Sharing the Harvest

Each Tuesday when the Third Grade comes to St. Anne's, one of the jobs is to prepare something fresh from our garden to share with the residents during their lunch in the dining hall.

We started this tradition during the 2011-12 school year, and the serving activity has been very popular! The children love it. Their time in the dining hall acting as waiters and waitresses calls forth their best manners and conversation skills. The children go table to table carrying plates of our produce and offering it to the residents. The children must describe the offering, serve it, and make polite conversation while they are there.

The residents enjoy this immensely. They like the fresh backyard food, and love to see the children and ask them questions.

Our recent offerings have included fresh salad with herbed vinaigrette, celery with herbed cream cheese, fresh apples, and lots of sweet-pea bouquets for the tables.

These photos show two Third Graders harvesting apples to share from our school tree. We are also lucky to have a kind neighbor of St. Anne's who lets me pick all the apples from his two apple trees to give to the Home. The kitchen makes all sorts of fresh apple delicacies for the residents, and, the Third Grade serves some freshly cut slices at lunch.

A collection of sunflowers

Sunflowers are a big hit in the garden. Each year we grow some from seeds we purchase, but others from seeds we've collected in prior years. Sunflowers can pick up traits from other varieties if they are anywhere within .5 to 3 miles away. Since we always plant different varieties in the same garden, our harvested seeds we simply call "St. Anne's Sunflowers".

Here are some photos of our flowers now in Fall 2012. Did you know that a sunflower is actually comprised of 100's-1000's individual flowers on its face? Each seed is attached to its own flower.  While we might think of a sunflower as one giant flower, it's not that at all!

Our two apple trees at the Waldorf Grade School

I gave our apple treesa significant thinning last winter and it seems to have increased fruit production this fall. Here's a photo of our larger tree, loaded with fruit.

These trees pre-date my tenure by a long time, as a result, I don't know the apple variety. Any ideas?



In a month or so, the 3rd graders will harvest the fruit with our handy fruit picker and use the apples for Harvest Dinner cobblers. Yum!