The fascinating world of the Orca K-8 school garden!

We had students decorate a simple envelope and collect things that smell or feel good in the garden. We have a plethora of mints, sages (fruit, honeydew melon, and pineapple), flowers, lambs ear, lemon yerbena, lavenders, and more. They wandered the garden, exploring and intaeracting as I (and they) pointed out things to collect. Remember- not anything bigger than your thumb!

Glorious glorious sunshine!!! The Autumn Equinox is upon us and we are grateful for our abundant harvest. Kindergarten students came out to the garden to explore the contents of our worm bins (Along with the notion of composting…) and to pick bouquets. The cosmos are exploding around the garden. The students were enthralled with these simple activities. Kindergarten age students are so open to new experiences and getting them connected with food systems and the natural world is so powerful.

Slow Food Seattle has brought us out to speak at this amazing event http://www.artisanfoodfestival.org/. Come have some fun and food with us as we share our vision of garden education, sustainability, and food justice. This speaking panel lasts 45 minutes and is part of an incredible selection of speakers and presenters who love food!

What an amazing harvest we have had so far this year. Melanie’s class came out for their first weekly garden class and did some delicious tasting. We munched on carrots, beets, chard, tomatoes, and cabbage- all picked within 5 minutes of eating! That’s fast food! Making the garden a place for eating is a big focus of our this school year. We have increased our harvest enough that we can finally do more cooking and tasting. It has been a delicious start to teh school year.

Thanks to Full Circle Farm http://www.fullcirclefarm.com/ for their donation of a weekly produce box for September and October. You are awesome!

We are eating our way to a food revolution. The challenge was this: which group of 7 students can make the most delicious salad? All the ingredients were on the table, except for fresh tomatoes and cabbage picked within 5 minutes of eating them, out of the Orca garden. It’s about eating together, cooking, preparing- sharing. Food brings us together and Matt’s 4/5 class had a blast eating a delicious salad and sharing good company.

Last week Mr. C’s class went to the food bank to deliver Orca produce. Today we went to our Hillman City p-patch to harvest food from our food bank plot there. We also collected food from our own plot there, for our won students to sample and taste for our incredible food units we have begun. Making these community connections is a vital part of our garden program.

Oxbow Farm reached out to us to develop a farm & school connection. For the next two months we will get a weekly box of produce from their farm. This helps us work with cooking and food preparation in the classroom. It also puts a taste to the “idea” of a farm- which will culminate in a a field trip to the farm for many of these classrooms. Having this farm connection with Orca will be such an amazing partnership. thank you Oxbow!

Today, students were exploring our wormbins. But after that, we sampled some Oxbow goodies (greenbeans & broccoli) and threw any scraps right into the wormbins. Sustainability!

Oxbow is a leading force in the NW for sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and permaculture. Check them out at http://www.oxbow.org/ . You too could get a weekly Community Supported Agriculture box of organic produce!

Kindergarten and 1st grade students got a chance to see the inside of a worm bin. We emptied out the contents of part of one of our 4 giant worm bins. 4 tables had the worm bin contents out to sift through and get aquainted with. Students were absolutely enthralled with this activity as we found worms, centipedes, potato bugs, and lots of mushed up fruit and vegetables. It didn’t smell bad either (a proper wormbin should not smell if it is managed properly). We also talked about the difference between earth worms (in our garden) and red wigglers (in our worm bins).

Our worm bins are super healthy now and are soon to yield tens of pounds of worm castings (poop).

The middle schoolers today made salsa in the greenhouse. We blasted Cubanismo (one of my favorite salsa groups) and got down with some eating. ALL of the tomatoes were from Orca’s garden and p-patch. they were fresh off the vine and extra delicious. They wrote all the ingredients down on a recipe card and even practiced the Spanish words as we cut and prepared. Que rico!

Mr. C and I are really trying to have students connect with their community and really feel that they are making a difference. We have partnered with the Rainier Valley Food Bank, to share our harvest and give students a real look at food security and poverty in south Seattle.

rvfb.org

We got a brief rundown of the operation there from their director Sam. He told us that 75% of the population that uses the food bank in Chinese and SE Asian. As he was talking with us, a woman with a cart full of our collard greens rolled by. WOW! This was a powerful experience for students.