Holy Carrot!

The day started out a little slow, as our first class did not show up to the garden as planned. We filled the time in with weeding and planning out how our introduction to the Edible Peace Patch would go with the other two classes that were scheduled. Before we knew it a group of rambunctious 1^st graders came running up, ready to go. We introduced ourselves and then made an attempt to learn the kids’ names, but we knew that remembering all of them would come with time. They had all been in the garden before, so as we walked them through it they all pretty much new what the plants were.

I found that the kids had less questions about the garden and plants than our group at Maximo, but instead they had endless stories to tell us. As we were trying to explain something to the whole group, there were always at least a couple kids pulling at our shirts to share a personal experience with us- from finding a snake in their flowerbed at home to telling us about their favorite cartoon character, Spongebob, who lives in a pineapple just like the ones we were planting. We found this extremely entertaining, though it may have set back our productivity just a bit.

Earlier in our shift we found that there were two carrots randomly placed in one of the smaller beds that had gotten very large and were ready to pull. At the end of our session with the class, we had them gather around the bed and pull out the carrots themselves and compare these carrots to the ones they eat at home or see in the grocery store. The looks on their faces were priceless. These carrots were covered in dirt, very wide at the top, but short and fat on the bottom. These were not the perfectly sculpted baby carrots they eat at lunchtime, and it was great to hear them talk about how different these were to what they normally see. 

The last class did not show up as well, so we spent that time cleaning up and talking about what worked today and what we will do differently in the future. Can’t wait to start the seed activity next week with the classes!

Colby Hause