September sunshine

Yesterday the weather was just about perfect.  Temps in the low 70's brilliant sunshine lots of happy kids and staff running around the place.

I had noticed that there were a lot of cherry tomatoes ripe on the vine and to told Josh to get the after schoolers out to pick them before they end up rotting on the ground.  It just so happened to be gardening day and a lot of cherry tomato eating with some picking was the outcome, and the parents were allowed to take those sweet red beauties home for free.  We also had some of the kids scrape sun flower seeds off the pods this afternoon.  Josh promised to soak the seeds in salt water tonight so they would be ready for next weeks snack.

I cannot think of a better place for a child to be after school than at Mountainside in the fall.  There was a mom touring the facility with her first grader

to decide if he wanted to become part of the fun.  She could not get her little boy to leave.

We had 220 eighth graders out on Monday and Tuesday from a nearby middle school for high ropes and team building.  With the exception of a few kids who thought they were about to plunge to their imminent death as they prepared to jump off the zip platform, we had nothing but smiles.  Even the young man who was shaking and wiping away some tears as I helped him dismount from the zip was going to go home with a huge sense of accomplishment.  Two other private schools are visiting this week for outdoor education which is keeping us from getting the greenhouse up and running.  Speaking of which...The framing us mostly up and secured, and I fully expect the greenhouse to be completed by the end of next week.

I ended the day driving my grandson Frankie back to the house on the four wheeler bathed in the amber light of the setting sun.  A big dinner awaited with Nancy, three of my kids, their spouses or significant others and and all 4 grandkids.  It is not possible for life to be better than that.

Fall is winding up.

As I watch the garden transitioning from summer to fall(i.e.
tomatoes rotting on the vine, corn cut down, cuchs and squash ripped out and the sunflowers sagging) life for the year seems to be on the ebb.  Not so.

For one thing there are plenty of pumpkins, okra, and the watermelons that have come out of the garden are some of the best I have ever tasted even though they have lots of seeds and the flesh is yellow.  I don't have a lot of experience with okra but we did fry some up last week with lots of Old Bay mixed in the batter.  Not Bad.  The other thing I learned about Okra is that the blossoms in the fall are truly beautiful.

So Josh wanted to introduce me to a farmer in Thurmont who is an engineer and a soil guru.  I tried to follow their conversation as best I could to no avail.  I did learn that the reduction of acid rain thru the Clean Air Act has depleted area soils of sulfur and left farmers scratching their heads as to why some of their veggies are not producing.  Who would have thought that the closing of coal fired power plants in West Virgina could ever have a negative effect on the region.

While we were there Josh needed to pick up some fertilizer for the strawberry rows we will be planting.  I thought the fertilizer was coming in bags and brought my pretty F150 instead of the stake body.  1 1/2 tons of compost dumped in the bed had an interesting aroma and a lot of bugs that were very much at home in the scoops.  I had to stop at a gas station and everyone at the pump was glad to see us leave.  If I did not employ the power washer I probably would not be allowed to park in the truck in the driveway.   Lets be clear about organic compost.  It either came out of somethings butt or it died and is decaying.  The term organic is very sexy in food circles but there was nothing sexy in the back of my pick up yesterday.  Bottom line is this, farmers from all over the region buy this guys organic compost.  As we were spreading the black gold on the strawberry beds, Josh gave me another wry smile and said that the strawberries next year are going to absolutely amazing.  The guy has already grown the best tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and watermelons I have ever eaten so it is all good.

The greenhouse came today so next weeks post will be all about that.

Camp is over but we are so not done

No posts for a while.  I was in Maine with my aging mother and when I got back we had no internet in the house for a week.  So here goes...

The summer camp is over, squash zucchini, and tomatoes are on the wain and Josh has been prepping the upper rows of the garden for fall kale, broccoli and brussels sprouts.  Watermelons, melons and pumpkins are getting huge but for the most part this week has been way quiet.  Not for long.

Our after school program starts on Monday and we will have over 50 kids ever school day till 6:30.  We are taking delivery of a 30x96 foot high tunnel on August 28th thanks to the USDA for a grant, and over 10 of our school based after school programs will be forming gardening clubs with visits to Mountainside weekly.  Here is what our vision is for the fall.  Our Mountainside after school kids will become the resident experts on gardening and will mentor the kids who visit once a week.  Of course all of this is voluntary and no one need participate if they choose not to.  However...after our summer experience with our campers I am absolutely certain we will be growing expert gardeners this school year not just vegetables.

The high tunnel will be assembled by mid September, we have already run our water and electric lines and just when the school year starts to settle in, the greenhouse will be ready for seeds.  Josh estimates that we should be able to extend the growing season into December so there will be plenty for our school year kids to do this Fall  The possibilities are truly endless.  This winter centers will be planting seedlings at there school sites and when they begin to germinate we will transfer them to our greenhouse in late February or early March.  Produce harvested will end up in cooking clubs at our participating after school programs and healthy nutrition will be the buzz word with kids happy to eat the food they have grown.  Is there a down side here?

Our goals for the summer were modest.  I did not know just how good at farming Josh was going to be.  We did not want to tackle more than we could handle and we were worried that little would grow in our depleted soil.  With a wry grin Josh has promised that next year will be soooo much better.  Strawberries, onions and blueberry and grape vines will begin to cover the soy bean fields.  We are just getting started.  Did I mention chickens?  You know who will be the biggest beneficiaries of all this growing?  The parents.  Who wouldn't want their children to participate in this program?  We will have kids going home and teaching their parents how to make a killer cucumber salad, or kale chips.  Best yet, my grocery budget has been reduced to meats and milk (and chocolate).  I am even enjoying zucchini bread baked by my wife Nancy who has caught the bug.  Life on the farm just gets better every day.

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.

Can 57 year olds know what is cool?

It used to be that if I thought something was cool it usually was.  Two tone shoes, yellow sport coats, Steely Dan and Earth Wind and Fire.  These things will always be cool to me.  Call it "Old School", But the reality is that most of my cool stuff is just old.  I cannot Rap, heck I could never remember all of those words and to spout them out rapid fire. It is just not in the repertoire of and old man especially this old man.  A very few things that are old are still cool,  like Frank Sinatra and Betty White. I think my kids humor me most of the time when I bust out dancing to the song "September".

So what has this to do with farming?  The fact is that I thought it would be a cool thing to incorporate farming into our camp programing.  That is an old person way of thinking.  When I was younger the last thing I would want to do during the summer is spend time in a hot garden plot and picking cucumbers.  As a kid that would be the antithesis of cool.  It would have been categorized as drudgery or chores.  I remember mister Young trying to convince his son Steve and I to bend over the hood of his car so he could teach us how to do an oil change.  Instead we shrugged him off and went and played stickball.  So as an older man when suddenly I had this idea that if we set up a garden and really grew vegetables, that kids "now a days" would be into it. That they would think it was cool.   Dag Gum if I wasn't right.

No really... it has been truly amazing.  We have had four or more groups come to pick veggies in the garden each day.  They want to stuff them into their backpacks and I even had a camper have a melt down over not taking a zucchini back with him to the locker room.  We are setting up a vegetable stand that will be operational tomorrow and there is so much interest that we are working on ways that parents can pay for a bag of produce that the campers will take home on the bus.  We are making signs in arts and crafts and introducing this farming thing has become something of a phenomenon.  Today we picked over a hundred huge cucumbers and will be very busy picking beans and squash tomorrow.

Farmer Josh is now a regular at morning opening exercises and asking for volunteer groups to help him keep up with the harvest.  Everywhere he goes the kids call out to him and call him "Farmer Josh"  He is loving it.  Most importantly, we sneak some bonafide teaching into the mix.  How to pick the cucumbers off the vine without hurting the plant,  how and when to plant,  how to prune, and how prolific a well tended garden can be.   Even more so my director Tim and the head boys counselor Johan are thinking up more cool ideas on how to involve more people.  The suggestion that we open the garden for parents to pick veggies on Saturday is just one that is being kicked around.

Pretty cool huh?