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