Late May, 2012

Live Power Community Farm, May 2012

Let me share some highlights from the 3rd grade trip to Live Power Community Farm in Covelo, CA.

Covelo is in Round Valley, just over an hour NE of Willits. The farm is a lovely, 40 acre Biodynamic farm run by the Decater family for over 25 years. The farm is worked only with human, horse and sun power. You can learn more about Live Power here.




The Decaters run a CSA for San Francisco and Mendocino County. I have been a member for 9 seasons and can attest to the delicious, vital food they produce.




Each year, the 3rd grade from SFWS spends three nights and four days working on the farm. The children weed, scythe, harvest, and plant. They also do daily animal chores, learn to plow behind a draft horse, shear a sheep,

This is how you hold down a sheep while it gets its wool  cut.

and generally come to understand the hard work that farms demand.

 I've included several photos to provide a look at our most recent stay with Ms. Fendell's Third Grade Class in late May of 2012.

Finished compost pile

Manure waiting to go into a new compost pile

This year a local blacksmith came and we made our own nails!

Do you know the story about the turnip?

These are leeks, but the story has the same ending!

Stephen teaching the children about horse drawn plows

Tools we used

Better Than the Cream Puff

Recently Ms. Beetle shared a recipe for a chard salad. This recipe proved to be a great hit, with several children asking for the recipe and one boy exclaiming that he liked it more than another visit's cream puff.

Here is the recipe, followed by the story Ms. Beetle relayed.

Rainbow Chard Salad with Raisins
serves 4

A bunch of rainbow chard
1/4 cup olive oil
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/8 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/2 cup raisins
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup fresh-grated cheese (parmesan or similar)

Wash the chard and let dry. Fold the leaves in half and slice away the tough stalk. Discard. Cut the leaves in half, lengthwise, then slice into fine ribbons. You should have about 4-6 cups of finely sliced chard.

Whisk the sugar, olive oil, vinegar, and orange juice together and taste. Adjust to taste and add salt and pepper.

Toss the raisins, chard and dressing all together. Distribute among individual salad bowls and sprinkle cheese on top.

Ch 10 The Memory Kitchen: All the Colors of the Rainbow

Dear Second Grade,

Last visit I took great pleasure in hearing your frequent inquiries as to how you could help. I know the grown ups were pleased to have your willing hands at work beside them. I expect you to continue asking how you can help today. Remember, hearing those friendly words brings a smile to everyone’s face.

In fact, the cream puff story reminded me of another story and recipe I love well. Believe it or not, the little chefs who thought up this recipe are younger than you are, for this recipe comes from a preschool here in the garden named Lovin’ Larvae.

In case you’re not sure, larvae is a stage that many insects go through (bees and beetles do, for example) First, the insects are born as an egg, then they grow into a worm shaped larva, then, they change into what they finally will be: a butterfly, a bee, a beetle, or maybe a fly.

Last fall Lovin Larvae got a new student, a very special student by the name of Cornelius Grub. The reason Cornleius was special was that he was destined to grow into a fly. Now, you might wonder, what’s so special about that? I see, and actually often swat at, flies all the time! Well, that’s part of the problem, Cornelius was a fly larva, but all the other larvae at Lovin Larvae preschool are butterfly larvae. How, you might ask, did Cornelius’ parents enroll him in the Butterfly preschool? What was wrong with the fly school? Well, Cornelius’ parents believed that children of all different types should go to school together. They didn’t like the way our garden preschools were organized for different bugs: the beetle school over by the carriage house, the moth preschool up by the Tower, the slug preschool under the agapanthus, the snail school over by the ivy… You see how it is.

Cornelius became the first fly larvae to attend Lovin Larvae. For the first couple months, it all went well. In the beginning the larvae all looked similar to one another, and they played around in the soil and swung on small vines just like any children would enjoy doing.

However, trouble began when the preschool began holding special information sessions to get their pupils ready for the change about to come. The teachers began posting pictures of lovely butterflies, with wings full of all the colors of the rainbow, around the classroom. The little larva ooohed and ahhed as they admired the posters. As you can imagine, they were full of questions. “What butterfly will I become?” Miles wanted to know.

“Will my wings have pink and purple stripes like this butterfly?” Millicent asked.

“I want to have those pointy wing tips with black and gold shimmers” cried Ted.

“Look! I bet my wings will be large and fuzzy yellow-orange like those!” shouted Cornelius.

The teachers at Lovin Larvae overheard Cornelius’ happy yell, and looked at each other with wide, concerned eyes. They resolved to speak to Cornelius’ parents that afternoon at pick up.

When Cornelius’ parents arrived, the head teacher of Lovin Larvae took them aside. “Mr. and Mrs. Fly, it’s the time of year when Lovin Larvae puts up the butterfly photos, and begins to prepare the little larvae for the changes they’re about to go through. We do this every year and it’s proven to be very helpful for the larvae before they begin to make their cocoons. This way, they can go to sleep looking forward to what they’ll become: lovely butterflies. We have a little problem with Cornelius, however. You see, Cornelius thinks he, too, will grow lovely butterfly wings when he is grown.”

“I see.” Said Cornelius’ mother.

“I hadn’t thought about this.” Said Cornelius’ father. They touched their antennae together for a while and thought about what to do. When they were finished the parents said “Please, teacher, will you put up a poster of a full grown fly? We’re sure Cornelius will recognize it as his future. After all, look at us. We’re not butterflies. We are flies ourselves.”

“Certainly” the teacher replied, and the very next day there was a large photograph of a fly on the board.

When the larvae arrived at school, the teachers overheard these comments:

“What’s that?” asked Diana.

“That’s weird.” Said Jim.

“Look at its big eyes!” exclaimed Phillip.

“That’s my mom and dad, but that won’t be me!” said Cornelius, happily.

“Uh oh.” Said his teachers.

That afternoon, when Cornelius’ parents arrived at pick up, the head teacher took them aside yet again. “Cornelius doesn’t believe he’ll become a fly. He thinks he’ll be a butterfly like everyone else.”

“Really?” said his dad and mom, incredulously.

“Really.” Said his teacher.

Time passed and Cornelius continued to believe he would roll into his cocoon and come out a butterfly just like all his friends at preschool. He daydreamed about the colors his wings might be, his biggest wish was for them to be magenta with black stripes and shimmery white dots on the wing tips. Yellow and black stripes was his second choice. His parents tried to help him see the truth, that he was on his way to becoming a fly. They tried things like standing with their arms around him in front of their big mirror, hoping he would take a good look at them and figure it out. They tried hanging all kinds of fly artwork around their home, having other fly families and their little larvae maggots over so Cornelius might pick up the news in conversation with other young kids, but whatever they tried did not work. Cornelius still talked about how he’d wake up a butterfly one day, and at school he persisted in ignoring the fly photo, and spent all his time talking butterfly with his friends. “We made a mistake with this school idea.” His parents agreed.

With his teacher’s urging, his parents finally agreed to sit Cornelius down and tell him that while his friends were getting very close to turning into butterflies, Cornelius was nearly ready to go to sleep and wake up a black, hairy fly like themselves.

“NO!” he shouted. “I’m a butterfly! Why else would I be at Lovin Larvae Preschool if I weren’t a butterfly too?! I’ve seen all those butterfly pictures, I’ve heard all the talks, I know what I’m going to be!” Cornelius’ parents hung their heads and regretted they’d ever decided to try to bring variety into the garden preschools. It really was too complicated.

Cornelius went to school the next day sad and confused. For the first time he noticed that he didn’t look the same as the other larvae children. They had suction cup feet and moved around as caterpillars, while he rolled and squirmed around. They were all shades of the rainbow, while he was a sort of clear white color. He began to worry his parents were right after all. Could he be a fly?

That morning the teachers told the students that there would be a party at lunch, a sort of get ready to hibernate party since they were all nearing their day to enter the cocoons (except Cornelius-his parents had told him that his skin would just get hard, and then he’d pop out of it as a fly after a while). The teachers explained it would be up to the larvae to choose and make the dishes for the party. Cornelius was assigned to a group with Pauline, Sarah and Mike. Mike noticed Cornelius looked sad. “What’s wrong?” Mike inquired.

“Mike, do I look like you?” Cornelius asked softly.

“Not really, but so what?” Mike replied.

“I’m worried I’m not going to be a butterfly, Mike. That I won’t have pretty colors on my wings when I’m older.”

“Cornelius,” Mike said, “So what again. You’ll probably look like that cool, hairy black fly on the wall instead.”

“But I like the bright colors so much” wailed Cornelius. Pauline and Sarah listened. “I wanted to be all the colors of the rainbow, like you will be. Not just all one color like my mom and dad”.

Pauline maneuvered her long body next to Cornelius’ and patted him. “Don’t worry, Cornelius. Don’t you know that you’ll always have the colors of the rainbow around you, your whole life no matter what color you are? Just look around! “ She pointed to all the greenery and flowers in this garden. Cornelius looked up and took it in. “Cornelius, just be thankful you have eyes to see the colors of the rainbow. And flies - they have especially big eyes!”

“Cornelius, look here.” Said Sarah. She was pointing to pink, yellow and green leaves on the table. “This is rainbow chard. Let’s make a rainbow salad, Cornelius! In your honor! We’ll call it Cornelius Salad-all the colors of the rainbow!”

Cornelius looked at the pretty leaves and felt a little better. It’s true that even though he wouldn’t have his own brightly colored wings, he could at least admire others’. He smiled a little and moved to the table to help cut the leaves.

That afternoon at the party all the larvae’s parents were there. Cornelius’ group made a special presentation of their salad. Cornelius spoke: “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, mom and dad, about my being a fly. I know that I will be a fly now, and not a beautiful butterfly. But, at least I get to see, and eat, all the colors of the rainbow. That makes a fly’s life sound pretty good to me.”

And that, dear second grade, is how this salad got its name and importance. How lucky we are to eat and see all the colors of the rainbow.

Sincerely,

Ms. Beetle

Remember the lettuce?

In early February I described how we had to transplant the over-crowded lettuce in the cell packs into the lovely wooden seed beds the 3rd graders made.

Here, they were newly transplanted in the box.

Now, two months later, I took this photo of the robust lettuce starts. Funny enough, they're over crowded again! Time to get them in the ground and start eating them.

Frittrasses: January, 2012

Each time the second grade comes to the garden, I relay a story from Ms. Beetle. Ms. Beetle is a character that the children met last year during their first grade visits to the garden when they heard the Tales of Adventure. Ms. Beetle is a beetle of course, who came to St. Anne's to live after she lost her job downtown as a chef. She retains a keen interest in cooking and looking after her garden friends. Her stories for the children comprise a collection I've named The Memory Kitchen.

In second grade the children cook as part of their job rotation. Each visit they make something different, a recipe that has as its main ingredient something that in season from our garden. During the winter those ingredients were leeks and wild onions. Ms. Beetle adopted the recipe from a book called Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, an accomplished vegetable-oriented chef in London. The title of Ottolenghi's recipe is "Leek Fritters", but Ms. Beetle changed the recipe's name to "Fritrasses" instead.

You can read the story behind the recipe and its name here. The fritters are delicious, by the way!

Happy new year, Second Grade!

Who, among you, likes to invent things? Who feels like they’re always full of great ideas for solving problems in creative ways? Well, I’m proud to say that I consider myself a beetle of big ideas and full creativity. Not only that, but as you might have guessed, I have a big heart as well.

Let me share with you one of the inventions I am most proud of: Frittrasses! You see, dear Second Grade, as you remember I’m sure, I used to work downtown San Francisco in a very fancy restaurant. I had a good life there, working hard, dining well, spending my days with my friendly colleagues in the kitchen. However, there was one little bit of sadness to my life while I lived downtown, and this was due to the fact that in order for me to walk from my home to the restaurant, I had to pass along many streets which were crowded with critters who had no home.

Yes, it’s sad to say, but there is a part of our great city where many critters just like me, or the common garden snail, the slugs, even some butterflies and moths, live out their lives without homes on the streets. If these homeless critters are lucky, they’ll bed down in a park, where at least they’ll find soft space among the greenery of trees and grass. But many of them are old and weak, and must lay their heads at night along the hard concrete, wrapping their bug legs around themselves or weaving a coat of slime to keep warm.

Nights after work I would pass these critters as they bedded uncomfortably down. On occasion I would stop to talk, to offer some company and a listening ear. I often brought food with me from the restaurant to share. One old stick bug, his nickname was Branch, he liked to tell me stories from his childhood, from the time when he was small and flexible, able to climb up any tree trunk and hide on any branch. I asked him finally what had happened to make his old body so bent and brittle. He told me that life in the city had been hard on him, and once, the tree he was hiding in had been trimmed, and he and the branch fell to the ground, the branch landing on top of my friend Branch. That accident left him crippled and unable to climb trees again. Imagine the difficult life of a stick bug who can’t climb trees!

In the mornings I often brought my friends hot cups of tea to make their start to the day more bearable. Daisy, an old lady bug with one broken wing, was usually the first person I saw. She usually slept in a crack near the wall of my apartment, trying to shelter herself from the wind. Daisy gulped her tea down and neatly wiped out her cup, handing it back to me so I could use it again. Daisy didn’t like to talk much, but over several years I learned her story. Daisy had lived her good years with 100’s of other lady bugs in the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park. They fed together on plump aphids, played together on the rolling green lawns, slept in the sweet smelling shelter of the tropical flowers. One day, however, just as Daisy was about to settle down and start a family of her own, a large storm blew into town. Daisy had been out that morning, and was too late taking shelter in her normal garden spot. The wicked winds picked her up and carried her toward downtown. As the wind roared around her she held her wings open, hoping to ride the lashing breeze safely down to the ground somewhere. Unfortunately, she was not so lucky. The wind carried her at full speed into the side of a tall office building downtown, breaking one of her wings as it pressed against the glass. She fell to the ground and limped to safety, but has never since been able to fly off to greener places, and so does the best she can downtown.

As the winter holidays approached one cold year, I decided to do something for my homeless critter friends. I decided to knit them each a blanket with which to keep warm and comfortable. Unlike you, I had never learned to knit, and tried to teach myself how to work those needles and yarn into something wonderful.

I went at it for hours and days, and dear Second Grade, you should have seen me: all tied up in knots, yarn balls rolling everywhere, needles flying and poking my thighs, blisters on my finger tips, and nothing that looked even close to a blanket. Knitting was proving very difficult for me indeed.

I began to worry that I would have nothing to offer my kind, needy friends for the holidays. I knew what they needed: food and comfort, but my knitting was a complete mess and would prove hopeless as a gift.

I took to my kitchen and began to cook which always made me feel better. I had eggs and flour and spices and milk. I had just a few leeks in my cold storage. I decided to whip up some leek fritters for supper. The cooking process brought me great joy, and before I knew it I had six plump leek fritters on my plate just waiting for me to enjoy them. They looked like a little stack of yummy pancakes just sitting there.

The sun was setting as I began to feel full. I decided to take my two extra fritters downstairs to give to Branch and Daisy. When I got to Daisy she was just packing her things away near the crack, preparing to lie down for the night. When she saw the fritter in my outstretched hand, she took it with a smile and said “Thank you! This is wonderful!” I was just about to apologize that it was no longer warm, when I saw with surprise that she laid my delicious leek fritter on the ground and proceeded to lay her own body on top of it.

“Daisy!” I exclaimed. “Why, what are you doing? That’s meant to be your supper!”

“My supper!?” answered Daisy. “I thought it was a new mattress to lay my weary back.” She continued to lay on top of the leek fritter, with a contented smile on her face. “You know,” she added, “this does smell might tasty” and she leaned her head to the side and took a small nibble. “I’m eating my mattress!” she exclaimed with glee, “and it tastes so good!”.

I stood there not sure what to make of this. “Well, goodnight Daisy,” I said. “I’m off to see Branch now.”

“Mmmm, bye,” Daisy chewed and dozed, all at once.

When I got to Branch, I held out the fritter to see what he would make of it. He took the plump little pancake out of my arms and laid his right down on the sidewalk. “A green mattress” he sighed. “How kind of you. And it smells so good I could eat it!”

“Well, Branch” I replied, “You can.”

And this, dear Second Grade, was the beginning of my new food I call “Frittrass”. You know, half fritter, half mattress? Once I saw how much Daisy and Branch loved their frittrasses, I made more and more for all the homeless critters in my neighborhood. I noticed that each frittress lasted about three nights, before the critter ate so much of it that there was no soft part left to sleep on. I saw many frittrasses that were eaten into the exact shape of the critter’s body, so that it was still just barely a mattress.

These frittrasses were my golden deeds, dear Second Grade. I made frittrasses for as long as I lived and worked downtown. Here at St. Anne’s, we manage to find each critter a home, no matter how needy he or she might be. We all take care of one another in this garden, so I haven’t needed to make any frittrasses. But do you know, this holiday season I got my recipe out and made some to take downtown, for there are still many critters there who have no soft place to call home.

Dear Second Grade, I realize these frittrasses will be too small to keep your big bodies comfortable, so for now, I thought you could just make some for eating, in honor of this season of Golden Deeds.

Enjoy them, and please think about ways you can be of help to others in need.

Sincerely,

Ms. Beetle

Leek Fritters: makes about 16 small fritters (from Plenty)

Ingredients

3 medium leeks, trimmed and washed

4 green onions, finely chopped

olive oil

oregano, sage, and thyme leaves, finely chopped

cumin

cinnamon

turmeric

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 eggs, separated

2 whole eggs

2 cups plain flour

1.5 tblsp baking powder

1.75 cups milk

2T unsalted butter, melted

Method

1.     Cut leeks into 2cm (1in) thick slices.  Saute the green onions and leeks in a pan with half the oil on medium heat for 10 minutes, or until soft. Transfer to a large bowl and add the herbs, spices, sugar and salt. 

2.  Fold egg whites into the vegetables. 

3.  In another bowl, mix together the dry ingredients with remaining egg yolks, whole eggs, milk and butter into a batter. Gently mix it into the egg white and vegetable mixture.

4.  Put 2 tablespoons of the remaining oil into a large frying pan and place over a medium heat.  Spoon about half of the vegetable mixture into the pan to make 4 large fritters. Fry them for 2-3 minutes on each side, or until golden and crisp.  Remove to a plate lined with paper towel and keep warm. Add more oil to the pan, if needed, and repeat with the remaining batter. This amount should make about 16 fritters.

5.  Serve warm with a squeeze of lemon.