"We're Going to the Garden."

Trading Posts and Compost

Garden Time

At the end of farmer’s markets, vendors often trade their leftover produce with other farmers. Men and women carry loaves of bread across the market and return to their trucks with tomatoes, eggs and cheese for the rest of the week. It is reminiscent of colonial America, where due to better community relations than we know today and resentment against British taxes, trading goods was a more economical method of exchange than government money. 

    As the kindergarten and first and second grades study a time period when people aspired to be silversmiths and ship owners instead of lawyers and doctors, during garden time they get the chance to have a trading post of their own. In three different rounds, children picked a profession out of a hat and received their accompanying prop. (The milliner, for example, carried fabric for making hats.) During the first round, each participant - who had a slip of paper stating what product they had and what they needed - found the person who needed what they had so the two could trade. By round three the “colonists” learned that the blacksmith might not need candles, and soon six-way trades were negotiating their way around the garden.

    Afterwards we worked on our garden beds, filling in the pathways with more straw while the girls filled up wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with compost. 

The Owls and Kittens collected firewood for the coming winter. Remember when we couldn't heat our homes with the turn of a thermostat?

 

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.