Sunday, April 26, 2026 was a rewarding work day to see the plans come to life. Darren brought over his small Kubota tractor to fill the 5 redwood planter boxes. His tractor worked perfectly to go between the garden and the composting bunker inside the horse corral. We had widened the entrance to 7ft into the garden by removing a gate and fencing and cutting/removing butterfly bushes. I love seeing a plan work out for a positive systems approach. One load of the horse manure in the backhoe is equivalent to 1.5 wheelbarrows. This saves a lot of time and back breaking work.

Darren worked from 11am – 1:30pm to fill the boxes, turn some compost, level the garden, and bring in old stall mats. Thanks to Will and Teddie for their hard work helping us. Emma stopped by in the afternoon to lay out extra terra cotta garden tubes around beds.

To wrap it up and plan for the middle section, we laid out the old mats to mark the tractor’s travel pathway and turn around spot. This helped with a visual to frame in the next set of redwood boxes. The garden walkways will be covered in wood chips, so the mats will not show. Rich came over around 3pm, and we flagged the next 6 boxes that he’ll build in May.

The redwood beds were filled in with the compost about 3/4 full, and then some extra garden soil. Lastly, it was top-filled by hand with some really nice compost from my “green bins” which holds all the waste from the chicken coop: poop, shavings, and straw which has been composting for a year. We also watered the soil and will wait about 2 weeks before planting.