Making the Fall Compost Pile

We make a big windrow of compost twice a year. We are just finishing up our pile for fall. We make it with vegetable cuttings, seedless weeds, straw, and horse manure. I get the horse manure from Horse Hill in Mill Valley.

One of the principles of Biodynamic farming is to generate fertility within the farm system itself. So, an ideal farm will have just the right number of animals to produce enough manure to fertilize the farm. In turn, the farm will produce enough animal feed for those animals.

At St. Anne's we don't have our own farm animals so I must bring in manure. Ideally this would be manure from a cow or horse living on a very local Biodynamic farm. This is not an option for us here in SF, so I try the second best thing, which is to bring in manure from animals living the closest possible life intended for their species.

Horse Hill in Mill Valley is a lovely spot where the horses live in a herd and are free to roam and run among the grassy hillsides. They are fed hay in the dry months, but the rest of the year eat a lot of fresh grass. The folks looking after the horses have built a manure bin, which makes it easy to shovel the poop into bags and drive it back to SF. I scurry across the Golden Gate with my windows down to spare my family the smell later in the day.

These action photos show Kindergarten 3 children hauling compost supplies and enthusiastically tamping down the pile.

First Grade Fairy Houses

 It's be come a tradition for the First Graders to welcome the garden fairies with their own inviting homes.

  The pumpkins are nestled all over the garden.

 The children decorate them in groups, according to their own design sensibilities. 

They collect branches, flowers, pebbles, and straw to make furniture, doors and landscaping.

One home even had a pet slug!

A Pumpkin Mystery

This Halloween the Second Grade children visited a lovely pumpkin patch at Spring Hill Dairy in Petaluma http://www.springhillcheese.com/ This is a fantastic pumpkin patch: the scenery is gorgeous, the children get to milk a cow, visit with young farm animals, ride a tractor, dig potatoes (they were huge!), and choose a pumpkin in the field. In addition, there is a large straw bale pyramid to climb, a straw bale maze, and free tastes of cheese curd and delicious ice cream.

While we were wandering the fields I came upon a pumpkin sight I have never seen before:



I found several pumpkins that were pumpkin skin on the outside, yet the insides were pure soil.

I asked the farmer accompanying us if he knew why such a thing would occur, but he was similarly mystified. I have looked for explanations on the internet but so far have come up empty.

The pumpkins were clearly rotten, in some cases the skin was dehydrated (below), but in other cases it was still moist and rather thick (see above).

It appeared to me that the inside of the pumpkin had somehow sucked the soil into its skin, but how or why I have no idea!

Any ideas out there?