Spreading Roots in the Community

Winter is the time of year when most gardeners have “time off.” During this “off time” a gardener’s thoughts are often on seed catalogues, dreaming, prepping the seed starting area, and, basically, gardening. Winter at the Edible Schoolyard finds me doing quite a bit of pruning, planting/transplanting, remodeling outdoor exhibits, drinking lots of warm beverages, and, dreaming.

So far this winter, we have added several new types of plants (hooray for nut trees!) in new areas of the garden. Last week there was a small Juneberry bush sitting on the table in a plastic nursery pot. I was in the chicken yard with a group of children, feeding the chickens and talking about life. All of a sudden, I heard a sound behind me, and turned to see a little girl, waiting patiently for my attention.  She delivered a heartfelt message about wanting to adopt a plant, any plant, oh please…can’t you spare just one little plant for me (and my class) to take home? I smiled and told her that I would love to send everyone home with a plant, but that was the only one and it already had its home waiting on it, etc… She smiled, looked very disappointed, and walked off.

Five minutes later I heard a familiar “uhh hum” sound behind me. The same girl was back with a newly formulated argument for why she would be the perfect adopted parent for the Juneberry. I was thoroughly impressed with her determination and had a hard time not laughing because the situation was so cute.  This same scene replayed 3 or 4 more times before her class left the museum.

Edible Schoolyard staff has tossed around the idea of hosting a spring plant sale to raise money for our program. We also want to take advantage of the enthusiasm that guests often have when they visit the garden for planting a garden of their own. Having plants for sale could help to maintain and extend that enthusiasm beyond this specific time and place, and help to develop patience, curiosity, and observational skills. What might we need to make this possible?

Imagine that!

On my personal ESY vision board is a greenhouse.  Greenhouses come in countless shapes and sizes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. A simple, unheated structure could be set up for the primary purpose of growing plant starts for the ESY and for the community. A larger greenhouse (attached to the Museum itself) could be used to over-winter tender tropical plants (citrus, avocado, chocolate, banana, etc…), provide for a larger production space, and serve as a year-round teaching structure. However, my dream doesn’t end with increased production capacity.

My hope is that we will have a junior garden volunteer program in which part of their responsibilities would be to help with all aspects of plant selection, raising, and distribution. This dream is filed away in my multi-year slot, but there is no reason that we can’t start towards that goal now.

So, that’s one item on my dream board. Hopefully, I will have enough time and space this spring to produce enough extra plants so that this time next year when I hear that familiar voice behind me, there will be a plant for her to adopt.

Justin

Check Out Our New Cooking and Family Gardening Classes

Is it Summer Camp 2012, yet?!

In May 2009 I began work at the Edible Schoolyard as caretaker of the pilot garden and summer camp teacher. In charge of designing and implementing garden and cooking curriculum, I realized quickly that I had landed my dream job and more importantly that I had a lot to learn. We are almost finished planning program for the fourth summer of Edible Schoolyard and I could not be more proud of the growth of our garden, our program, and our team.

Summer camp is what keeps my proverbial “museum heart” beating. I live for summer camp. I have dreams of summer camp in the winter months. There is even a special dance that our education staff does when we talk about it because our excitement cannot be contained. It may seem dramatic, but if you are familiar with our programs, you understand.

Last summer we built GIANT bug puppets and had an epic performance. Our 4^th,  5^th  and 6^th grade campers learned how to create banner puppets (… a la the Paperhand Puppet Theater). Campers learned how to move like the critters who are so essential to our food supply. They each made a papier-mâché beetle, a worm in the style of  a Chinese dragon, a 6 foot fabric butterfly and three honey bees the sizes of their puppeteers. The campers filled the lobby with their movements, impressing their families and the guests who came to watch.

In July of 2011 we had a spot on WFMY and a front page article in the Carolina Peacemaker for our camp “Chiles and Chinampas”. It was the museum’s first ever bi-lingual camp. The majority of the campers were immigrants or children of immigrants. Most campers were from Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. We built a floating garden bed (which is still floating, by the way!) in our pond called a Chinampa.  Aztecs built these floating growing spaces on flooded farm land by weaving together reeds and willow trees. Campers built them out of trash and poultry netting, designing a modern take. We talked about ancient civilization, colonization, contemporary immigration and food. Some campers expressed they had never been in an environment where they spoke in Spanish or about these topics outside of their homes.

I knew 6 or 7 of the campers prior to camp and it was an incredible thing to see their engagement with the projects. At the end of the week campers taught each other how their families make tamales. We served the tamales at a party with their parents. At the party, parents were in awe of the work, the food, the garden and the program. Students were beaming with pride.

Chiles and chinampas showed us what the Edible Schoolyard has the ability to do. It can bring children and families who are pushed to the  social, economical and cultural margins to celebrate their ways of living. It can emphasize that knowledge that is outside of the mainstream is vital to building a society based in justice.

The education team submitted our proposal for summer camp 2012 today. Information will be available at the beginning of February. Please visit the website to see what we have in store for this year. Some of the most popular programs like “Farmer’s Market” will be back and better than ever! New camps with new energy will be guaranteed to have the same spirit and depth as all our programs.

-Kat Siladi

Tags: ancient civilization, edible schoolyard, puppet theater

Bee Aware!

A Bumble Bee Visits Our Flowers in Summer

If you live in North Carolina or other parts of the southeastern United States, you may have noticed some unusually warm days in the past few weeks-we’re talking highs in the mid 60s here in the Piedmont.  That is a bit unusual for an area where the average highs in January are in the upper 40s and the average lows are around 30 F.  These strangely warm temperatures make me want to spend all day in the Edible Schoolyard garden.  I love to see visitors in the garden in the winter!  It’s fun to show people what we are growing in the winter garden.  I’m sure the chickens and rabbits appreciate the warm weather, too.

In spite of the benefits of warm days in January, I’ve found out there are negative aspects to the weather, too.  Recently, I’ve been learning more about bees since we have a lot of bees visiting the garden.  Here’s what I’ve learned:  Warm weather in the winter makes bees active just like it makes people more active, and an active bee uses a lot more energy.  Bees normally spend the winter in a cluster around the queen, who lays eggs to keep the colony supplied with workers.  The inside of the cluster is about 95 degrees, and worker bees rotate from the edge to the center, so that everybody gets a chance to stay warm some of the time.  But when the temperature outside is in the mid 50s or higher, bees will start leaving the cluster to forage for nectar.  In the winter, it is hard for bees to find much nectar because flowers are not usually blooming.  They may not find enough food to make up for the energy they use in foraging.  Bees then end up eating through the extra honey supplies they stored for the winter.  If the weather stays erratic, then bee colonies are at risk.  Beekeepers are advised to provide extra sugar sources to their bees on warm winter days.  If you know beekeepers in your neighborhood, ask them what they do for their bees in the winter!

-Eleanor

Happy New Year!

This is my first week on the job at the Edible Schoolyard and I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities ahead.  I’m joining a fantastic team here at the Greensboro Children’s Museum and I want to thank them for the patience and kindness they’ve shown me as I get settled. 

I was born and reared in a part of Ohio where farming was a profession of scale – thousands of acres of corn or soybeans.  I was dislocated from my food and food systems in general.  My reconnection with food began when I moved to North Carolina for graduate school in 2004.  Some classmates coaxed me into visiting the local farmers market and I fell in love with the variety, quality, and community the local food movement offers.  It has been quite the journey to get from that point in life to where I am today.  I learned to cook, my husband and I keep a small flock of heritage breed chickens in the yard, and growing, preserving, and enjoying food has become a large part of our lives. 

I can’t wait to see what all the seasons have in store for us here at the Edible Schoolyard.  Here are a few things to keep an eye out for as we launch the New Year:

• Cooking classes for kids of all ages and adults
• Tours and learning in the Edible Schoolyard
• Summer camp
• Baby chickens

Stay tuned and thank you for your support of the Edible Schoolyard in Greensboro.  Come by and see us!

- Stephanie

Resolved: My family will eat more locally grown food in 2012

It’s been several years (maybe decades, to be honest) since I actually wrote a New Year’s Resolution and I have never shared one with family or friends, let alone published one.  Since this resolution has a long history for me, I will share some of the story.  Here’s a little background to my resolution: When I was in seventh grade in the late 1970s, my family moved to a quaint ton in central New Jersey-one which happened to have a subscription to Mother Earth News, which was at that point, published in Hendersonville, NC.  Fast forward several years and I enrolled as an art major at Appalachian State University, dreaming of becoming a sheep farmer in New Zealand or a “dirt farmer” somewhere in the NC, VA, or TN mountains.  Some years later, I graduated, married, and headed to Japan and Costa Rica, with the idea of self-sufficient farming still a dream that I planned to pursue at some point.

After six years abroad and the birth of a daughter, I returned to North Carolina to live near my family and to figure out a career that would allow some time to dabble in growing a garden.  Having taught in Japan, I decided to pursue teaching here.  During that same period, I had an opportunity to work at a summer camp in Vermont-Indian Brook at the Farm and Wilderness Camps-and to participate in gardening and animal care on their farm.  Upon returning from Vermont, my family built a small chicken coop and ordered baby chicks from McMurray Hatchery.  I was on the way to my dream of farming!

For a short while that year, I worked with a program in Greensboro that provided short term alternative education for middle and high school students who had been suspended from school.  Through trying to figure out a productive way to spend their time in the program and talking with some people with more years in the field of education than I had at that point, the idea of gardening with the students in a vacant lot came up.

Someone I knew mentioned that a fellow in town, Charlie Headington, had some experience with this sort of project.  I met Charlie; we looked at an available lot; life took some interesting twists; and that garden never came to be.  Some months later, I enrolled in a Saturday workshop at Charlie’s house-in his backyard to be more precise-and started learning about Permaculture-a term that embodies the sort of relationship with the Earth that I sought…working with nature to create local abundance-in the form of food, energy and water harvested without excessive inputs of labor or imported commodities.  Over the years, I’ve added fruit trees, blackberry vines, and blueberry bushes to my home garden, because they require the least work for the longest term productivity.

When it came time to find a more permanent teaching job, I interviewed at a few local public schools and at a private school-The Greensboro Montessori School.  It just so happened that Charlie Headington had been developing the gardens at their Horse Pen Creek campus for a year or two, when I was trying to decide where to teach.  GMS had an opening, where I settled into classroom teaching.  Over the years, I helped with the gardens when I could and incorporated the garden in many lessons.  Meantime, I had given up the chickens and the idea of self-sufficiency in food production at home.

In the winter of 2008-09, I was looking for inspiration to move back into farming and food production.  One fortuitous day, I ran across Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at Edward McKay’s, a local secondhand bookstore.  When I picked it up during the winter holidays, I was hooked.  In the book, Barbara Kingsolver’s details her family’s move to a farm in Virginia and their quest to live as locavores.  Over the course of a couple of years, my husband gave me a greenhouse for Christmas and a chicken coop for our anniversary!  My dad and I built a turkey house in the summer of 2008 for a small flock of turkeys (mostly acquired from Gregory’s Poultry near Stuart, Virginia) took up residence.  Since then, my mom and my daughter put up with endless stories of the antics of the chickens and turkeys; and my extended family and friends and coworkers have eaten local eggs and dined on local turkeys for Thanksgiving.

By early 2010, once again following Charlie Headington’s lead, I was working at the Edible Schoolyard at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, shopping at the local Farmer’s Curb Market, and committed to eating in restaurants like Lucky 32 which source their meat locally.  Now, it’s almost 2012, and I am ready to make a public declaration that my family will eat more locally grown food in 2012.  We will grow annual vegetables year round, start seeds (probably in my daughter’s bedroom, once she heads back to college in January) and we may even raise some chickens specifically for meat .  I have also checked out some CSA options and hope to find shares available with the Goat Lady CSA. If you became a “locavore” years ago or you are just beginning that journey, please share your story!  We’ll be offering several family gardening workshops at the Edible Schoolyard this winter and spring and would love to help you increase your consumption of local food, as well.

Happy New Year!

-Eleanor

Hibernation Station

Hibernation Station is open!

Tomorrow it will be 66 degrees Fahrenheit. The poppies wave near Lindsay Street, a few honey bees  collect nectar, new flowers continue to emerge: not exactly the picture of winter I’m used to.  Scientists are linking the dramatic changes in the arctic ecosystem with weather patterns in the mid-Atlantic. read: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/

Nevertheless, our calendars will read tomorrow: First Day of Winter.

In preparation for the coming season the Edible Schoolyard staff has built a fort to top all forts. Do you remember the crawl tunnel and bean structure covered in cucumbers, gourds and beans throughout the warmer months?

Picture this: we have covered those same structures in plastic and burlap and leaves to create HIBERNATION STATION! We will decorate with grape-vine wreathes, pine cones, dried flowers and other natural decor.  What could be more thrilling than crawling into a cave and snuggling up like bears?!

We recognize that as the seasons change and the temperature drops, the desire for outdoor play diminishes; the developmental need for children to move and explore outdoors does not! Lessons on hibernation are a fascinating way for children to understand survival. When animals hibernate, their body temperature lowers, their breath and metabolisms slow down and they are able to use their body fat for organ functioning in order to survive. Some animals store food in places they hibernate for energy, too.

What would it be like if humans were hibernating? What do you do to prepare for winter?

We have created other options for activities in the garden to entice visitors to explore the garden and stay a while. In addition to hibernation station, Justin, our garden manager rebuilt our “solar house” so that children can crawl inside and act as a bitty plant under Plexiglas.

So put your layers on and head to the garden this winter, there are tons of ways to engage your senses all year long!

 -Kat

cookies!

What is it about the cookie? Is it the butter? The sugar? The size? The comfort in memories? The crunch? The gooeyness? It seems to me that the global love for the baked treat is all of the above. Everyone I’ve talked to about cookies this month has opinions about them; real, strong and often steadfast ones:

“It depends on the flavor: if it’s chocolate chip then crunchy;  if it’s oatmeal raisin then chewy.”

“Ok… I love a thick chewy cookie… crunchy cookies, uh… not so crazy about ‘em.”   

“I need a sturdy cookie, for dipping, scooping ice cream, etc. I’m not the flimsy type…”

Might our cookie preference parallel our personality? While this blog may not be the venue for exploring the intricacies linking food preference and human character, it is a place to divulge recipes of the Edible Schoolyard kitchen and the outcomes of children making their own choices.

December is the month of the cookie in the Edible Schoolyard kitchen.

We start by looking at wheat seeds in their full form and then smash them to bits with a large clay mortar and wooden pestle that friends from Vietnam donated to the kitchen a few years ago after they gave a cooking class and saw the exhilaration kids had when using it. Once we establish that we are going to be using parts of plants in our cookies and other foods that come directly from the ground we’re ready to measure and mix.

We combine the white wheat flour, Homeland Creamery butter, raw cane sugar, sea salt, baking soda, dark chocolate chips, homemade vanilla extract, ESY chicken eggs, brown sugar, and cream of tartar (it adds crackles in the top). Students decide from the following to add to their base recipe: Peppermint oil, orange oil, walnuts, almond paste, cinnamon, rosemary, sage, mint, lemon balm, apple, raisins or cocoa powder.

Some students desire as many combinations as possible to push the boundaries and test the unknown, while others are more reserved and could never imagine putting a green leaf in their chocolate chip cookie. (“EW! Are you serious?!?” says one student. “Yes, yes we are,” teachers respond.) The winning combination from one evening with our 3^rd-5^th grader cooking class was chocolate chip with cocoa powder, cinnamon and peppermint oil (a variation on a thin mint!).   

Cooking is like any other responsible learning cycle. We make a choice, we think about it, we reflect on our thoughts, and then we act. Students learn to express their opinions with each other in the kitchen. Shy students are given room to share the passion of their palate and energetic students are able to listen and decide which combinations are most exciting, most disgusting, or the most delicious.

In cooking and gardening we grow through our errors, we take ownership and we celebrate our achievements and our mistakes. In fact, the kitchen is a perfect place for these life lessons and it’s what we explore with our students. In teaching holistic cooking, we’re engaging the whole student, asking them to discern and reflect on choices, flavors, techniques, and experiences.  Here is the recipe we used for our cookies. Happy Baking!  – Kat

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (120 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) (115 grams) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch (1cm) pieces
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups (200 grams) semisweet chocolate chips

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

 Adjust the oven rack to the top 1/3 of the oven and preheat to 300F (150C). Line three baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat the sugars and butters together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and baking soda. Stir together the flour and salt, then mix them into the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts. Scoop the cookie dough into 2-tablespoon (5cm) balls and place 8 balls, spaced 4 inches (10cm) apart, on each of the baking sheets. Bake for 18 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Make about 20 cookies.

Borrowed from a favorite cooking blog, 101 cookbooks: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000158.html

 Don’t miss the opportunity to bake cookies with MRS. CLAUS in the Edible Schoolyard Kitchen this year! http://www.gcmuseum.com/programs/upcoming.php#holidays

 

 

Planning for Spring (Yes, already!)

Chicks from http://citygirlfarming.com/Chickens/BabyChicks.html

Earlier this week I received two pieces of mail that are sure harbingers of spring: a seed catalog and a postcard from My Pet Chicken. Even though it’s not officially winter yet (and we’ve only recently had some hard frosts), I always get excited about spring when the catalogs arrive!

Last year at this time, I had a silly hen at my house hatching out baby chicks on November 30, in weather a lot like yesterday. Near freezing temperatures and driving rain made me wonder why I had let her sit on eggs in the month of November. Sam and her chicks moved into the master bathroom for three weeks while the baby chicks grew feathers, then they all moved outside under a heat lamp in a small coop on the front porch for several more weeks before they had enough feathers to stay warm on their on. Two of the little female chicks grew up and went to live at a small school in Greensboro, one little rooster went to a flock at farm north of Greensboro, and one rooster is still part of my flock at home.

So, while I am looking forward to ordering chicks for spring, I will just place my order early (maybe as early as tomorrow) and I’ll count the weeks until they arrive in the spring…no more winter chicks! If you are interested in helping to decide what kinds of chicks to add to the Edible Schoolyard flock, take a look at My Pet Chicken and email efarlow@gcmuseum.com to share your thoughts. I’ll email you back and let you know what kind we’ll be adding and when they’ll arrive. (And if you want to be part of a larger order of chicks for your own flock, we can probably work that out, too!)

Kids are Natural Scientists (and you can be, too!)

Did you know that children are natural scientists?  Think about a baby or toddler trying the same thing over and over in new ways until they figure out how to accomplish something.  Does it work this way or that way?  Adults can encourage or discourage a child’s sense of wonder by inviting children to predict and figure things out through trial and error. As it turns out, children think a lot more logically than most adults realize.  Check out this article from wired.com which tells about an experiment that shows children’s ability to think like scientists. Adults can also model a continuing interest in why things work the way they do in our daily lives.  You might say, “I wonder why the cake didn’t cook the same way as grandpa’s cake…” instead of “the cake is saggy in the middle because the air pressure is different here than at grandpa’s.” Or “Did you notice what kind of birds visit Aunt Mary’s bird feeder?  I wonder why she doesn’t have many cardinals.”  By inviting children to play, observe, experiment, and figure things out on their own, you help them become better scientists!

Here at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, we are gearing up to participate in the second North Carolina Science Festival in April. Since the festival is in the spring, I want to be sure to highlight my favorite spring events…planting a garden and hatching baby chicks.  Of course when I think about baby chicks, I think about eggs, and when I think about eggs, I think about meringues and quiches.  So I let my mind wonder and dream about the fun “eggs”periments we can do as part of the NC Science Festival.  Since our biggest audience is families and school groups, we are planning fun science activities that can involve children of all ages.  While we make our plans, here is an idea that you can try at home: Hard boil an egg and don’t peel it!  Spin it on a table…now take a raw egg and spin it beside the hard-boiled egg.  Which one spins faster?  Which one spins longer?  I wonder why!