Heavy Lifting and Colonial America

Garden Time

This week the Giving Gardeners did some heavy lifting. Fall is the time of year when the garden gets prepared for the coming spring. In a garden that is just coming into existence, it’s a great time to build beds and pathways and imagine what our space will look like when it’s covered in green. The Owls and Kittens are learning about manners and teamwork, and they proved their new skills by working all together to push a wheelbarrow full of woodchips up to help finish our pathway through the garden. The elementary students split into three teams – one group laid out cardboard, a second filled our wheelbarrow with compost, and a third raked the compost out over the cardboard to build beds. They are learning about Early America, and during garden time they experienced what kids their age would be doing to help their parents during colonial times. 

     The reason for the cardboard and more compost than you would find in an average garden is the unique type of farm the Giving Garden will be. Most farms use a roto-tiller, which breaks up and aerates the soil, stirring the nutrients and making them readily accessible to young plants. However, this practice quickly uses up the minerals in the soil and over several years begins to compact the top layer of soil down until it is almost impossible for oxygen to get through. This inhibits the number of organisms that can thrive around the roots of the plants and this directly correlates to how well plants can grow. There is however, another system of farming in which a roto-tiller is not used, and the surface of the soil is not disturbed. 

    No-Till farming is a process by which weed growth is restricted by blocking sun and oxygen with layers of cardboard. The compost placed on top of the cardboard gives the new plants the boost in minerals that they need and it gives them a chance to grow big and strong before the weeds can catch up. By the time the plant's roots have reached the cardboard, it is soft enough from moisture and decomposition for the roots to push through, and by the end of a growing season the cardboard is gone entirely. This way, every year you farm the land you return to the soil what you took from it in the first place. Your garden only has to contend with airborne weeds and your soil stays aerated instead of compacting down, (trust me, once you have tried pulling weeds in a roto-tilled and a no-till garden you will know the difference). 

    When the community garden is up and running in the spring, participants will be able to farm their plot in whatever way they choose, but the rest of the garden will be there as an example of something new to try. The Giving Gardeners love trying and learning new things. The children usually quick to answer even the hardest of questions though, could not fathom that summer vacation was invented only so that people their age could spend more time doing manual labor during the growing season.

Also, check out a video of the Owls and Kittens talking about compost! (It was put up between full blog posts)

Let's Talk About Compost!

Burning Questions and the Three Sisters

Garden Time

As the air outside grows crisp the elementary students' curriculum moves from direction to early American history. The Mohicans populated the Hudson valley, living in small communities along the Muhheakantuck River, (river that flows both ways). Their system of farming largely relied on growing the three sisters, corn, beans and squash. Corn stalks provide a pole for beans to grow up on, and the leaves from both create enough condensed moisture and shelter from direct sunlight for squash to thrive. So we cooked with one of the sisters, corn, and made ourselves some campfire popcorn!

Building the Fire

While building our campfire, we learned about a time before gas powered stoves and electric microwaves. When asked to imagine building a fire such as ours for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Lorelei also added, "And SNACK!" After collecting kindling and dried leaves, we learned about how fire needs three things to live, oxygen, fuel (wood) and heat. Remarkably similar in some ways to what our bodies need. After building up a flame and running in circles to escape the smoke, we heard the first pops, and pretty soon the popcorn had lifted the lid clear off the pot!

Waiting for Popcorn

We ate our popcorn listening to the story of Loo-Wit, who kept fire safe for two warring Native American tribes until they could come to peace with one another, and then told some campfire stories of our own.

Reading the Story of Loo-Wit

It is always interesting to wonder how what children are taught when they are young will return to them later in life. Whether or not something as simple as practicing telling campfire stories and learning to survive without the use of electricity will ever be of use in a rapidly modernizing world will remain to be seen. However, when it was time to go outside to the playground and have free play, everyone voted to stay longer around the fire in the garden instead. For me, to have children that value fresh air, the freedom to question and the time to discuss their thoughts with their peers is to be able to look at the future of the earth and see a bright horizon.

Owls and Kittens Collecting Leaves for the Compost

Digging for History

Garden Time

One of the most astonishing things to watch in the garden is the innate brilliance young people have in working with the land. While an adult wants to put at least a shovel's length between themself and compost, The Giving Gardeners wanted to touch, smell and share compost with each other. We learned about how compost is organic matter broken down, how all of the scraps from our snack time can help us grow more snack, and that the soil under our feet is millions of years old - recycled over and over again from bones, tree bark, water and, (I was informed adamantly) fairy dust.

To decide what our garden could be, it was important to know what it had been. Compass in hand, The Giving Gardeners followed coordinate directions on a scavenger hunt around the garden. We first found a dinosaur and volcanic rock and discovered that Theropods, (like a Tyrannosaurus Rex) and Ornithischians, (like a Triceratops) had probably walked across the very soil we were standing on. We walked 30 steps Northwest to find a mini glacier buried in the dirt, learning that a real glacier in the ice age carved out the Hudson River. We found squash from the Mohican Native Americans, who named the Hudson the Mahicantuk, (people of the river that flows both ways) and spices from Henry Hudson’s failed voyage to Asia in 1609. We dug up steel from the industrial revolution when factories lined the shores from New York City to Albany, and clay from when the garden used to be a tennis court. Finally, we found a class photo of The Giving Gardeners. As they move on in their curriculum from direction to early American history, there is an enhanced connection to the subject because they have a place in it. To know the history of the land you are about to farm is to see yourself as the culmination of the total history of that place. It gives responsibility and pride to the group of children prepared to be the new caretakers for a small piece of the earth.

Before there were Watches there was Sunlight

Garden Time

The elementary students have been studying direction. The classroom has North, South, East and West taped to the classroom walls, and globes and flashlights have been employed to explain that we spin on an axis, and we are also spinning around the sun. We forget that we don't know until we are told that the world is round and when the sun comes "up" it is actually reaching our side of the sphere. 

During garden time we made sundials and brought them outside, pointing them north after learning to use a compass. Students not only saw how the movement of the sun affects plants, but also that sunlight was something they could measure. Having measured the path of the sun with something of their own creation allowed the children to know planetary movement instead of having learned the information but maybe not fully retaining it. This opened up their minds to questions they may not have asked, and gave a steady framework for reasoning themselves through related questions they will have in the future.

Heartwood Trees and the Five Senses

owls touch the heart of the tree!

      Garden Time

The Owls (3) and Kittens (4) learned about the center of trees, called heartwood, and how just like the center of our bodies, the heartwood of a tree helps it stand up straight and tall. It turns out that the tree we counted rings on was the same age as most of us!

We talked about how the five senses can be used when we are outside in the garden. After having practiced a song about 'everybody's bodies' everyone was able to share how we can use our eyes to look at the trees, our hands to feel and dig in the dirt, and our tongues to taste worms (just kidding!)

Lumbricus Terrestris in the Classroom

Reading "diary of a worm" after our visitors went home

Garden Time 

Animals! After discussing the creatures we do and do not want in our garden, we learned about the animals that we sometimes don't even know are there, like earthworms. The class had several organisms of the species Lumbricus Terrestris, (try saying it five times fast) come visit us and we learned that Lumbricus refers to an worm's slimy coat and Terrestris means it lives in the ground.

After tentatively touching our slimy friends, we brought them home to the garden. When handling the worms we thought about being careful and considerate, especially when you are in charge of keeping something or someone else safe.

What is the Giving Garden?

Learning about cold frames

The Garden Road School community garden space, known as ‘The Giving Garden’ is a project that will incorporate outdoor learning, community development and food education. Not only will food be grown for a CSA, (Community Supported Agriculture) but local community members will also have the opportunity to rent a raised bed for the growing season and be part of a community garden. In this program plant care responsibilities such as watering and weeding will be shared by the group and participants will have access to group gardening tools and advice from someone experienced in different farming techniques and practices. As the growing season approaches, after-school programs for community kids of different ages will begin, and this summer ‘The Giving Garden’ will be a part of the Garden Road summer camp program.  During the school year students at The Garden Road will be cultivating their own plots of land! Every Friday during ‘garden time’ students of different grades will learn about the various aspects of farming, food and the natural world. This will encompass learning about the organisms present on a farm, the way seasons affect plants, and the actual techniques involved in growing food from the earth. Incorporating gardening, community and education will hopefully be one of many steps towards an integrated and healthy learning process for children and adults alike.