TOPIC: Token Auction Benefitting Mary's Hands - UPDATES!

Did this end last night or does it end tonight?

Beertram wrote: Did this end last night or does it end tonight?

The auction ends midnight EST tonight! Lots of bids coming in - I'll have them updated in the next hour or so.

Fred

All bids through 3pm EST 4/26/2023 updated. We've hit $2,318 so far! Tons of movement on a lot of items. Remember, no bids past Midnight EST tonight will be accepted. I'll keep updating every couple hours right up to the end of the auction. Thank you everyone! Let's push for a big finish!!!

Fred

More bids coming in! We're up to $2343 - Let's get this above $2,500 before midnight!

I'll update in about 2 hours.

Fred

Lots of last minute bids! This is the last update before the close of the auction so put in your last bids!

Fred

All bids are in!

Wow. Thank you so much to the TD community. Together, we raised $2,710 for Mary's Hands!

I'll be emailing auction winners by end of day Thursday with what you won and details on how to pay. I'll double check the bids and names to make sure I didn't make mistakes on any final results in the morning (message me if I mixed anything up.)

I'd like to take a moment to talk about what this money raised will accomplish.

Combined with the work of our volunteers and partners at UpRoot, our goal is to provide more than $300,000 in healthy produce free of charge to those who need it most in the Greater Denver area. The $2,700 will pay for more than 400 starts (plants grown enough to transplant) of organic tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, strawberries, and eggplant. We'll be planting them mid-May with the first harvests in July. These will be combined with seed already gathered for carrots, lettuce, spinach, and melons. We add high-end restaurant quality garlic to this mix that was planted back in October (and is harvested approximately the first week of July). The garlic is an important part of what we distribute. Although it isn't a direct food staple, the people who get this food rarely can afford good quality spices and seasoning for their family meals. We're making sure they get garlic that is normally reserved for high end restaurants.

We work with Boulder Food Rescue to distribute the food into low income housing communities where residents can take whatever they want without a sense of loss of dignity. The increased cost of groceries and reduction in SNAP benefits is making feeding their families harder than normal for these communities. We're humbled to help make whatever difference we can.

I'll post pics of what is grown throughout the year.

Thank you again everyone!

Fred

As part of emailing auction winners, will you be updating the first post with the winning bids?

James W wrote: As part of emailing auction winners, will you be updating the first post with the winning bids?

The first post should have correct winning amounts (I corrected one that I had an incorrect amount this morning.) If you see anything off, let me know.

I'll be emailing winners instructions on payment by end of day today along with what they won. Payments will be done through the donations button on the Maryshands.org web site.

On a related note - several people asked how they can send donations if they weren't involved in the auction. Donations are always appreciated. Anyone can donate from the Mary's Hands web site (courtousy of Isabelle's web site building prowess) at Mary's Hands Donation Page .

Fred

Notifications have been sent to all auction winners. Thank you everyone. I'm aiming to get everything shipped by Monday.

Fred

I had hoped to get everything packaged and shipped by end of day today but got delayed (had a system crash that killed the spreadsheet with all the data on it for the auction.) Over the course of a few hours, I reconstructed who won what and lined up their auction winnings with their real names.

Everyone has paid except Boba Fett. I will ship out everything Monday.

Fred

All tokens from the auction have been shipped. Most people were notified via email. Those where I didn't have email addresses were sent PMs on the forums. Everything was shipped USPS Priority Mail Small Packages. Please reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thank you again for everyone's support. We're prepping the beds for planting and making water adjustments.

Fred

Update for those who are interested on production from the farm this year...
We had record rains in Northern Colorado between March and May. This was both good and bad. The bad was crop damage across the state was pretty significant (overwatering seeds will dramatically lower germination rates.) The good is adding much needed water to the aquifers after 20+ years of drought.

It slowed down our outside fields but everything that was covered or well established before the rains has done well. Normally, we'd be over a thousand pounds of donations by this time and are only at the first 100 pounds.

With all that said, we harvested a record amount of garlic - 100 pounds worth. Half will be seed for next year, the other half is being donated. The garlic alone is worth more than $3,000 and with the large amount being seeded into expanded fields next year, it will exceed $10,000 we'll be able to provide.

Our tomatoes are doing better than ever and will help make up for a lot of the field losses. Our hope is to be well over 2,000 pounds of donation just for the month of August then another 2,000 in September. It likely won't be the most food we've grown but the value being given should exceed $200,000.

Thank you everyone in your help in making this possible! Our new greenhouse is built and our cool storage unit is going in the barn soon to better set us up for next year. With it being our first year growing starts, we are going to purchase half of what we normally would and try to grow the rest.

Attached are some picture of the progress so far!