The National Week of Volunteering was celebrated at AMURTEL with a bit of everything: excitement, new friends, energy, good will, sun, rain, fresh air and joy! In the weekend of 10-11 May, our team – accompanied by volunteers and friends set out to the beautiful mountainside village of Poieni, where we have our farm.
We project we choose for the weekend was to make a “Mandala Garden” where we grow vegetables for our organic vegetable basket project. The young people from Familia AMURTEL were happy to spend a couple of days in the fresh air with us. We also had a team of volunteers from Bucharest: Cristina, Denisa, Mihai, Raul, Florentina as well as our local friends, Valentin – a volunteer from Patirlagele, kids from Familia AMURTEL, and even a “WOOFer” volunteer from America.
The plan for the project was made by our neighbor and expert in medicinal plants, Mr. Ungureanu, who designed the shape and selected the plants – offering seedlings from his own garden.
On the first day – the weather didn’t collaborate – but nobody complained – appreciating the importance of rain for agriculture and our seedlings. So we worked to construct the garden bed in spite of the capricious wind and rain of springtime! We cleared a section of land and made some compost. We then arranged river stones to outline the mandala.
On the second day, the weather decided to be more cooperative and we enjoyed the sunshine!
The younger kids helped to put down straw on the pathways and following the suggestion of our WOOFer volunteer, Elijah, we wove willow branches to make pretty ornamental fences around the beds. We then planted the medicinal plants and at the end of the day we were able to admire our work! We look forward to harvesting the plants for herbal teas and other concotions in the summer!