May Day at the Community Garden

There is a good chance that you will never see my daughter enthusiastically eating fresh spinach like this again.

There is something about growing your own vegies that makes 'em taste better! This summer we are tackling our vegie consumption from two directions. The first, and easy way to boost our enthusiasm for vegies is through a subcription to a local CSA, Broadbranch Farm. When we lived in the country, we enjoyed the weekly drive to pick up organically grown vegies from Broadbranch. The kids got to play with the farm owner's kids, chasing chickens and climbing fences and trees. Now that we live in town, we can still get a vegie box, delivered to our neighborhood. Not the same, but still good.

Our second strategy to get good, fresh and organic vegies is to grow them ourselves. Recently our city started an initiative to support community gardening in every neighborhood. Somehow I got wrangled into the planning meetings and secured a couple of plots for our homeschool! The kids and I really enjoy gardening with other neighborhood folks, seeing what others are growing, and learning about new methods from our new friends. Community gardening doesnt just grow food, but also community!

For Little Brother, gardening is a wee-bit-too structured. He did spend quite a bit of time planting and watering, and digging in the dirt. But mostly, he loves the small grove of pines along the fence.

The ribbon cutting by neighborhood homeschoolers...kind of hard with a garden shears!

 We HAD to incorporate some science. On the near side of the table is a contraption that makes seed pots from newspaper. A friend used this pot maker for an Atrium camp last summer. You have to plant seeds when thinking about the parable of the mustard seed. She was kind to lend it to me for the day. Many children got to plant green beans to take home or to plant in their garden plot that same day.

On the far side of the table are two jars with two types of soil. One has compost and one has ordinary dirt. By putting the soil in the jar full of water, shaking and then letting settle, one can clearly see the difference between the two types of soil. The ordinary soil has a lot of clay, and compacts very densley. But the compost has gobs of organic material that floats to the top of the water, the water itself never looses the compost tea look, and the material that settles to the bottom is loose and beautiful brown. It almost looks like coffee grounds.

Two short films by Big Sister: