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Interested in everything that can happen in children's garden

Introducing…. our new FoodCorps service member!

Posted on August 20, 2018 by kidsingardens

Today we are welcoming our new Food Corps service member for the next 11.5 months. You may remember that our district began working with (the most amazing) FoodCorps program last year, and Emily pioneered the position here on campus. Cam was here in early August for on-site training, then left for national and regional training in Portland and Oakland, and now he’s back to dig in. I’ll let him introduce himself below. Welcome Cam!

Howdy everyone!

My name’s Cameron James Petersen, though most call me Cam, and I’ll be replacing Emily Horowitz (or Ms. Emily to our younger readers) as the new FoodCorps AmeriCorps Service Member at Julian Union Elementary School District / Julian Pathways.

So a little about me:

I hail from down the hill, and grew up in El Cajon, although I’ve lived up and down the West Coast. I graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in History and English, knowing I’d end up back inside a classroom sooner or later as a teacher. An interest in public service and an insatiable appetite for travel lured me into serving 27 months in the U.S. Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa as an agriculture volunteer. There I discovered my deep-seated passion for community development and the degree to which food ties us all together. Fast forward a couple years and here I am, serving for the next year in your community.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the FoodCorps’ mission, we are an organization that aims to connect kids to healthy food in school, so they can lead healthier lives and reach their full potential. We achieve this mission through three types of activities: hands-on lessons in the classroom concerning gardening and nutrition, working with school foodservice providers to provide our students with healthy school meals and create a cafeteria that steers students towards the healthiest options, and by creating a school wide culture of health including everybody from teachers to the community members that live in the area.

You’ll more than likely see me around town and on the school campuses — please stop and say “hi” if I don’t get to you first. I’m looking forward to meeting you all and getting some good work done!

Best regards,

CJP

First week of school (already?)

Posted on August 15, 2018 by kidsingardens

Welcome back! School is officially back in session here at Julian Elementary, and we are looking forward to our best year yet in the school garden. (Thanks once again to the Sage Garden Project for funding! You folks are the very best!)

A few cool developments over the summer:

Our pioneer bed is exploding with veggies!

Emily finished up the signage for the native plant trail!

Emily also found an amazing volunteer to build a heavy-duty trellis for our grapes, creating a shady, whimsical tunnel for kids to walk through between the lunch tables and the playground.

In closing, I’d like to revisit the original objective was for this blog: to make a case for school gardens from every possible angle. Here’s yet another compelling reason for a school garden:

On the first day of school we have an orientation for parents new to the school. All of our administrators and program directors warmly welcome new families as we explain all of the resources we offer. I had a few minutes to talk about our garden, and at the end of the meeting, I invited parents to go out for a short tour.

As I was walking around with one of the new families, the mom told me that they had seen the garden on their first visit to the school months ago. They were won over by many things at our wonderful district but “it was seeing the school garden that finally convinced us that this was the place we wanted our kids to go to school.”

Presenting the native plant demonstration garden

Posted on May 29, 2018 by kidsingardens

Under Garden Teacher Kat’s expert leadership (and unfailing love for native plants), we now have a native plant demonstration garden along a newly cut trail on the back slope of the garden.

The idea goes back years to the James Hubbell Gate.

When James created the gate, his vision was to better connect the gardens at the elementary and junior high. At that time,the garden was separated by a high chain link fence and a long asphalt road. With the installation of the gate, we took down the fence, put up an attractive, waist-high fence and cut an opening to the slope on the back side of the garden. Then five years elapsed until Kat took up the cause. To begin she recruited Garrett to install steps on the steepest part of the slope down from the gate.

This allowed us to cut a straight path across the hillside. Mr. Boling, parent volunteer, came out to help with shoring it up.

It’s hard to see in this photo but the path continues through the trees.

Kat then purchased native plants and worked with kids to plant them all along the trail. Not only will children learn about the plants by using the trail, but community members can also educate themselves about California natives simply by visiting our campus. Another project completed at the Julian Elementary garden! Thanks everyone! Well done!

Not your parents’ school lunch

Posted on May 16, 2018 by kidsingardens

By FoodCorps Service Member Emily Horowitz for the Julian News

Everything you think you know about school lunch is wrong. There is no grumpy old lunch lady plopping slop onto styrofoam trays of hungry students, no half-frozen cardboard pizzas or lumpy mystery meat specials. School lunch has had a bad rap for over 50 years — rightfully so in some cases — but with new USDA nutrition standards and policy shifts, school lunch has been changing for the better.

At Julian Elementary School and Julian Junior High School, we are incredibly lucky to have school lunch made by chefs Donald and Shirley Hooper at the local restaurant Jeremy’s on the Hill. As parents to a first grader and a pre-schooler, creating delicious, locally sourced kid-friendly meals is a personal matter for the Hoopers. Donald has transformed Jeremy’s On the Campus lunch program by sourcing the most local ingredients he can find with the help of the generous suppliers at Sysco and local growers like Sage Mountain Farms. From San Diego free-range chicken to tomatoes delivered within four hours of harvesting, the ingredients in our school lunch are far from the frozen mysteries we used to serve.

If San Diego isn’t local enough for you, Donald is also partnering with Brigida and Josh Rasmussen of Down the Road Farm, and Stacy Peyakov of Wynola Flats Produce. Down the Road Farm is a 22.5 acre farm and orchard that uses organic practices and, although it is still relatively small, provides salad greens and herbs for both Jeremy’s on the Hill restaurant and the school lunch program. The Hoopers supplement dishes with these local greens and create sauces from “ugly” produce donated by Wynola Flats to form the delicious and healthy meals served at school everyday.

The National School Lunch Program has strict standards dictating the amount of sodium, saturated fat, sugar, number of calories, and servings of fruit and vegetables contained in each student’s meal. These requirements mean that children who buy school lunch may be more likely to meet their daily nutrition requirements than those who bring lunch from home. It can be difficult to make sure kids are eating nutritious and balanced meals, so why not ditch the lunchable or leftover pizza for some affordable restaurant-quality lunch that you know is healthy?

National school lunch programs allow children whose families may not have access to healthy food to receive the majority of their daily nutrition needs at a reduced price or even for free. In rural Julian, the need for affordable fresh food is especially high. Our school lunch program, Jeremy’s on the Campus, is famous throughout San Diego county as one of the most unique and progressive systems of its kind. The Farm to School movement, which strives to connect kids to healthy food in schools, is transforming lunch programs all over the nation, and we are proud to be a part of it. So next time you stress about what to pack in your child’s lunchbox, put down the hot cheetos, and let your child enjoy a beautiful salad bar and freshly cooked meal!

A first grade student enjoys a chicken sandwich made with meat from Mary’s Chicken in San Diego.

Donald and Shirley Hooper receive the Julian Backcountry Collaborative April Partner of the Month Award.

Thank you San Diego Master Gardeners!

Posted on May 9, 2018 by kidsingardens

Last semester Julian Elementary was thrilled to receive a $500 grant to build a pioneer history raised bed in conjunction with the 5th grade teacher, Mrs. McFedries, as part of her social studies curriculum. We used the money to buy heirloom seeds, wood, soil and paints. Our garden teachers Kat and Emily did an awesome job overseeing all of the steps with Mrs. McFedries.

We chose to take out a raised bed that we inherited ten years ago and was falling apart.

Students cut and painted the new boards. We decided to make this bed not only wider, but also twice as deep.

Tom, the head of our school maintenance staff, generously helped the students build the bed.

Meanwhile, students propagated their seeds from “Seed Savers Exchange” on every available flat space in the classroom and later in the garden. Emily had researched and purchased historic varieties of beans, corn, squash, okra, cucumber and herbs.

It took a lot of soil to fill this beauty! Small transplants were then placed in the new bed and covered in agrobon to protect the baby plants.

Finished product! (We only need to add some length to the current irrigation.) The fifth graders “paid it forward” by planting herbs and vegetables for next year’s class, but since the junior high is adjacent to the elementary, they can also come back early next school year to enjoy the harvest too! The smaller letters on the bed read “Thank you SD Master Gardeners!”

Meet Emily, our FoodCorps Service Member!

Posted on November 16, 2017 by kidsingardens

Meet Emily, our FoodCorps service member and part of the Pathways team at Julian Elementary!

Emily graduated from UC Davis in June with a degree in Sustainable Environmental Design and Community and Regional Development. She then applied for a position with Food Corps, a division of Americorps (which you may know is the domestic Peace Corps.)

The mission of Food Corps is:

“Every school a healthy school. Every child well-nourished, eating healthy and ready to learn. FoodCorps connects kids to healthy food in school, so they can lead healthier lives and reach their full potential.”

For the 20717-2018 school year, Emily will be helping with afterschool garden classes at the elementary and junior high, teaching in-school nutrition lessons, conducting taste tests, promoting school lunch, helping with Food Day, working on grant writing and garden maintenance, and so much more! We are thrilled to have her working with our district for a “school-wide culture of health.” Welcome Emily!

February Garden Tour

Posted on March 3, 2017 by kidsingardens

Citrus is booming in San Diego County (though not here at 4,200 feet in Julian) so it makes for a perfect February/March harvest of the month.

To kick off this lesson, I bought five containers of orange juice and things that “look like orange juice.” We did a little consumer education as the kids passed the bottles around looking for the percentage juice, other ingredients, and marketing techniques (pictures and phrases.) We then analyzed them together based on their observations.

After deciding that 100% juice was the best, we squeezed our own 100% orange juice and everyone received a small cup to drink. (We did some classes inside, others outside, depending on the weather.) I found that using an electric juicer made the process quick enough for each child to try his/her hand at it.

Upper grade students started their lesson with a slideshow I made about citrus varieties, citrus pests, biological control and California history. Then they spread out and played a “grapefruit fact” matching game I created a few years ago.

A few other garden activities lately include:

A “love note” to the garden displayed on our bulletin board for Valentines Day :

In after school class, Miss Kat continues to wow kids with her exciting lessons and field trips.

Planting peas:

Creating mountain puma art, after lessons on local wildlife:

Although everyone worked off the same picture, the results were wonderfully varied!

Kaitlyn Kuiper, 1st grade

Aryana Bennington, 1st grade

Gavin Leck, 1st grade

Carlo Martinez, 4th grade

Kasen Mushet, K

Jackson Angel, K

Liaden Mitchell, K

And finally taking trips with Club Wild (a joint program with the Volcan Mountain Foundation) to Mount Volcan to learn about watersheds and water! (Lucky kids!)

Snowy landscapes and comforting spaces

Posted on January 31, 2017 by kidsingardens

Hello friends!

Even though it has been snowy and freezing cold in our garden with not much happening…..

….I’d like to share these warming thoughts from our school garden partners/sponsors. The Sage Garden Project works with gardens all across the county and state. The stated purpose of my blog is to make a case for school gardens from every conceivable angle and here’s yet another:

Your School’s Garden As A Healing Place
Thoughts, Experiences, and Ideas from the Sage Garden Project Staff

It would be disingenuous to publish a newsletter full of recipes and growing tips without speaking to the anguish and upset that many of our students are experiencing currently. The schools we support range from those filled with families serving in the military to those filled with immigrants from Mexico and others with large populations specifically from the Middle East. More than ever, we hope that the Sage Garden Project provides a common ground – where students do not compete, but rather work together, learn together, and ultimately, break bread together. More than ever, it is our hope that school gardens can be a respite, a place of solace, of peace, rest, and beauty. We have often found our sensitive students wishing to sit in a quiet spot in the garden in order to escape the chaos of the recess playground. Perhaps now would be the perfect time to create a calm corner of your garden that is a special spot, welcome to all quiet comers. Some schools have special “I could use a friend” benches, some have “time-out” spots. Whatever you choose to anoint your spot, consider stocking it with books, art supplies, and suggestions of garden projects that interested students could take up, and get their minds off their problems in the process. Let’s work toward making our gardens places to nurture our children’s whole selves, in addition to feeding their bellies.

Food Day, I

Posted on December 2, 2016 by kidsingardens

Thank you’s have been sent, accounting is done, now all that is left to do for Food Day 2016 is the storytelling. As always, it’s a big story so I am breaking it into parts.

If you’ve followed along, you know that for the last three years we have celebrated National Food Day with a full day of experiential workshops on cooking, nutrition and agriculture at Julian Elementary and Julian Junior High. (See posts from past years here, here, here, and here.)

One partnership I’d like to highlight is our partnership with Sun Dog Art Studios of Ramona. Tomi and Teal, the talented, warm, vision-filled artists behind this non-profit, partnered with us last year (“Soda is the monster we need to mash”) and joined us again this year to create “bee spas” with the children (small basins from which bees can safely drink.) They put a lot of time and research into creating the project from scratch, we collected tons of materials, and student were able to learn about the importance of pollinators and then take home a beautiful product.

The beautiful visual aids Sun Dog created to go with the lesson:

Days ahead of Food Day, Sun Dog glued 110 glass basins to the glass jelly, olive, and mason jars to make a basin with a pedestal.

Students then painted the “baths” as well as a big stone to sit in the middle of gravel and glass gems. (An “island” or a landing spot for the bee.)

Once dry, the baths were sent home with students (carefully! in boxes with bubble wrap) and a selection went to the Julian library for a display.

Thank you Sun Dog once again for your delightful partnership! We love that a beautiful art project is a key part of our Food Day celebrations!

September Garden Tour

Posted on September 21, 2016 by kidsingardens

Welcome back to the garden! As we do every once in a while, allow me to take you on a seasonal tour of garden education at Julian Elementary.

We started the year by “decorating” the garden with flowers. We let many unirrigated flower boxes and pots go over the summer, so we freshened them up with some color.

Third-fifth graders created/updated their garden journals for the year with seed catalogue collages. This lesson was forced inside because of the wind.

We have the best apple harvest to date. We’ve been picking them like crazy.

Last week I did lessons on how to use a dehydrator. I did a small demo in the class, then we went out to the garden for the students to get a chance to use the peeler/corer/slicer and layer up the trays.

We also talked about pears and made a “pear salsa” served on graham crackers. Students then took home small pear recipe booklets with an “at home cooking challenge.”

I also chose a new crop of garden ambassadors, and they jumped right into their new jobs: helping with lunchtime composting and giving the Monday Morning Garden Report.

Garden education is expanding at our school. We split my job from last year and now I am the in-school garden educator two days a week, and the unbelievably awesome Miss Kat is the after school garden educator three days a week.

Though I have the best support imaginable from administrators, teachers, staff, Pathways, and Pathways director and rockstar-in-residence Susi Jones, it is so awesome to have an in-the-garden, shoulder to shoulder, fellow teacher in Kat. I have enjoyed so many things—the technical garden planning, the lesson sharing, the inspiration of a kindred vision—but I’ll focus on one thing in particular.

Every week I go to the garden and there are wonderful things happening that someone else made happen. It is downright thrilling. Thanks Miss Kat for bringing so much wisdom, experience, love for children, and love for the earth to our little public school….

Here’s a sample of Miss Kat’s work in the garden in our first month of school:

She collected coyote gourds and the students decorated them and chose seeds with which to fill them: