Moving Forward

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

-       Sir Winston Churchill

The beginning of EPPG is over and we move steadily into the body of our work. What a great beginning it was but today we all got our hands dirty. The beds are all weeded and the garden looks great. But there is still much work to be done as we begin expanding the garden in two directions. The first will be mulching the ditch were the sunflowers are grown. The cardboard is down and as we wait for the much we weed our way back into the undergrowth to develop a pineapple garden.  This turned out to be no simple task. The grass is tall and well-established and other weeds seem to be stubborn in giving up their ground. The ground is firm and slightly rocky.

As we moved slowly backwards our compost piles grow higher and higher. However great progress was made. Our already resident pineapples are now happily sitting in their new private plots. The progress was slow and slightly daunting at first but besides a few run-ins with man eating spiders and incredibly stubborn plants we moved ahead undaunted. Much of the undergrowth is removed and soon we will be able to lay down some serious layers of cardboard and mulch. We have also been ordered to quest out into the world and return with as many pineapple tops each student can find.

Working in stages with separate groups makes watching the development of the garden very interesting. Every time I go it is slightly improved and looks slightly better. Also it leads to some very interesting conversations such as how different children treat nature. Some love to stare some love to touch things and some like to cop attitudes and stomp frogs apparently. We did get a quick visit from a kindergarten class today. The looks of excitement reminded us all of why we are working so hard in the morning sun. In the end it was worth it and I believe were all excited to keep moving forward.

Tristram Norman

Weeding, Discoveries, and Things To Come

     Today was one of firsts. As a new member of the team working on the garden it was my first true day working at Lakewood Elementary along side two other firsties, Forest and Alina. For the group in its entirety today represented our the first day of our new schedule, and for many of us, our first day ever having interacted with gardening in general.
     Walking onto the school campus, seeing the children we'd be educating for the first time walking along the corridors and up the portable ramps staring with interest and waving to us with giant smiles across there faces created a sense of kindredness between we three students who had barley met before our afternoon shift. I think we all felt at ease in each others presences, talking of our environmental interests, goals and opinions and sharing what our own personal value of working in the garden.
     Having worked in gardens before it felt amazing to be able to break free from my daily courses and lectures and dig my hands in the soil for the first time in months. Although it was a very warm and sunny Florida afternoon, Forest, Alina and I managed to weed the entire trench area where we plan to plant Sunflowers. managing to fill 2 wheelbarrows full of compostable overgrowth from the small area! After, we laid the base of cardboard over the trench to maintain the weed growth until the area can be mulched.

     With an hour left in our shift we decided to continue weeding many of the raised beds and a bit of the pineapple area as best we could. As we picked our way through the Sweet Potato bed, Forest and I noticed a patch of Purslane sprouting. Purslane is an edible "weed" that can be used as a leafy green in salads. It has the highest amount of Omeg-3 fatty acids found in any other leafy vegetable. It is also amazing ground cover, maintaining soil moisture.
     After weeding a few of the beds in the heat we deiced to move toward the Pineapples, an area in much need of some TLC. Finishing our shift we cleared as much of the thick rooted grasses as we could. Forest and I talked at length about how interesting it must be for a child to see a pineapple grow for the first time.

Erin Mattick

Fall Semester Begins

"You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result."  Mahatma Ghandhi

And so we are underway.  After Ethan Mauger spent the Autumn Term cleaning out weeds and planting seeds and putting things in order, we begin the new semester with an anticipation of great things to come.  

This morning a dozen and a half Eckerd College undergraduates showed up at 7:30 in the morning, while the air was still cool and the dew was still on the grass, to visit the garden for the first time and come together as the Fall garden teaching community.  Everyone was in a remarkably great mood despite the early hour and we got lots of little things accomplished.

We have squash or cucumber (too early to tell) volunteering all over the garden this fall.  It is popping up in every bed.  Elsewhere, okra sprouts are taking roots and growing well in the past week of rains.  In less than a week, the sedge and grasses have started to try to recolonize the beds and push up through the mulch, but with this new community of gardeners, we will soon get ahead of it once again.

The lovely pointed leaves of the sweet potato vine are sprouting from the place where tubers were buried last week and we anticipate a nice crop of the delicious underground fruit by December.  As you can see, the weeds are doing well, too.  Many hands are needed to help along our food in this Florida climate.

Our tour began in the storage shed and ended with the watermelon that has somehow survived a summer of drought and overgrowth of grasses at the far end of the beds.  We witnessed many pineapple plants that have made similar remarkable survivals and that will be a part of the garden growth in the season ahead.

In past years, with little expience to guide me on what will come next I have often begun the year with a bit too much anxious anticipation, worry even that things will not go as thing ought to go.  Now this fourth year of work, my worries are erased.  I look at the sprouting plants, the beautiful space, the happy faces of Eckerd College students, and I am filled with joy at the opportunity to be a participant in this community, to be a cultivator of relationships and a tender of spirit.

On Monday, the final preparations of the site get underway, and before we know it, the Lakewoods kids will join us and the whole cycle will begin again.

Kip Curtis
Project Director

The planting has started!

 After a long couple of weeks of weeding and mulching in the garden the beds were ready to get some seeds and plants to start the fall growing season. All of the beds needed some supplementing of manure and soil to boost their growing potential. Katie and I picked up manure from a local horse farm and added it to the beds and ALL of the soil came from our compost! I was amazed at how much soil we created from last semester.

Last week Katie and I planted a few starters of okra, corn, squash, broccoli, peppers, and eggplant. 

We also planted all of the small sweet potatoes and their leaves have already started to sprout out of the bed.

The okra came up very quickly too in our starters, and all over the garden in random beds. These beds also have some random sprouts coming up from seeds of last semester’s veggies. 

 I've had a great time fixing up the garden this month and can't wait to get started with the kids!

Peace,
Ethan Mauger

Before

After!

 

Into the Street 2011!

For the past two weeks Ethan Mauger, an Eckerd College senior, has been laboring away on the Edible Peace Patch, clearing overgrown grasses and weeds, transplanting bushes, planting seeds and getting starters started.  He's done a fantastic job, but, except for one or two of the days, he's been completely on his own sweating it out in the Florida sun.

This past Friday, however, we got some major assistance from a group of 14 Eckerd College freshmen participating in the annual "Into the Streets" service day where Eckerd College sends its students into St. Petersburg to help out wherever it's needed.  From what I saw, the class of 2015 is an impressive group!

The day was almost unbearably hot, in the nineties with a thick humid air and a burning summer Florida sun, and we asked them to turn sod, pull weeds, and lay mulch.  Without a complaint, they set to work.  The joy I get as an Eckerd College professor listening to the quiet conversations of working students cannot be measured.  Here they learn about each other and begin to make friendships that will last four year and then a lifetime.  

I had to convince them to stop and rest under the shade of a nearby oak tree after two hours.  They seemed unwilling, persistent, driven, dedicated.  In the photo above you can see the large area they had already cleared and after twenty minutes of cooling down, they went right back to work unprompted.

I had expected to complete maybe 1/4 of the garden area last Friday, but these students completed almost half of it, and laid a lot of mulch to boot.  They were soaked with sweat, and sunburnt from the pounding rays of sun, but joyous in their own way and when I told them it was quitting time, they asked if I was sure.  "Have we done enough?" One of them queried.

These young adults were amazing.  They impressed me, and further reinforced my belief that the future will be in good hands.  Thank you all and thanks to Brian MacHarg and the Service Learning Office who organizes this event every year.

And thanks especially to Ethan Mauger, who has picked up again where the freshmen left off last Friday and has turned a tangle of weeds and overgrown beds back into the beautiful garden we will tend this semester.  I am grateful for all that you do.

Kip Curtis
Director, Edible Peace Patch

The first week back

It has been about three months since I’ve been to the peace patch and I’ve missed it. The first thing, or things, that I saw were the weeds. It looked like an over grown meadow to the point where I couldn’t even find the beds!

So I spent the first two days weeding all the beds and managed to fill two of the compost piles up to the top of the fence. I was definitely surprised at the amount of time that it took me to find the bottom of each bed. I also managed to get myself sun burnt during the first few hours of work. During the first day I was lucky enough to find about a dozen sweet potatoes to harvest and another dozen that will be replanted when the bed is ready. I made some delicious sweet potato fries for my roommates as soon as I made it home. 

I spent most of Wednesday picking up mulch from the local recycling center and piling it up at the edge of the garden. It seems like I picked up a lot of mulch, but I’m sure I’ll be making a few more trips before the end of the month to make our garden look great.

Thursday was my favorite day because the garden finally looked more like the peace patch. I mowed all of the grass that had crept up over the summer so all of the beds could be seen. I also pulled up all of the weeds from our three sister’s plot (squash, beans, & corn). This was a task that took about three times as long as I first expected, but now looks great. Friday I prepared the beds by raking up all of the roots that did not get pulled out the first couple of days. Now all that the beds need is a little bit of horse manure and they will be ready for seeds!

Next week I have to weed the pineapple area, which has about five that made it and start planting seeds!

 Peace from the peace patch,

Ethan

Today was my last day of teaching for the spring semester 2011, but definitely not the last time I will be teaching at the Peace Patch. The kids came out and ran into their groups, excited for this week’s lesson. Unfortunately it was not a lesson today, but a little test on all of the lessons that we have taught throughout the semester. It seemed like we hid the fact that it was a test from the kids pretty well because they were so excited to do the worksheet and got started right away, no complaints! It also could have been because we told them that if they were good they would get to play a game at the end of class. Anytime the kids were having a little trouble with one of the questions I would mention a game or activity that we did over the semester and they would remember the answer. This semester has helped me realize that this active teaching style works really well with kids and I’m pretty jealous that I didn’t have a program like this at my elementary school.

Once the worksheet was completed we played the compost game and a few rounds of the butterfly life cycle.

After the students left Jamie, Sarah, and I were visited by a preschooler whose pet butterfly had hatched around 9:00 this morning. It is the second one she has released into our garden this year! These preschoolers have not yet experienced the garden lessons, but they already have a fascination with butterflies and nature so I’m excited to teach them more next year.

It was a little sad leaving the garden and saying bye to all of my students, but I know we will all be back next year for more garden fun in the Peace Patch.

Ethan Mauger

Harvest Festival 2011!!

Another season passed.

What a blessing to be a part of this community, to be a part of Eckerd College, where students care about making the world a better place and actively do something about it, to be a part of Lakewood Elementary School, which has welcomed us and allowed us to spend time with all of the beautiful children there, to be able to build and plant and cultivate and harvest a garden...and a community.  What a blessing it is.

We had visitors tour the garden in the late afternoon, croon at our sunflowers, admire the tomatoes, peer into the compost.

Our kale and collards and sweet potato and beans all welcomed them with bright green leaves and food for the picking.

There were samples to try in the garden, nasturtium flowers, basil leaves and dill seeds.

There was okra the size of small children.

There was a palpable feeling of joy as we all shared our landscape with the community.

Inside, Eckerd College students had prepared a feast.  They each made a dish based on the vegetables we grew in the garden and the food was stupendous and healthy.

Everyone filled their plates with pasta and salad and a host of dishes like lasagna and eggplant and sweet potato.

There was more than enough for everyone and everyone was well fed.

We even spotted some elementary kids actually eating their vegetables.

Two of my project coordinators, graduating senior Jamie P.  and phenomenal sophomore Katie S. greeted folks as they came through the door, welcoming them to our celebration.

Kaylie B., who was a big part of the garden before she graduated last year, came to visit her old and new friends, sharing a laugh with Tommy L., Cheslea E., Ethan M., Sydney C., and Jamie P.

There were seconds, and thirds.

And everyone readied themselves for some entertainment.

Three of the fourth grade boys from chorus agreed to sing The Garden Song led and accompanied by Lakewood Elementary's fantastically talented music instructor Mrs. Alfaro.

Three fourth grade girls from strings then serenaded us with four songs on the violin and viola.

We had an opportunity to thank Alpha Kappa Alpha, whose generous support helped us get started in the fall and serve up full dishes in the spring.

We also had an opportunity to thank Sarah T., who brought her mom, and whose work developing the Wellness Kitchen and teaching nutrition from our garden was perhaps the most generous gift we received this year.  

We will MISS Sarah!!

The Eckerd students enjoyed the show.

We even raffled off eight eggplant and pepper plants to several lucky winners who were excited to bring them home and see how much they could grow.

It was a wonderful evening with a lovely community,

and I am truly one of the luckiest people in the world.

SEE YOU NEXT FALL!!

Kip Curtis

Project Manager

Planning and Cooking up a Storm!

Today was spent making final preparations for the harvest festival... making posters, buying last minute groceries, and gathering pictures... everyone is so excited! Despite some initial organizational confusion (as is the case with most big events), everyone left the meeting with a sense of preparedness and anticipation. I'm excited to see how the parents respond to all the hard work the kids have been doing this semester... I think they will be pleasantly surprised!

I have been spending my afternoon cooking up a storm! I am making eggplant lasagna, and so far it's coming out as planned... let's keep our fingers crossed!

In other news, everyone was quite amused with the plight of monk parakeets that frequent our garden. They showed up this morning, despite the mass of people, and tried to attack our sunflowers. We managed to shoo them away (for now), but this introduce species definitely enjoys munching on the flowers pretty regularly. Here they are pictured perched on the power-line, waiting for us to turn our backs!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update from the Harvest Festival... you won't want to miss it!