Asclepias Curassavica

Several years ago we planted asclepias curassavica in the garden at St. Anne's.

For the first time in my memory, the plants produced many follicles this winter. Asclepias is the milk weed family, and those plants produce their seeds in follicles. Long, banana shaped pods full of seeds just waiting to burst out and float away on the wind. The children loved these seeds and blew several of them up into the air and watched them float away.

3rd Grade Millers; Holiday Preparations

The Millers worked on two garden crafts to give as third grade gifts. Firstly, they harvested dried herbs from St. Anne's and our campus garden and mixed an herbal tea. We included mint, oregano, nettle, chamomile and lemon balm. We grow all these herbs, but in some cases don't produce enough in the garden so we augment with the organic bulk herbs at Rainbow Grocery.

The students bagged this tea mix and later I transported nearly 50 tea bags to the snack room at St. Anne's. The sisters and residents love the tea blend and look forward to our twice-yearly production.

 The Millers also blended a simple salve of beeswax (partially harvested from the bee hive at the Kinney's), coconut oil, and vitamin E. We made enough for each child to give one jar as a holiday gift.

Second Grade: Herbal Salve

 The Second Grade was so lucky to work with my parent volunteer Amanda to create an amazing herbal salve to give as a gift for the holidays. Amanda soaked yarrow, comfrey, and plantain in sesame oil for several days. Then, the children filtered the oil and mixed it with coconut oil, St. John's Wort extract, and beeswax.

 The children bottled it in small jars where it hardened into a wonderful salve for the body. 

Winter Gifts: Bird Seed Pinecones

Every year I tell a story to the kindergartners about "Winter Gifts". It is a prelude to our seasonal activity - pine cone bird feeders. The children understand these feeders are a thank you to our feathered friends during the leaner times of winter.

The children carefully put sunflower butter all over the pine cone, then roll it in wild bird seed. Once covered with seed, each child finds a special place to hang the feeder.

While we are making the feeders one can almost feel the birds circling closer and closer. I think they've come to expect this each year. As soon as the children turn their backs, the birds are all over the pine cones, and within just a couple days, the birds completely pick each feeder clean.

You can see the progression here.

Our First Frost

It's cold these days, and this morning I observed the first signs of a light frost. A light frost is when the temperature drops below 32 degrees. Many plants can weather this with out problem. A hard frost, on the other hand, is when the temperature drops below 25 degrees for four or more consecutive hours. Few plants tolerate that well.

You can see the frost on the soil and on the strawberry leaves. These are photos of planted pots. You'll usually observe more frost on potted plants than those in ground due to the tempering aspect of the earth's relative warmth.

A Bright Red Mushroom

We discovered a couple bright red mushrooms hiding in the clover. Over two days the mushrooms went from firm and fresh, to decomposed mush.

Third Graders' Bath Salts

The Farriers spent the day mixing fresh herbs from St. Anne's with sea salt to create a bath salt mix. The bath salts will be on sale at Winter Fair, Sunday December 8. 

We included rosemary, thyme, oregano, lemon peel, mint, and lavender.

Once the ingredients were well mixed into the salt, we spooned it into mason jars and added a ribbon and hand made label. Several of the Farriers hope to buy their own jar back at Winter Fair!

Last year the now 4th grade made an herbal salt rub for meat and vegetables. The ingredients were similar to those listed above, but included garlic. Unfortunately, the labels weren't clear that the salt was a cooking rub, and I heard later that several folks had bought the jars at Winter Fair for use in the bath. I hope they didn't mind soaking in garlic!

Mushrooms - Three Days Later

Those mushrooms are growing by the day. Look how much bigger they are just three days after the earlier pictures!

Any identification ideas?

Mushrooms!

After a bit of rain we've had a plethora of mushroom growth! These grew along the side of a old stump. We did not succeed in identifying them. Any ideas?

 

Jerusalem Artichokes: aka Sunchokes

This year we experimented for the first time with sunchokes. We grew the tubers at St. Anne's and in the Third Grade garden at school. Both locations suited the plants. They grew taller than any of us, student or adult, and each stalk spawned at least 5 chokes. You can see a Third Grader digging for them here.

To harvest, one must wait until the yellow flower dies and the stalk goes brown. Some folks think the tuber is sweeter if you let it rest through the first frost, but we don't have a guaranteed frost, and so pulled them up as we needed them through the fall. We ate them raw (resembles jicama), and sauteed with garlic and olive oil. The children and residents both preferred the cooked variety. Sauteeing them brings out the pronounced sweetness. The tubers contain a high percentage of inulin, which over time converts to fructose, this imparts the sweetness to the choke.

Jerusalem artichokes are not related to Jerusalem (they are native to North America), nor to artichokes. Their taste does resemble artichokes, which is why "choke" is in their name. The word Jerusalem is thought to be a derivative of the name given to them by Italian settlers: girasole, or, sunflower. Another idea is that they were named by the pilgrims as they ate them here in the pilgrim's "New Jerusalem" - the American wilderness. Sunchokes have been cultivated for hundreds of years by the Native Americans.

Calling all Jack o' lanterns!

Every year after Halloween I ask school families to bring me their carved pumpkins. We collect several, and then over the next several days the children work at cutting them up and mixing them into our compost pile. What's amazing is when the children look into the pile a few weeks later, they can't find a single trace of the pumpkins! My how fast they change!

Honey Extraction

The Third Graders have done a lot of honey extraction. Thanks to the Kinney family, we have five bars of honeycomb to harvest this year from their hive near St. Anne's. We tried several methods to separate the honey from the wax comb: crushing with fingers or a spoon and then leaving the pile to drip through a cheesecloth for a couple days in a warm spot.







We also experimented with melting the full comb over low heat and then setting the liquid in a cool spot so the honey and wax would separate. This also worked well, but some people think heating honey, even slightly, takes away many of its intrinsic nutrients and beneficial enzymes. I noticed the heated honey did have a darker color than the crushed honey when we bottled it.

One further note- to the right of the bowl is a queen cell. It is built into the comb you see and is quite a large tunnel to hold the queen larva. These cells usually hang off to the side of a brood comb.

Magical Fairy Walk

The Third Grade Garden looked enchanting for Fairy Walk!

Third Grade Practical Activities

Every week the Third Grade breaks into four groups and enjoys a practical activity led by volunteer parents and me. I oversee the garden rotation of course, and several other parents are in charge of cooking, crafting, and building.

When the Farriers, Cobblers, Millers, or Blacksmiths are with me we usually go to St. Anne's to work in the garden and then pass out garden food to the residents at St. Anne's during their lunch time. However, occasionally we stay on campus to work on the third grade garden space and other campus projects.

Recently the Farriers used their knowledge of measuring and planted garlic at school and radish seeds. The carefully measured the same distance between each garlic clove or radish seed before they planted.

In addition to planting, we did quite a bit of harvesting our fall produce.We had a bumper parsnip crop, and in addition to harvesting the roots, we let several go to seed and now have enough seed to grow for an army. Our apple trees weren't as prodigious as usual, but we still got tasty apples over the September and October months. 

First Grade Fairy Homes

Every year the First Grade welcomes autumn with a celebration of her beauty. Specifically, the first graders build fairy homes for our garden friends. As soon as the First Graders turn their backs, the fairies move in. By the time the children return the following week, the homes have magically disappeared!

 The children use cuttings and found objects from the garden to decorate the homes. Many of them even include tiny furniture.