

Some pics of our volunteer efforts

We keep busy! Several pics of what we've been involved in: when the staff work with the sturgeon, they are id'd by a small tag near their dorsal fin, I'm reading and documenting the fish, date, time etc using the pit tag reader.

Spawning of the sturgeon takes hours & hours and usually calls for all staff... and some long nights. Once the eggs are spawned they are stirred & mixed for 20 minutes, we all helped .. I helped stir BV helped with washing, straining and getting the eggs into hatching jars. One female had 8 sessions - each session has about 2 hours in between; then one night they had 7-8 females all spawning. Sooo, the midnight oil was burned !

We've also re-painted and stenciled several of their fish transport tanks, the two compartment circular was in bad shape and the six compartment didn't have any identification. One of the wives made the stencils, we then put them on both sides of the tanks. BV and I worked very well together, had patience... and didn't stress out or get onto each other !!!

One of my big projects has been photo logging & documenting all their process's... they don't have any current photos of what they do here at the hatchery. Just outside the Aquarium are two interpretive kiosks... in bad shape and need of repair & paint. So taking on the task of rebuilding - BV took all the display boards off, brushed, renailed and repainted.

I re-worked the exhibit displays, first drafting several ideas with description by-lines, then had staff review and we finalized just this week. One display is done and now put up. It's a pictorial of the sturgeon research & spawning process. We are working over the weekend, and hope to finish the 2nd display.
There are no interpretive staff here, and we hope the photos will give the visitors a better idea of what all is accomplished at this facility. Plans are for us and the other volunteer couple to build several more displays - one at the hatchery, another at the outside rearing ponds and one at the endangered species building. I'd like to think we can make it happen..... but it all has to be done by scratch and we may not have enough time.