Time to Clean the Coop

This week 7th grade cleaned the chicken coop while the chickens looked on.

Winter held on to our broody hen, Oreo, while her "nest" was cleaned.

One of many fresh eggs collected before cleaning out the coop.

Sarah Sophia in the middle of the job.

Meanwhile, outside the coop, the rain barrel has been thoroughly filled to overflowing.

Someone felt the need to wash their toes in the rain water.

All the rain has also given us plenty of clay to play with.

In addition to cleaning the coop, some of us weeded the carrots.

Batian loves weeding carrots so much that he is jumping for joy!  OK, maybe not really...  Daniel, our photographer for the day, took this shot multiple times until he got it just right.

Meanwhile other members of the class prepared a bed for the cucurbits.

Sarah found some interesting things while prepping the bed...
World's longest worm.

And, the rarely seen Emerson Gnome.  He agreed to have his picture taken in Sarah's hand as long as we didn't show his face.  Worm included for size comparison.

A Beautiful Day for Flowers

This Monday was a flower day on the Biodynamic calendar and the garden made the best of it.  It was cool and sunny with a slight breeze that made the plants and flowers dance and kept everyone's spirits high.

Noah and Alex went to the horse barn to collect rain water for the new jauche barrel.  Our jauche is made of a mix of weeds and rain water, allowed to ferment for 3 weeks or more and then poured on our plants as a liquid compost.

Meanwhile, Maite and Mia fill up a wheelbarrow with some finished jauche so they can feed the flowers.

Mia didn't much care for the smell of the jauche.

But the smell of the flowers they were feeding more than made up for it.

Even though it doesn't smell so good, it is beautiful work.

And in honor of our flowers, here are just a few that were blooming on Monday.

Roses

Giant Allium

Mustard Greens