Today was truly phenomenal

I have posted many times how happy I have been with the response of the campers to the garden.  I never could have dreamed of what transpired today.

My good friend Valinda stopped by yesterday and visited the garden.  Josh and I showed her the veggies stored in the refrigerator and she offered to come by and make some pickles with the surplus cucumbers we have been amassing.

After opening exercises with the campers Valinda was near the garden setting up her food processor and unpacking tupperware that she had brought.  I asked Tim the camp director to see if any groups would be interested in helping her with the cucumbers.  Within minutes the first grade boys showed up and we started helping the kids collect and clean the vegetables.  I left to attend a meeting and checked back on the operation an hour later.  A pop up tent was added and two other groups were there, older campers slicing cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and helping Valinda empty the food processor.

This went on all day.

By noon farmer Josh had 2nd grade girls skipping behind him in the garden collecting more peppers and corn for the batch of salsa they were making.  He was grinning ear to ear.  I loved listening to the children bragging about how good the cucumber salad was or the salsa or the pickles.  I was commanded to try everything that the kids were making. With Valinda's guidance each bowl could have graced the tables of the best restaurants in town.

I had to visit another camp at mid-day and I was  sure that Valinda would have been packed up and left when I returned at 2:30.  Wrong!!!  Closing exercises were fast approaching and the pool staff were there to see what all the fuss was about.  Bags of Tortillas and chips lay emptied by campers and staff alike and over 70 pints of pickles had been packaged.  5 or 6 gallons of sliced tomatoes, mangos (we bought) and ground cherries were collected in a bin to be made into salsa tomorrow.

These children have very likely eaten more fresh vegetables today than they have in weeks.  Kids were saying "I never eat pickles but I love these."  More than just teaching campers how to grow vegetables, we are teaching about good nutrition, how to make heathy food fun to eat, and to show children that they can make this at home. When summer camp is over our after school programs are going to be forming gardening clubs which will include lessons on how to prepare the food we are growing.

Today we stumbled onto the Why we are doing this not just the How.  I have never tasted a more delicious Why.

Veggies really do taste better when you grow them

OK so the harvest is kicking in big time right now.  Okra, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, squash, ground cherries, sunflowers, pumpkins and watermelon and dang gum if the brandywine tomatoes that are as big as my hand may just be the best tomatoes I have eaten in years.  I know that I am biased but I am darn near a vegetarian lately, eating squash, zucchini, tomato sandwiches and everything else that Josh is growing.  You gotta love mid to late summer.

It is wonderful not to worry about who has been handling the vegetables before eating them as I pick the cherry tomatoes right off the vine.  They are sweet and as flavorful as table grapes.  When I go to the vegetable section

sunflowers reaching for the sun

of the local Safeway I am scoffing at the selections that are being offered.  It is amazing how arrogant one gets when you have a gifted farmer making your fields come to life.

The big worry right now is to prevent so much wonderful food from going to waste.  We are filling the walk in refrigerator at camp with fresh veggies and we barely have enough room for the camper lunches each day.  Even though we are filling vegetable orders each day,  they are not keeping pace with the output and we are not sure if we will be able to move the produce as easily once summer camp ends in two weeks.

Next year we will have a CSA in place for our after school school and summer camp families, but when we started out this past March we just were not sure how much we would be able to grow and if the vegetables would be good enough to sell.  Now we know.

todays harvest

As much fun as we are having right now Josh has promised that the harvest will be much better this fall and next year.  That is a little hard to imagine.  Most importantly is the interest level of the campers.  Each day Josh as no problem finding eager little helpers in the garden and he loves to share his knowledge with them.  It has been such a win win proposition.  Lots of help, a built in market, a great harvest, and so much enthusiasm from our campers and their parents.

A USDA high tunnel grant is awaiting my signature and the fall looks to be just as promising as the summer has been.  Good Good stuff.

Mid summer progress

Ok so the a week at the beach and a Ill family member has contributed to a lack of blog contributions lately.

We are now 6 weeks into the summer.  The cucumbers are still coming in at nearly 100 per day but the squash and zucchinis have slowed down.  The tomatoes are struggling with rot forming the top or bottoms so we are not looking at the output we had hoped for.  Josh seems to think it is from a lack of calcium.  I still had an amazing heirloom tomato he picked for me today.

The best news is that the USDA grant for a high tunnel is just a form submittal away.  Now to carefully select the greenhouse we want and to plan on how best to handle production and what to produce.  We will be operational by September and the possibilities of linking with schools is very promising.  It would be hard to keep Josh on the staff if we did not have the ability to extend the growing season and engage in proper winter preparations for next Spring with a greenhouse.  I am so happy that the plans we have made are completely on track.  Nancy and I had a small raised bed garden next to the house which has failed miserably.  Truly an affirmation that Josh is a talented farmer and there is so much for me to learn from him.

I appreciate all of the feedback and interest I have received from this blog but I am considering presenting at ACA National and the MAEOE conference to share our success with my peers.  My campers are so interested in the garden and the most involved campers have learned so much from Josh.  There are tons of kids out there who are hungry to be involved and need more places like mine to tap into.  There are a lot of Millennials who are taking a different look at farming and the current food chain and generation behind them are showing even more interest.  I really believe that food production and diet will be very different in the coming years than the processed food production that has impaired the health of so many Americans.  So much for the soapbox.

I am attaching a few more pictures of the kids in the garden and veggie orders going home on the bus with campers.