Fellowship Farm - Our Final Event

Well, it's over; and what a great day it was. After cooking for several hours with organic chef Lindsay Gilmour, we had a feast of vegetable frittata, watermelon and goat cheese salad, and braised potatoes to go with the desserts prepared yesterday. And, of course, Mr. Mason got the corn ready for grilling with our help.

The final evaluations were done, some cleaning up accomplished, and we headed off to Fellowship Farm. Their warm and wonderful staff took over and led us through A B C ball, Crossing the Acid Pit, and Scaling the 12 Foot Wall. We learned a lot about how we had grown and melded as a group while we worked together for a month.

After all had scaled the wall, we went to the pavilion with families, from infants to grandparents, and had a wonderful dinner, gave out certificates of completion for the FFT Crew of 08, a few final awards, heard a bit about Fellowship Farm, and had a warm ending to our four weeks of hard work. Ms. Susan and Ms Denise and Yvonne came along, as did Mr. Ed from Park Spring.

We expressed our thanks, and do so again here, to those who made this program possible. Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation - Evidenz Foundation - Helen Bader Foundation - Bard Foundation - Park Spring Apartments - Kimberton Waldorf School - Kimberton Whole Foods - Beneficial Bank - Waldorf Education Foundation - Dansko Foundation; many pieces came together to make the whole picture. Ms. Kate, Mr. Mason, Sankanac, Kimberton CSA, Charlestown Cooperative Farm, The Mill at Anselma, The Restaurant School, Ms. Cara, Ms. Sheri, Denise and Yvonne, Hobo Ed, and others--thank you all for helping us work and learn and grow for a month this summer.

We're glad for an opportunity to rest and catch up with everything, but sorry that it's over at the same time. Andre and Megan, helping with the final cleaning on Saturday, were asked what might be done to improve the program. Their first comment: it should be longer!

Our Last Day!

Ms. Kate here, reporting on the final day of Food for Thought 2008. Everyone is hard at work right now at the garden building, tying up loose ends and preparing for our final dinner tonight for parents and friends. A slideshow of photos is rolling on the projector screen, Mr Mason is playing guitar, and the food cooking in the kitchen smells fabulous - what a great atmosphere for our last day!

Here is the recipe for one of the desserts we will be enjoying at tonight's dinner that we did not have time to print out and put in everyone's journals. As usual, it is courtesy of Ms Denise and Ms Yvonne of Cooking for Real, and is absolutely delicious:

Berry Cornmeal Cake

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

2 tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 cup organic sugar

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

7 tbsp. butter, melted, plus 1 tbsp. for greasing pan

12 ounces berries (blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, or a mixture)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a medium bowl, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter, pour over flour mixture and stir to combine. In a 10-inch cast iron skillet (or glass baking pan), heat the remaining tablespoon of butter in the oven until melted and pan is hot, about 5 min. Remove from oven; swirl to coat bottom of skillet. Pour batter into skillet; scatter berries or top or make a pattern to decorate top of cake.

Bake for 45-50 minutes. Let cool for 30 min., then run a knife around the edges to loosen from skillet/pan. Cut into slices and serve warm or room temperature.

See you tonight! And make sure to check out all of Mr Mark's photos from this summer in the online photo albums linked at the top right hand side of the blog.

Wednesday, August 13

On Wednesday we did "The Green of Green." We added up our expenses for the peach and pesto project. We added up the expenses of the peach jam and pesto jars and our income. The other expenses were transportation, peaches, sugar, operation/building, pine nuts, basil, cheese, olive oil, and garlic. The total expenses were $184 and the total income was $296. It was 82 jars of peach jam for $3 each and 10 jars of pesto for $5 each. Some local people bought our product and Triskeles bought the rest for the golf outing gifts. Our profit was $112.

We also went over lessons learned over the program. Here are our notes:

Mulching - to keep the soil moist, cool, and loose. It also helps to keep the weeds down.

Harvesting beets - easier in moist soil; beets are roots plants; to harvest, you need to pull by them stem of the beet and then cut the stems

Harvesting potatoes - potatoes store well. They are tubers. The dark brown circles in potatoes are "plant eyes." To pick potatoes you need to dig the potatoes out, lift the soil, and then pick them by hand, or you can use a plow, but the soil was too moist to do that when we went to Charlestown farm. When you see a green potato, it's poisonous.

Weeding - weeds suck up nutrients, water, and sunlight, and they could be feed for animals. That is why we pick them. Weeds are good for making mulch and compost. A weed is a plant out of place!

Onions - to pick onions, you pull by the stem top, you chop the top 2 inches above the onion.

Carrots - a carrot is the root of the plant; you pull from the top, but pulling from the bottom of the stem is easier to get it out of the ground. Carrots have vitamin A and are good for your vision.

Insect control - chickens roam areas to help eat insects; you can also handpick the insects off plants (which we did); birds can help - purple martins can eat 2,000 bugs a day. BT is a bacterial disease that caterpillars get from sprayed pesticides. Some farms use tiny wasps to kill beetles.

Soil - to get soil, we can use horse manure, compost, cow and chicken manure. In China they use a green manure.

Sugars - high fructose is really bad for you! Sucrose is table sugar. Rice syrup, barley malt, and maple syrup are better for you than sucrose because they're not as processed.

Fresh/Local/Organic - Fresh: fresh food has vitamins, it has all of its nutrients, and it's not spoiled. Local: better environment that it's grown it, no transportation, more jobs in farms, undeveloped land (which means no factories or tall buildings - just farms). Organic: uses no pesticides, no chemicals, not genetically modified, no hormones or antibiotics.

Written by Megan

In the afternoon, we split up into three groups. One group made a type of herb salt - it had oregano and a lot of other herbs. We used mortar and pestles to grind it, then put the whole thing into a blender. Another group planted different kind of herbs to take home in pots with our names on them. Now we'll have our own organic herbs that aren't processed - we won't have to buy them. The third group made salsa for the dinner we're having Friday to end our great experience and for our parents to know exactly what we did.

Written by Eliana

Thursday, August 14

Today we went to Sankanac. We pulled weeds out of a compost pile and we took buckets and put the compost dirt into the buckets. The compost had been there for three years - it started as cow manure. When we pulled the weeds, we had to shake the dirt into the compost pile and throw the weeds up against the fence. We did that because the soil was, "black gold," because it's rich and helps the plants grow. We rode on the back of a tractor in a wagon with Sebastian to get to the compost pile. "Seven of us walked back to Sankanac after we finished working while the others waited for Sebastian to pick them up. It was a little more than a mile walk. Good thing there was shade! When we went up on the tractor, I really didn't get to notice all of our surroundings. But on our walk back, I really got to see all the farm land and all the animals and all the hard work that was put into their farm." (Eliana) "We feel good about ourselves because it's the last workday. We've proven to our families that we could do it and feel satisfied." (Matt)

Today Zairre and Mr Mason stayed at the school garden and pruned the trees around the benches. We pruned them so there was a more open area to sit around the trees. Tamara planted flowers around the chairs and put mulch on the grass. She also put flowers in pots and clipped mint leaves.

This afternoon we split into two groups made zucchini brownies and mixed berry bread. It was easy to make the brownies because we had done it before. We put raspberries and blackberries on top of the berry bread/cake. The cake was made of eggs, baking powder, flour, corn meal, sugar, buttermilk, melted butter, and salt. We made the desserts for tomorrow's trip to Fellowship Farm. Parents are coming to eat dinner so we need a lot of food.

Written by Jaryn, Zairre, Matt and Alyssa

Tuesday, August 12

Today we went to the Sankanac Farm. Meanwhile, back at the farm (at the school), Jim and Tamara moved all the flowers and the herbs from the greenhouse. Jim rolled up the fence around the tomato garden, then we picked up all the apples that had dropped on the ground so Mr Mason could cut the grass. We tasted some of the apples and they tasted good - there were a bunch that were rotten or had holes. We picked raspberries, and removed stems from mint leaves and stevia and crushed them up into a powder. The leaves are for tea. That's when everyone came back from Sankanac...

Miss Kate was at Sankanac. Over there, they weeded a flower bed and did lots of stuff to help prepare for the CSA pickup, like washing and counting yellow squash, processing carrots, carrying crates, and many other tasks. There is always something more to do on a farm.

This afternoon, we made three different kinds of salsa. Tamara liked hers best. It was just a regular salsa that everyone eats in jars. It had tomatoes, cilantro, onions, vinegar, olive oil, sweet pepper, and basil. Jim's salsa had peaches, jalepeno peppers, onions, cucumber, mint, and basil. Jim's favorite was the green one; it had corn, jalepenos, green peppers, lime juice, water, vinegar, tomatillo, coriander, and an herb that tastes like cilantro called papallo. We also made tortilla chips by taking the outside of a taco and putting salt and olive oil on it. We cut the tortilla into chips, then baked them in the oven. They tasted pretty good, like regular tortilla chips. Salsa day was pretty good - we liked it because we got to eat! And we liked cutting the ingredients. Also this afternoon, people tried jalepeno pepper and it burned - it made people cry. Overall, today was pretty fun - and we're getting paid!

Written by Tamara and Jim

Monday, August 11

This morning we went to Charlestown Farm. We looked at their chickens - we learned that if you have food, the chickens will rush to you. Miss Susan, the farmer, sells the eggs for $4 for a dozen. We think that's pretty expensive. Then we went to go pick a couple of potatoes. We picked them by hand, with a big metal fork. The potatoes looked a little yellow or golden brown. After that, we went to weed their cabbage patch, for the "eight thousandth time" as Eric says. This time was easier to weed because there weren't many weeds and they were right there - they weren't surrounded by flowers or anything like that.

In the afternoon we cooked with Miss Yvonne and Miss Denise and everybody made their own pizza. Megan liked the lemon basil and oregano, Eric liked the pepperoni, and Tony liked the mushrooms. We used cheese, sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms, all types of peppers - sweet and jalepeno - basil, lemon basil, oregano, dried tomatoes and regular tomatoes, yellow squash, eggplant, and swiss chard. The base of the pizza was a pita bread. We started with pita bread, then put sauce, a few of the toppings, cheese, and then we put it in the oven for a couple of minutes to make a pizza - italian style! We liked the pizza. Some of us think we would make it at home.

Friday, August 8

Friday was our trip day. In the morning we went across the street to Seven Stars Yogurt farm. We saw their cows and how they process the milk. We also got to see a new baby calf that was just born that morning, named Indy. They make the yogurt in a big silver barrel that processes milk inside of it. Instead of milking the cows by hands, they use a milking machine - an automatic milking udder! Seven Stars has to label their product exactly because there are inspectors that come to see whether they're following rules, like how big the symbol that says "organic" can be. They told us that their costs for making the yogurt were going up because gas is more expensive; we saw a barrel of organic maple syrup that cost $2800! At the end of our visit, we got to sample: vanilla, original, and maple. Megan liked vanilla and maple - she mixed them together with leftover peach jam we had made.

After the yogurt farm, we visited Hives for Lives. We saw six or seven of their beehives. You can stand to the side of the beehive, but not in front of it, because the worker bees don't know where they're going when they come out of the hive and could sting you. A couple of worker bees sometimes goes behind the queen bee's back and crowns another queen bee. The two queen bees battle to the death to see which will be the queen. After that, we got to label the honey, pour it into jars, and took wax off the honeycomb to let the honey come out. Hives for Lives is a nonprofit organization; they're raising money for cancer charities. It's just two girls who started this business after their grandfather died, and they wanted to help people who had cancer like their grandfather did. Plus, Molly and Carly are only 16 and 14, and it's really cool how two girls can do so much in only a few years. They raised a lot of money. After we helped with the honey, we went swimming. We had fun. We went home.

Written by Megan

Thursday, August 7

First in the morning we took attendance and we played the game with the hula hoop and we couldn't let go of each others hands. We got a pretty good time for having all of the adults playing too. Then we took our waters and gathered up all of our stuff and we went to the seven stars farm across the street and we picked beets. The beet picking took about an hour then we took all the weeds off the beets and put them in a container. After that we took our break. The people that owned the farm were going to store the beets in a root cellar.

Written by Kahron

In the afternoon we split into three groups and Mr Mark picked a couple people to make a new recipe for rice crispy treats that were vegan. We made them with rice mellow. It was very sticky and got everywhere. We then cleaned up our mess and observed the people who were making the fried rice. We then tasted it and it was delicious. We then got into our groups for chores.

Written by Hannah

I was in the group who made the fried rice. First we had one group chop green peppers, one chop celery, and one chop onions. We diced the vegetables, meaning we cut them into little pieces. Then we put the veggies into a pot called a wok and sauteed them. Denise and Yvonne passed around a little white plant - it was a mung bean sprout. We scrambled eggs, then we fried the rice and then mixed everything together with Tamari sauce. Tamari smelled a little interesting, so I didn't try it. The fried rice was very good and Denise and Yvonne said you could add anything you wanted to it - chicken, shrimp, anything!

Written by Eliana

Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Green of Green Day

We started off the day with circling up and playing a hula hoop game where we all had to hold hands and jiggle a hula hoop around the circle without letting go of hands. We did it three times: 1:39, 1:32, and the last time 1 minute and 5 seconds.

After that we got our journals and wrote up the cost of our expenses and our income. We subtracted expenses from income and we ended up with $21.50 as our profit from last week's brownies and cookie sale.

We split into two groups; one worked on making pesto, the other group made peach jam. Andre calls it 'Space Jam' for some reason no one can figure out, as usual! We cut up two big boxes of peach 'seconds', we blended them slightly, then added sugar and pectin. Then after lunch we processed it while it was hot, and put it in a boiling water bath. At the end of the day, we had make a good bit of pesto, and 70 small jars of peach jam. Triskeles will buy all of this from us for their golf outing.

At lunch we had beef hot dogs, tofurkey hot dogs and turkey dogs, with potato wedges wedges and the sweet potato chocolate mousse we made on Tuesday. We ate our own catchup also.

In the afternoon, one group took a walk down to French Creek and also the basketball courts. Then they cleaned up, while the other group, who had finished the jam, went to the creek. They found fresh watercress growing in the brook.

Jacob, Eliana, Andre, Hannah, Tessa, Alexis, Mr. Mark

Tuesday, August 5

Today was definitely a learning experience. This morning we pulled onions, we counted veggies so that some could be sold at a market, some could stay at the farm for the CSA pick up and some could be given to the pigs (who smelled really bad). We fed the pigs and Eliana thought it was nasty - the pigs stank and she never wants to do it again! We also pulled bugs off plants. They were called mexican beetles and we had to squash them. We pulled the bugs off the bean plants so that the plants wouldn't get eaten. Some of us felt disturbed and disgusted by killing the bugs. Some of us felt like it was just another day's work. On any other farms without people to pick the bugs off the plants, the bugs would have taken over, or the farmers would have used chemicals to kill all of the bugs - even the useful ones that help the plant. Also today, we saw things that we've never seen before - we saw mice in the onion patch!

We came back to the garden building and made some "foul concoctions" according to Tessa, except for the pear-peach-apple juice and the last juice that we created ourselves - it was made with lime, pineapple, apples and peaches. We used a juicer to blend fruit and vegetables into different kinds of juices. We all got to taste each juice in a little cup and rated them 1-5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. We used apples, pears, peaches, celery, tomatoes, fennel, beets, carrots, lime, and ginger in different combinations. Our favorite juice would definitely be Juice #3, which we described above. The worst juice we tasted was the one with the beets. It tasted, "indescribably disgusting. There was so much that was nasty about it, I can't put it into words," says Eliana. Everybody tried the juice, though, so we can all have our own opinions. Mr Mark told us that juices are good for the digestive system and that they can boost your immune system.

Today is pay day! Though for some, it is not about the money, it's about the educational credit. Today was just fine.

Written by Eliana, Lonnisha, and Tessa

Monday, August 4

This morning we split up into groups. One group stayed and helped Mr Mason work around the garden building. That group weeded around the building, cut weeds in carrot patches, and Stephanie picked tomatoes for the afternoon. At Kimberton, we picked onions, weeded cabbage beds, chopped the tops off of onions, and one group worked with Mr Tom. Weeding the cabbages was hard because there were lots of prickly plants in the beds that we couldn't touch without hurting ourselves. Picking onions was hard because some of them were mushy and wet because they were rotten. We processed probably a whole bed of onions - 3 wheelbarrows.

This afternoon we came back to eat lunch and then Ms Cara arrived. We made ketchup, waffles that were vegan, groundnut soup (groundnuts are peanuts), kale chips, collards and sweet potato mousse. To make the kale chips, we had to rub little pieces of kale with olive oil, season them, and then bake them in the oven. We didn't like the kale chips - it was an unsatisfying taste, in our opinion. The waffles were okay, but we would have liked them better warm and with maple syrup. Alexis chopped celery for the soup; Haley worked on the kale chips; Jacob helped measure water and oats for the waffles; Willie also made waffles. Today we learned to never trust Zairre with waffles - Willie and Zairre burnt one, and apparently it was Zairre's fault. We also learned that there are two different ways to make ketchup - you can make it with tomato paste, or boil down tomatoes. It takes an hour and a half to boil down tomatoes because they have a lot of water in them and you have to take all the water out. Today was a little hectic in the kitchen because our kitchen is small, but we made a lot of food items.

Written by Alexis, Willie, Jacob, and Haley

Friday, August 1

On Friday we went to the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, PA. We had a scavenger hunt that took almost an hour and we weren't even finished! We had to find certain items and answer questions. We had to ask the owner of the stand for some of the questions - we had to ask the sugar free candy section about what kind of treats they sell there; we talked to the cheese place and found out that the "chevre" was from California; we found out that the big lobsters came from the west coast; that honey is good for your immune system. After the scavenger hunt we ate lunch. Haley and Jacob had cheesesteaks, Alexis had a veggie sandwich, Kate had sushi and a turkey sandwich, and almost everyone had ice cream. The market had everything! They even had a bookstore. We all loved the market and want to go there again.

After that, we went to the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. Mr. Natale showed us around. We saw two or three of their restaurants, five different kitchens where they have cooking classes. We saw a kids cooking class that was cleaning up and playing air guitar. We talked about the different majors that the School has (hotel management, restaurant management, culinary arts and pastry arts), how many students go there, how many people are employed in the restaurant industry, and other things. The best part was seeing the bathrooms! The girls bathroom was Moroccan themed. It had lamps and pillows and ornate pots decorating it. The boys bathroom had a car hanging from the ceiling, license plates on the walls, and a crosswalk sign that was made into a chair. We liked to visit the Restaurant School but Haley says she will never attend - some people like Tessa and Andre really wanted to go there! Mr. Natale told us about the scholarships you can get to attend the Restaurant School and told us about how to apply.

Friday was a very successful trip.

Written by Jacob, Haley, Alexis and Willie