Today Friday, April 3rd, was the last day of
service in New Orleans. As the two students leaders scheduled for us, we didn’t
work with United Saints today. We volunteered at a Veggie Farm owned by Vietnamese
American community in New Orleans. Before, we started working at the farm, Daniel
who is the farm manager told us that they supply veggies to couple of local supermarkets,
small grocery store, and restaurants in this city (New Orleans). He talked
about that during Hurricane Katerina there was veggie shortage because only two
supermarkets (Winn-dixie and Walmart) were open in the city. Then, we started our service for the day. Some
of us (included myself) were transplanting a different kind of egg plants (Japanese
eggplant and Italian eggplant). It was my first time I’ve ever done it and it
was a great experience for me. We gave each plan enough space to grow and put
mulch around them and pull any weeds that’s around it. The second group, had a
fun job. They let ducks get out of their house and watch, but it didn’t work
well for them. The idea was to herd the ducks into the slug-infest area and
they would start chomping. Unfortunately, one of the students (Chris) came back
to me and told me “they (ducks) are stubborn idiots. They kept trying to get
through the fence back to their house”. I’m not an expert about the life of
ducks, it seemed to me that it was same environment both inside and outside of
their house. Therefore, there was no need to be outside. Other group, were seeding
by taking out the extra stuff on it. It was a great service to end our long
week for serving this community.
-Nur Mood