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?
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