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27 December 2010
Our Final Day of Week One at Winter Wonderfarm
I look down at my wrist and remember a wonderous week at Hayes Valley Farm. Four loops of yellow bookbinding string hold four magical beads on my wrist. Four pearls of wisdom that represent the knowledge I’ve gained at Winter Wonderfarm and the experiences I will share with the greater communities in which I exist.
Day Four of Winter Wonderfarm was guided by the theme of Community. The day was dedicated to honoring our fellow farmers, our brethren and sistren of students and educators, and the webs of relationship that connect us to our friends and family around the world. On day four, Winter Wonderfarmers celebrated community through music, art, and culinary mastery.
We began the morning in the freeway food forest. We stretched our bodies, relaxed our minds, and awakened our senses to the cool breeze and sunshine around us. Janelle led us in two trust-building exercises to showcase the belief that communities thrive through bonds of trust, communication, and mutual understanding.
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23 December 2010
My name is Chase and my nature name is Feather, “Whoooooooo, (shake, shake, shake...)”
“Good morning Chase Feather, (shake, shake, shake)” we respond.
Our check-in this morning involved making a noise and a movement to represent how we were feeling. From subtle and soft to big and boisterous we said “Good Morning” to each other and to the Farm. Day Three at Winter Wonderfarm commenced... with blue streaks against a gentle gray sky, lots of smiles and sparkling eyes. Today was wonderful!
Connection was our theme, meaning deepening connection to place, each other and the possibilities that each moment holds for discovery, learning, trust-building, creativity, and FUN!
We got a special visit from Carla of City Grazing and her two dear friends, Cow and Petunia, GOATS!
Cow and Petunia had never visited Hayes Valley Farm and they were very excited to spend part of the morning with the young farmers. We learned a lot about goats! Garden Wizard, Yannick Organic lovingly referred to these soft, furry friends as natural lawn mowers. They will eat just about any plant, and can help to manage a weedy situation. We learned that they have four stomachs, they have really nice, white teeth, and they are vegetarians. Also, goats have a lot in common with worms, their poop is really great for farms and gardens. We took the goats on a tour of the farm, the young urban farmers were gracious hosts, offering our soft, furry new friends kale, fava leaves and broccoli greens, Before the goats left Hayes Valley Farm, they had a late breakfast of dew speckled ivy. Thank you Carla, Cow and Petunia! We hope to have the goats back to the farm soon!
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22 December 2010
We’ve evaded the forecast for another rainfree day of Winter Wonderfarm 2010! I awoke to a joyous text message this morning from fellow Garden Wizard Lindsey- ‘Sunrise and Epic Skies to the East!’ The skies were indeed luminous as day two set forth with the positive energy of the Winter Solstice.
Our young farmers arrived on-site at 9am and rushed to Mulch Mountain to pick-up where they had left off on Monday afternoon. Kids are so imaginative! To most adults, a pile of mulch isn’t much more than a stockpile of wood chips. But to our campers, Mulch Mountain is the house of hot tubs, hot chairs, and volcano eruptions. You see, our campers have discovered that mulch, when piled high, begins to decompose and heat itself from the inside out.
Day two was deemed Homemade Creativity, a look into homesteading, veggie prints, and Andy Goldsworthy. Our first activity was to make wrapping paper from edible stamps. We used cross-sections of vegetables like celery and onions to stamp multicolored prints on recycled paper. Our participants expanded their mediums by stamping calendula, eucalyptus, and fingertips on their papers. The wrapping papers turned out to be beautiful manifestations of Wonderfarm creativity.
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21 December 2010
Today was a day of firsts: The first day of our first Winter Wonderfarm, a seasonal day camp for youth ages 3 - 13. The first clear day in a series of stormy, wet ones. The first time I’ve witnessed a child name himself ‘KaleSage,’ and the first time I’ve boogied with a wormologist to the tune of ‘Cardboard Breakdown.”
Day One was a success beyond our expectations. Loving parents dropped their children off at the farm around 9am, and our day of laughter and learning ensued. Eleven children and four Garden Wizards (Educators) joined in a welcome circle where we exchanged birth names, breakfast stories, and self-declared nature names. KaleSage, Eclipse, Lilac, and Cheetah were several of our bright new identities.
Today's theme was ‘Zero Waste,’ which encompassed lessons on composting, waste management, soil building, and recycled art. Each day of camp features an expert presenter, and today we were blessed with the presence of Booka the Wormologist. She enlightened us all with knowledge about worm anatomy, diet, and peculiar wormy rituals. Expert-hour concluded with lunchtime for our composting creatures, followed by lunchtime for us curious and hungry humans.
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19 December 2010
The word "engineer" comes from the Latin "ingenium", meaning "cleverness". My particular brand of cleverness involves writing software, but I consider myself among peers who design automobiles, fancy molecules, and suspension bridges. There's a common ethic among all engineers: a can-do attitude that whatever the problem, there must be a solution.
For centuries, since we first started growing plants instead of finding them, clever engineers were there to say, "I can fix that!" Crops need more water? I'll design a system of irrigation ditches! Monocropping depleting the soil of nutrients? I'll create synthetic fertilizers! Weeds getting in the way? I'll genetically modify crops to be herbicide-resistant so you can kill everything else!
Most of these engineering feats were victories for the profession, and many still regard them as such. They've enabled unprecedented food safety, and resulting population growth, enabling a world of six billion people in which two billion are well-fed. (Yep, another third of the world is considered hungry; another starving.)
As a part of our 6-week program with the 1st graders at FAIS, the budding wormologists and the HVF Youth Educators created worm-ariums to observe what worms do underground. We filled up two jars with four different layes of earth: clay, compost, mulch and leaf matter. We borrowed a few of our red wiggler friends from our worm bin on site and placed them on top of the leaf layer, closest to the top of the jar. We poked holes in the lid to ensure circulation of oxygen, and reminded the wormologists that they needed to cover the worm-ariums with a dark cloth because worms do not respond well to excessive exposure to light.f They agreed to take diligent notes and draw their observations in their farm journals (hand-made from all recycled materials found at Hayes Valley Farm).
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Over a thousand volunteers, neighbors, and community members have helped coordinate the farm efforts.