Big ideas, big events in our small town

Posted on May 8, 2013 by kidsingardens

If you are a Julian/San Diego local, consider yourself invited to the following events that relate to gardening, Farm to School and environmental activism/awareness. If you’re not, consider this a window on some of the super cool stuff coming up in the next four weeks in our little town.

Wild and Scenic Film Festival

For the last eleven years the Wild and Scenic Film Festival has kicked off in its home, Nevada City. After that, it travels. Local committees organize to bring the films to their city, and Julian is lucky enough to have a group of visionary folks (read Nancy, Brian and Terry!) and a supporting organization (Volcan Mountain Foundation) who successfully brought it to Julian last year and are bringing it back again this year, bigger and better. From Friday to Sunday (May 17-19), our little town will show 44 films about the planet—from gorgeous nature films to inspiring environmental activist stories to thrilling adventure documentaries. Along with the films, there are hikes, naturalist-led children’s activites, food, receptions, chats with the filmmakers, and more. I can’t wait! This year, the committee has also arranged for films, all featuring children and the environment, to be shown at assemblies at the elementary schools and junior high the week before the festival. (See list of kid-related films below.) And during the festival itself, Cafeteria Man will be shown and the director will be present to discuss the project. (Remember, we got a chance to talk with Cafeteria Man—a charismatic chef who revolutionized Baltimore’s public school lunch program— at our recent USDA conference.) To top it off, the event benefits the Volcan Mountain Foundation which I’ve written about here.

Learn more about the festival, buy on-line tickets and/or drool at the general awesomeness of this event at: www.julianfilmfestival.com

Julian Garden Tour

As a fundraiser for Julian’s Farm to School program, the Julian Garden Tour will be presented on Saturday, June 1st from 10:00-4:00. Presented by the Julian Triangle Club and supported by the Julian Educational Foundation, this self-guided tour will feature seven gardens with their resident gardeners on hand to chat with visitors. The gardens will range from an ambitious permaculture project in Pine Hills to an integrated waterwise residential landscape in Kentwood to our own charming school garden. A $20 ticket buys a map to all locations and can be purchased at the elementary school or Julian Town Hall. Seedlings donated by Heather Rowell and Julian-specific gardening handbooks, compiled by Sally Snipes, will be available for sale. (Many, many thanks to Sunday Dutro—the dynamo behind this incredible effort.) More info? Check out the Julian Garden Tour Facebook page.

Family Fun and Fit Day

This Farm to School fieldtrip is the first in a series which will help Julian families explore our local food economy. We will be visiting Cook Pigs Ranch, a family-owned farm that specializes in sustainably raised heritage pigs. To learn more about their passion for happy animals and good food, please visit: http://www.cookpigs.com (This is just for Julian families—please r.s.v.p. to me directly if you’d like to come along.)

All together now: Goooooooooo Julian!

SAMPLE FESTIVAL FILMS

Young Voices for the Planet, Citizen Scientist

13-year-old Anya, an indigenous Siberian girl, sees her world literally melting away. She joins Arctic scientist Max Holmes’ research team, learns about her ecosystem and shares what she learns with her schoolmates. (4min)

Young Voices for the Planet, Olivia’s Birds and the Oil Spill

Olivia loves her New York forest and the Louisiana gulf coast where her grandparents live. When the BP Oil Spill devastates the coast, Olivia creates 500 paintings of her feathered friends to raise funds for Audubon’s bird rescue. (7min)

Watermelon Magic

Richard Power Hoffmann

International audiences will delight in this nearly wordless burst of color and music that draws inspiration from film classic “The Red Balloon”. Weaving together documentary and narrative elements, “Watermelon Magic” chronicles a season on the family farm, as young Sylvie grows a patch of watermelons to sell at market. The film employs a dynamic visual style that uses high-resolution stills at varying shutter-burst frame rates with stunning time-lapse sequences to trace the journey from seed to flower to fruit. When harvest time arrives, Sylvie must decide if she will share her precious watermelon babies with the world. www.springgardenpictures.org (USA, 2013, 38min)

How The Kids Saved The Parks

Andy Miller, Robin Moore

You know those movies where the kids get together and do something awesome? When they unite to overcome insurmountable odds? Maybe win the championship from the favored bad guys. Maybe embark on an epic quest to stop the grown ups from doing something stupid. This is one of those movies, except this one really happened. This is the story of a group of great kids that worked day and night to save the California State Parks that they love – this is ‘How The Kids Saved The Parks’. www.plusmproductions.com (USA, 2012)

Kindergarteners + math + garden

Posted on May 7, 2013 by kidsingardens

One of my favorite things about the school garden is discovering ways it is being used by teachers, staff and families. A few weeks back, a mom was out at the table, orchestrating a birthday celebration for her son. Earlier in the day, the kindergarten class was looking for patterns. What a great lesson, Mrs. White! She wrote to me later:

So…we had an amazing day in the garden! It really helped our math work to “come alive!”

Photo courtesy of Mrs. White

Photo courtesy of Mrs. White

Why do we forget food can be simple?

Posted on May 3, 2013 by kidsingardens

And by we I mean me. Do you forget this too? I sometimes think a meal or a packed lunch has to be more involved than it needs to be, when simple foods are often whole/raw/minimally prepared and really the best for you.

A compelling example follows.

A couple weeks ago I picked up our first box of donated organic fruits and vegetables from Be Wise Ranch. For the first activity I decided to teach the Garden Ambassadors to sauté zucchini and run a taste test for their fifth grade class. The recipe I found called for garlic, ginger, and soy sauce, and after I gathered these extra ingredients I thought….nope, change of plans. We’re going to cook these zucchini with a little bit of safflower oil and salt. By isolating the variable, we’d know whether or not they like zuc, without the ginger or garlic confusing their “yum” or “yuck” vote.

The maiden voyage of our outdoor food prep station!

My lesson plan got simpler too. Nonetheless, there was so much to teach:

-the importance of weighing our yield, how to read a scale, how to subtract a tare (oh my goodness, high school chemistry coming from some deep recess of my brain), the different smoke points for different cooking oils, food safety, how a wok works, how to spell wok, how to spell sauté, why it’s important to cut veggies in similar sizes, and on and on and on……

The kids took turns stirring, rotating around the island

And here are three incredible outcomes:

1) 26 kids voted “yum.” Only one recorded a “yuck.” Remember this is unadorned, lightly stir-fried zucchini, and kids “hate” vegetables.

2) I had three zucchini left over, and each of ambassadors was begging to take them home. I offered one to the first kid who remembered how to spell sauté. Then we drew slips of paper for the other two. (One read–“Yay, you get the zucchini!” The other: “Sorry, maybe zucchini next time.) It bears repeating: WE DREW CARDS FOR ZUCCHINI.

3) I spoke with the mom of one of the ambassadors later that day. She said her daughter not only asked to stop at the store that afternoon to buy zucchini so she could show her family how to cook it, but she had also called her grandmother to make sure she put a few zucchini plants in her spring garden this year.

This is the hope, and in our garden, the reality: that these little lessons learned at school in gardening, nutrition, and science get transferred home.

To the USDA and back again

Posted on April 22, 2013 by kidsingardens

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that we are in the middle of a USDA Farm to School planning grant. As part of this grant, representatives from each of the funded districts went to D.C. for a two-day conference last week.

Ashley, our consultant, me and Susi, Pathways Director in front of the US Department of Agriculture where our meeting was held

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan addressed our group at the Whitten Building. In her remarks, she said three things I will remember. One, everyone believes in the Farm to School concept: kids get healthy food, and local economies are stimulated. Two, despite the simplicity of the concept, the implementation is very difficult. (I just wrote about that here!) Three, Farm to School is one of the things the USDA is truly excited about, having invested 4.5 million in this project this year alone. They told us repeatedly that as the first cohort of grant recipients, we are the ones pushing this movement forward, and they are looking forward to seeing what we do and how we do it. We are grateful for their vision and support.

To equip us with tools, we had presentations on subjects such as promoting food safety, procuring local food, and marketing our programs. It was great stuff—kudos to all of the staff who made this possible.

Our group is incredibly diverse. A district with 200 students in South Dakota was represented (smaller than us!) as well as districts with dozens of schools and 50,000+ students . We heard about efforts in sourcing local bison for burgers, introducing salad bars in a state that has never featured them before, and partnering with hometown NFL teams to promote good nutrition on campus. Some of our most valuable moments were chatting with our fellow grant recipients: What are you doing? How are you doing it? For example, we struck up a conversation with a group of folks during a break about school lunch vendors—turns out one of them is the star of the new documentary film “Cafeteria Man.” (http://cafeteriaman.com)

We also got to do a few fun things like dine out at the ah-mazing “farm to table” restaurant Founding Farmers and have a private tour of the Food 1950-2000 exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

The exhibit, which includes Julia Child’s kitchen, has a long dining table in the middle of the room. On “Lazy Susans” running down the middle of the table, discussion questions and information was presented on the topic of “food pyramids” over time and across cultures. These topics will change, and next up is “school lunch.”

Our White House garden tour was cancelled (sequester!), and so I didn’t get the chance to ask Michelle out to coffee to talk about gardening, parenting, the challenge of being married to busy men, etc. The upside was that I had some extra time to tack on a breakfast, stroll to the Mall and connect with dear D.C. friends. Coming up next: the childrens’ garden at the National Botanic Gardens.

Garden Tour, April 2013

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kidsingardens

Join me as we take our periodic stroll around the garden!

Junior High students often change the message on the blackboard hung in their garden. Yes, welcome indeed!

I might have mentioned we are planting a lot of peas to get ready for our first Harvest of the Month program in May. (Pinecones are to discourage critters from walking in the bed.)

As we were harvesting the broccoli, one child told me she didn’t know that the part of broccoli we eat is curled up flowers. I told her we’d leave one plant in the ground to flower so she could see for herself.

Broccoli is also coming up in one of our container gardens. That’s one of the funny things about school gardens—mystery plants! (Someone, at some time, had an idea, a vision, a spare plant…who knows?)

The strawberry plants look luscious. Keep. meaning. to. enclose. them. in. nets.

The tulips are finally up in the breast cancer awareness ribbon. Watching them bloom took on new meaning for me this year as two very brave and beautiful friends of mine have kicked cancer’s butt in the last year.

New child-created signage on the bulletin board on the CATCH nutrition concept: go, slow and whoa foods.

We’ve been moving native strawberries out of this prime veggie growing location to the hillside around the fruit trees, as a move toward a permaculture fruit tree guild. We hadn’t moved all of them by Science Day though so I split the bed to make some room for pea planting, pinning back the strawberries with some white picket fencing we keep moving around the garden. Cute!

Someone donated this flag last year, and we fly it—announcing our allegiance to daffodils!

Mrs. Shull’s fourth grade class peas. Each child did a letter on an index card, I laminated them and kids taped them to bamboo skewers.

We have a gazillion wildflower seeds in the garden, from seed ball making activities, former projects, etc. Wildflowers have a special immunity in our garden. Wherever they want to pop up, we gladly let them stay.

This little donated table broke. No worrries. With a tree stump standing in, it makes another cozy little spot to hang out in the garden.

A local grape grower trimmed these for us! Our first crop this fall? (Stay tuned.)

Look who decided to bloom. (Oh little wisteria, you have no idea how close you were to being uprooted.)

Our honeysuckle reading teepee. Last week a child sitting inside yelled, “Mrs. Elisara! Come here! There’s a chrysallis at the top of the teepee!” Sure enough, a butterfly-to-be was dangling from the ceiling. (The president of the entomology club later ID’ed it.)

If you’re not familiar with Box Tops, they are the little pink coupons found on hundreds of products. Schools collect them and mail them in, receiving 10 cents for each one. It adds up, and at our school, the proceeds have been earmarked for the garden. Twice a year we receive a check. Here’s what we bought with our latest earnings: pea trellises, bean towers, seed starting mix, trays, compost, and our 3×3 raised bed frame.

Finally, it’s always good to step back and get the big picture!

What’s worthy of a 100th post? Compost!

Posted on April 6, 2013 by kidsingardens

The glories of compost….much ink has been spilled on this everyday miracle. Scraps of food that transform into “black gold” with leaves, water, air, time, and microbial mechanics. It’s poetry pay dirt, and it happens under our noses.

Our compost system at school is a passive system. In other words, we don’t get around to turning it very often and only harvest it about twice a year. Nonetheless, the magic still happens.

Garden Ambassador turning the bin with a pitchfork at recess:

Fourth grade students sifted the bottom layer of the bin into the wheelbarrow using stacked plant trays.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you: the fruit and vegetable leftovers from Julian Elementary, ready for our next planting!

Science Day in the garden

Posted on April 3, 2013 by kidsingardens

Last Thursday was Science Day at our school during which students went from “station” to “station” spread across campus for science-based lessons. For example, San Diego Country Office of Education brought their traveling Splash Lab (microscopes and chemistry experiments) and Green Machine (soils, integrated pest management, water cycle) programs.

Almost every student passed through the garden for a 30-minute class. In the morning, we had the younger classes combined by grade so I divided the children into groups with an adult (teacher, parent, and/or aid) and explained that they would go to 5 different stations for 5 minutes each. Each station was set up with a clipboard of simple instructions and the necessary equipment. I went from group to group to answer questions, point things out and re-set materials.

Station One: Planting Peas

Station Two: Watering peas

Other classes had already planted peas in other beds. At this station kids observed their growth and watered.

Station Three: Storytime

Station Four: Smelling herbs

Station Five: Looking for habitat elements

Mrs. White demonstrating how our beautiful fountain turns on when she holds the panel to the sun. A wonderful day for hands-on learning!

Daffodil show: win-win-win-win…

Posted on March 27, 2013 by kidsingardens

This past weekend was the annual Daffodil Show in Julian. (Last year I gushingly detailed all of the reasons I love this community event here.)

After a brief chat on Friday about how to choose a prizewinning bloom, the students spread out to harvest.

What to choose?

Then after school I took my boys home to pick their personal entries.

Ethan almost backed out this year but decided to enter again after listening to his mother go on and on about the importance of tradition. (A fistful of ribbons, including a “court of honor” distinction later, he was glad he followed through, and I made him promise to do it every year until he graduates high school. We’ll see. Elliot’s in, for sure.)

A friend visiting from out-of-town jumped right in on the excitement, watching the boys key out and arrange their flowers. (The paper flowers hanging from the ceiling and the watercolor paintings on the wall were all done by kids at school.)

The youth division took up one full wall with a record amount of entries.

Photo courtesy of Anne Garcia

Marisa’s beautiful display with children’s essays. The photos are of kids planting at school and around town—a yearly tradition led by Sally Snipes.

Photo courtesy of Anne Garcia

The ribbons and some of the flowers are now proudly on display in the front office of the school.

My friend Anne summed it up well in a post-show e-mail:

I think the Youth Division MAKES the show! It adds so much pizazz and meaning to why we grow the flowers. Pure joy!

Summoning the foodie advisors

Posted on March 21, 2013 by kidsingardens

As part of our year-long Farm to School planning grant, I have pulled together a group of excellent people in Julian to serve as my advisory board. They are a gorgeous slice of our community: parents, gardeners, health practitioners, alumni, farmers, grant writers, chefs, camp directors, business owners, school staff, board members, etc. We met this month for the first time.

After briefly reviewing progress with the grant, I broke them in to groups to circulate around the room and jot down ideas on posters with headings like: “Ideas for getting discounted or free produce,” “Lesson and fieldtrip ideas,” and “Ways to celebrate National Food Day.” We met again as a large group to read through these ideas and further stimulate the brainstorming. As “chief researcher” in this process, I then compiled all of the ideas and am now following the leads. I am thrilled to have such a knowledgeable and passionate group of folks to learn from throughout the grant process.

I’m reminded of the necessity and beauty of collaboration, as this has been a good week for it. The owner of a local winery swung by school on the weekend to prune our grapevines. Garden Beneficials (and husbands) visited over the weekend and after school to transplant strawberries, water and pull some mystery rebar out of the ground. I’m heading out the door right now to collect a donation of seeds from our feed store.

It is no cliché when we say our garden grows community!

P.S. If you live in Julian and want to join the fun, you are welcome! Just give me a call or write me a note—our next meeting will be in May!

3×3 bed: a how-to

Posted on March 19, 2013 by kidsingardens

I’ve never paid much attention to square foot gardening, despite Mel Bartholomew’s book being the bestselling garden book of all time. Until now. I recently bought his book, read it all, and decided to build our next set of raised, edible beds along the square foot model.

Although his basic idea is to build a 4×4 bed, he recommends 3×3 for children. Pictured below is a 3×3 frame made from cedar wood. I purchased pre-cut pieces that fit together with little dowels (Amish-made, a closeout item on the SFG website) in the interest of time and simplicity. I’d like volunteers to build 6 more of these, so I wanted a model. Needed: four 3 foot, 6 inch boards and something to attach them at the corner—nails, screws, corner fittings, etc.

Then I gathered “hardware cloth” (a wire mesh sold in rolls of 1/4 and 1/2 inch squares), wire cutters, gloves and a staple gun.

I cut a piece to cover the bottom of the frame and stapled it every inch or so along the perimeter. Take that, gophers.

Then I made an “exclusion device.” I bought four 3/4 inch pvc pipes. I had the nice man at Home Depot cut them into thirds. I then had two of the thirds cut again. I bought 8 elbow pieces and four connectors. Then I told my oldest boy there was a project in the garage that would draw upon his long history of lego-building.

I also bought white duct tape (weatherproof) and repurposed some infernal bird netting (pictured above, bottom right corner.) I taped a panel of netting from one side over the top to the other side, and then cut pieces to size on the remaining sides. This is to keep out birds, cats and gophers. It is easy to lift or tip back for access.

Students filled it with store-bought organic compost. (Apologies to Mel–he insists on a particular formula, but I think I met the spirit of the law by buying super high-quality, blended compost. Doing all the mixing from scratch at school was just a bit much that week.)

The square foot method goes like this: Think of plants as S, M, L and XL. In each square you can put:

One XL plant, like broccoli or a cabbage

Four L plants, like swiss chard

Nine M plants, like beets

Sixteen S plants, lilke radishes or green onions.

You can mix it up with squares planted with different size plants , and then simply replant each square as it produces. (Google square foot gardening images, and you’ll get an abundance of photos, charts, and diagrams.)

We planted spinach, so we put nine seeds in each square, in evenly-spaced rows of three. Each row has a different variety so kids can see them growing side by side.

Our hope is to build more of these to put in the last remaining sunny strip in the garden. I feel hopeful about them because they are small, manageable and unintimidating, and the concept is easy to get one’s mind around–therefore, potentially increasing the number of classes growing edibles.

TRUTH: I am neither experienced nor skilled in the “construction” side of gardening. Doing a simple building/maintenance-type errand at Home Depot usually makes my hands go all clammy. Because I hope to not only promote gardening at school but also in my community, I wanted to do the whole thing by myself to prove….if I can do it, so can you. (It’s true!) Reading Mel’s book will give you all the info you need. (All New Square Foot Gardening, 2013.)

Do you have experience with square foot gardening? Do tell!