Farm Food Forest at the Schoolhouse: Week 1

Hi there, Emily here! What a fantastic week we are having in our Farm, Food and Forest program! We are really getting into the swing of things here at the Schoolhouse.

What is Story Time up to this week, you ask?
Well, there was plenty of garden time this week! We have so many beans, tomatoes and other veggies to snack on. We went on one of our infamous nature walks and heard the story of "The Squirrel Stole Manabozho's Paint" by Amy. We also took down lots of observations we made on our walk and had lots of free time to explore on our own. The cattails these days are super fluffy!

Yummy! Having snacks in our bean teepee!

Yummy! Jasper snacks in our bean teepee!

Nature walk time!

Amy is great at telling stories!

We saw so much in the forest!

Logan shows off a discovery.

Nari's class was in the forest for their FFF field day this week!

What a MARVELOUS morning in the forest it was!

Nari’s class arrived to the heartbeat rhythms of Bekah’s new drum. The drum symbolizes time when we strive to quiet our voices and bodies and listen to the sounds around us. Gathering around the morning circle, we welcomed each other and shared names. It was lots of people’s first time to these woods!

After talking about what it means to enter a forest and what respect for it looks like, we made our way to the turkey field (the one where we play lots of games). On our way we noticed some scat…hairy with various textures. We think it might be a sign of a coyote.

This time in the field we played “Time to see the Turkeys!” Bekah was a goose up ahead and when she turned around FAST we all had to stop and be as still as we could. We played a bunch of rounds. We also spotted a lot of milkweed where we were playing.

Pausing once more outside the forest, we gave gratitude to the forest for letting us visit for the morning and then, once more to Bekah’s drumbeat, we silently made our way to Fallen Oak base camp!

Upon arriving, we took a seat on the logs at the fire pit and while we had a snack, Bekah told the story of “Aida Returns”. It seemed to talk about how sometimes the changes that we know are around us are hard to truly see….it’s more something we feel.

We passed around the Green Antler (our talking stick) and each shared some stories before heading out to explore! Fallen Oak was SUPER fun, and challenging at times, to balance on. Her crown is like a natural ladder and a LOT of people like to excavate the soil from under her roots. We saw mini frogs, I think they’re called Peepers, and LOTS of fungus. We learned that you have to be careful with mushrooms because many can be poisonous, but they’re each SO cool and different. There was even a yellow one with purple stripes! Those mushrooms are all busy turning the older forest floor back to nutrient-filled soil! Some of us built fairy houses too….we’ll see if anyone moved in when we return!

We gathered back at our fire ring and that’s when Bekah brought out her partner in crime, Toby the Ukulele! We are learning a new song called, “Oh the Clouds”. After, whoever wanted to had the chance to hold the Green Antler and share something they were grateful for during the morning spent in the forest. We had a great time!

Lots of things along the forest floor to be checked out!

Getting our game going!

A beautiful day in the forest...

Just appreciating the flora!

A tiny frog or giant hands??

Tree trunk mining has become an FFF forest favorite!

How about Danielle's class?
In the kitchen this week, we focused on APPLES! With the first day of Autumn this week, what more perfect time is there to hop right into one of Vermont's finest fall crops. With great thanks to the Yates family for their awesome donation of NINE (that's right, 9!) pecks of all different varieties of apples, we were able to have an ultimate taste testing session and have enough left over to make some delicious apple cake!

During our taste test, we recorded which apples were our favorites, what the apples tasted, felt and smelled like and how they differed from each other.

During our baking session, we practiced peeling, slicing and measuring our ingredients as well as used our artistic abilities to decorate our cakes and fill them with yummy apples slices. They came out great!

We also did some fantastic apple art and researched tons of apples facts!
Did you know??

1. An apple can be as small as a pea!

2. Apples are crunchy because of a substance in them that holds the cells together like a kind of glue. When this substance gets old or breaks down, the apple gets mealy.

3. The scientific name for apple is malus domestica.

4. Apples have been improved by selection for thousands of years, Selection means that people and animals chose the biggest, best, and most delicious apples and those apples' seeds were spread and grown most effectively, resulting in more and better apples over time.

5. Cooking apples are more tart than apples intended for eating raw. Maiden's blush and granny smith are two kinds of cooking apples that can also be eaten raw.

6. The McIntosh apple was discovered by John McIntosh in Canada in the early 1800s. The McIntosh was the most popular apple for more than a hundred years, Now some other varieties, including gala, are more popular. Joh McIntosh spelled his name differently than Macintosh Swan spells his!

7. Apples turn brown when cut or bruised because the oxygen in the air comes in contact with polyphenol oxidase (PPO) an enzyme in the apple. A chemical reaction occurs that results in the cut edge turning brown. Some apples turn browner than others because they contain greater amounts of PPO.

Taste testing!

Carefully recording our observations...

Expert apple slicers!

Packing our cake batter with, you guessed it, apples!

All ready for the oven!

Mark's class was on the farm this week!
We started off with introductions and a fruit or a veggie we had never tried. We talked a lot about exotic fruits. We noticed during our introduction that the farm had a lot of Bluebirds visiting in groups.

Next came chores. We split into groups and while one group went with Corie to restock the farm store, another fed the pigs their breakfast of soaking bread. We found some great scratching sticks that the pigs really seemed to enjoy!

In the greenhouse, we taste tested parsley and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. We found evidence of tomato horn worms, such as defoliation and partially eaten fruit, as well as poop! Using our eagle eyes, we found 8 horn worms! We brought them over to the chickens to become lunch! We had lots of time with the chickens to feed them and opportunities to handle them. This seemed like our favorite activity of the day!

Lastly, we journeyed across the street to a wild apple tree with buckets and ladders to help Corie with a project. We harvested apples that were "pig worthy" and apples that were "people worthy". We climbed the ladders as well as directly up into the trees. We brought them back to the farm to share with the pigs and shared the biggest apple between our entire group. It was super juicy and sweet!

Just before getting on the bus to head back to school, we spotted a Harrier and and Red Tailed Hawk! A great ending to our day.

Restocking the farm store.

Feeding the pigs!

Greenhouse time!

Getting to know our chicken friends.

Finding just the right apple!

Last but not least, what have the Deltas been up to this week?

This week, the Deltas took a trip to Bread and Butter to do some work and gear up for a new potential project! We worked together to move the chicken house and took time with chickens, practicing the right handling techniques.

After that, we looked at a map of Bread and Butter to start thinking about a new plot or plots for the Schoolhouse garden. We took samples of soil from the greenhouse to be analyzed at the University of Maine to really understand just what is going on under ground at the farm!