Farm and Garden: Summer Update
As the school year drew to a close, harvests and seed saving filled our last days of Farming and Gardening. The spaces cared for by our students produced hundreds of pounds of food for the Fellowship Community kitchen. Beautiful dishes of fresh salads, carrots and radishes, warm, nourishing beet greens, and earthy, deep red beets brightened the tables of members, co-workers, and guests. Students joyfully sampled the vegetables they grew and delivered them to the kitchen with the pride of real farmers.
The medicinal garden entered its second season of blooming bounty as well in the last few weeks of school. All summer long, this garden will provide a workspace for our summer program, a haven for our dear pollinators, fresh herbs for the Fellowship Community, and the makings of future healing teas, sachets, tinctures and creams to get us through the winter months.
Bees...
And teas...
Central to all of our work on the land is the ongoing work of building relationships – amongst each other, with the broader community, and with the incredible vibrancy of the farm individuality that is unique in our school life. The opportunities that present themselves, for service and learning, in the gardens and on the farm, are endless as the students make connections between caring for the earth, the animals, themselves, and each other.
While summer students and teachers continue to care for the land throughout the summer, the seeds of next years programming, both literally and metaphorically, are already being sewn. Our seed saving program produced thousands of lettuce, beet, chard, and radish seeds for next years crops. In one greenhouse, oats, sewn to build biomass in the soil, are nearing the “milky oat stage,” when they can be harvested and dried for use in revitalizing and restorative herb teas. Plans are being made to repair another one of our greenhouses in the fall, with new beds to build and holes to patch, but for now, plants flourish in the steamy environment, which will bring a late summer harvest of tomatoes, squash, eggplants, peppers, and more.
Milky Oats
Summer Crops