Early Spring with 3rd grade

Here are a few more photos of third grade from late February, sent in by Rula Mouawad. 


The children have been training the chickens to love them and coming running to them whenever they show up by bringing food, and by never, ever chasing them.  It's working very well.  Whenever there are children there are chickens.  Some of them are even allowing themselves to be picked up without chasing!


One of our projects lately has been to sort the enormous wood pile into more usable stacks.  Here you can see the children gathered around what remains of the original woodpile with the small brush for burning in the foreground.


Some of the wood needed to be cut into more manageable lengths with hand saws



The medium diameter wood got carried to a big pile in the parking lot where Mr. Ostrowski can turn it into wood chips.  We'll let the wood chips compost for 6 months to a year and then use them as mulch in the garden.


Most exciting event of all, our farm assistant, Kristin, returned with baby Josh on the outside instead of hidden on the inside!  He has the sweetest smile and all of us love it when he shines it our way.

Fountains and Fires

Rula Mouawad, third grade parent, sent in these lovely photos of the children working on our flow form fountain and enjoying fire keeping.

First the students got to see where the pipes were laid, how they would connect to the pump and how the water would flow.

Then they filled up wheelbarrows with soil and packed it under and around all the pipes.  Once they were done with that, they started grading around the fountain area to smooth out the steepness of the slope.

Meanwhile, another group learned about fire safety and fire building.

Bonfire with the 3rd Grade!

One of the great things about the weather getting colder is a nice bonfire! The third grade got to enjoy burning some of the wood pile, and also enjoy eating and roasting radishes and sorrel from the garden! A couple Kindergarten students were also there to join the fun!

At the end, they had fun putting the fire out with water, and also getting in a group circle to taste broccoli fresh from the garden! One finger up meant they wanted to try broccoli a little and two fingers up meant they liked broccoli a lot! Many realized it tastes a lot fresher than store bought broccoli, with a much different flavor!

Third Grade Update

Thank you very much to Rula Mouawad for taking the photos in this sampling of what third grade has been up to since school started this fall.  Enjoy!

First a view of some of the work we've done in the garden this fall:

Third grade dad, Dave Swanson, loaned us his broad fork so that the students would be better equipped to prepare beds for planting.  A broad fork is a wide, heavy "fork" that can be used to loosen up soil deep down.  This group is working the soil for a garlic bed. 

Once a bed is thoroughly weeded and the soil loosened deep down, we sift some of the compost we spend all year making.  Our compost is made from the food scraps 3rd grade brings down each week in compost buckets from all of the classrooms (including high school and kindergarten), from chicken, bunny and horse manure collected at the farm, from weeds we dig up in the garden and from donations of old, indedible hay given to us by area horse barns.

When a bed is completely ready, we plant either seeds or transplants.  Mahea, Michael and Shiva are transplanting lettuce here.  So far this year our garden grows sorrel, broccoli, nasturtium, evening primrose, mums, thyme, kale, spinach, chives, shiitake, lettuce, arugula, collards, chard, daikon, carrots, onions, beets, radishes, peas, oats and wheat.  We'll soon be planting rye and garlic as well.  In mid November planting season ends and we switch our activities to maintenance chores around the farm and doing what we can to protect our crops from cold weather while they overwinter.

The children learn that bug life in the garden is both welcome and necessary to the health of our garden.  Early on they learn that there are 5 main types of bug:  

• flesh munchers (horseflies, mosquitoes, ticks, etc.)
• plant munchers (squash bugs, japanese beetles, aphids, etc.)
• scavengers (earthworms, pillbugs, crickets, daddy long legs, etc.)
• pollinators (butterflies, bees, some wasps, etc.)
• hunters (spiders, praying mantis, assassin bugs, ladybugs, etc.)

In Biodynamic gardening we try to maintain a balance amongst all these types of insects that is most favorable to our plants.  A few flesh and plant munchers are OK in the garden because we know that they are a vital part of the web of life.  When we get a lot of them, then we try to figure out why and change the environment to keep them from spreading or coming back so easily next year.  Another thing we do regularly is sprinkle or spray two kinds of preparation on the plants and around the garden to improve the health and vitality of the plants:  

• stinging nettle tea, made by soaking stinging nettle for 24 hours in rain water
• milk and honey prep, made by stirring milk, local honey and rain water for 20 minutes

The nettle tea provides deep nourishment to the plants, strengthening their vitality and helping them to be a little less tasty and tempting to plant munchers.  The milk and honey encourages hunters and pollinators to visit the garden and stick around.  Below are pictures of Enid, Michael and Shiva spreading the milk and honey prep by sprinkling it over everything with paint brushes.

At the end of every productive day at the garden, the children have time to just enjoy their surroundings.   

Below are some pictures of some of the things they get up to in their free time.

Picking the first persimmons of the season.

Khadija, Eva Grey and Anastasia give the persimmons a try.

Garret, Grey and Theon enjoy wheelbarrow rides.

 Everyone loves visiting Finnigan the horse.

We also find a lot of really neat things in nature:

Fuzzy white caterpillars

Spiders who carry their babies on their back

Interesting mushrooms

A watermelon that unexpectedly grew straight out of the compost pile

A beautiful sun dog appeared near the end of class one day.

A Third Grade Day

This week the camera came to third grade where it caught each of the four third grade groups working on their task of the day.

The Earth Group emptied the kitchen scraps from the classroom into kitchen scrap compost pile and then rinsed the bucket.

We collect our kitchen scraps in one area for five weeks and then spread them in one big layer onto our big compost pile which also gets layers of horse manure, chicken bedding, hay and weeds.

When they were done with the kitchen scraps, Earth group sprinkled the Barrel Compost preparation that 7th grade had stirred for them earlier that day.

The Fire Group worked hard, clearing the weeds out of a new bed to get it ready for planting.

The Water Group harvested.  Here you can see them picking swiss chard.

The Air Group helped set up an experiment in weed control.  Instead of digging up the weeds, we decided to cover the whole bed, weeds and all, with paper and then plant seeds through the paper.  Here's hoping it works!

Earlier in the week, Jim Mueller came by the farm and helped to cut the split ends off of the siding for our shed.  We hope to have it finished before school gets out.

Around the garden...

The rye cover crop is growing beautifully.  Rye has long roots that help to break up clumps of clay deep down and provides organic matter for the garden.  We cut it and turn it under before it goes to seed, then wait three weeks and, voila! we have a lovely bed full of rich humusy earth.

Last year's third grade made these beautiful stepping stones which were completely hidden by weeds in the flower beds this spring.  We had a couple of very mucky spots along well worn travel ways so the stones got moved to keep our feet from getting too wet.  They do a great job and they are beautiful.  Thank you Mrs. Comaniciu's class!

Carrots!

At long last, the carrots that third grade planted last fall were ready for harvest.  Everyone dug in and savored every last bite of rich, carroty goodness.  Carrots fresh out of the ground are definitely not the same as carrots from the grocery store!

The Farm in Winter

Some of seventh grade continued work on the chicken tractors this week.  Third grade was unable to come out because we had a deluge just as class was supposed to start and many boots and raincoats were still at home for the Holiday Break.

Sarah, Winter and Camilla discuss what to do next on the chicken tractors with Ms. Miller

Mia, Carter, Noah and Batian prepare to sift compost for planting artichoke and tomato seeds in flats for the greenhouse.

Noah, Carter and Batian wait, with their full wheelbarrow, for me to find the flats.

Batian takes a break.

 

 Our photographer this week is MacKenzie.

 She took a lot of lovely shots of the farm...

 Cabbages

 Kale

These are cedar poles waiting for their next task.  We use them to make trellises, hold down tarps, prop things up, you name it.

The chicken coop and hay bales as seen from the meeting spot.

Oreo, our lead bantam hen. 

Elephant (white hen) and an as yet unnamed hen.  Elephant was named for her size.  Someone had a sense of humor.  I doubt she weighs more than a pound.

 

Some of the horse pasture.

An unclaimed flow form hiding in the leaves.