Winter Camp Update: Wednesday 12/8

I suspect the kids will sleep well tonight.  They got some great exercise today & it got quite warm!  

We started our day with a chat about some important Farm work that takes place on Wednesdays & Fridays.  These are big harvest days where we pick all the produce that’s ready to go into our CSA Veggie bags.  These are veggies for our community.  So they put on their farmer hats and join Farmer Cullen & Austen out in the field to harvest turnips and radishes!  As eager as they were to just start pulling things up, we all had to be patient and look carefully to make sure the crops were in fact ready to be pulled.  They all did great.  Afterwards, we spent some time chopping off the long leafy greens and placing the round bulky bulbs of the radishes and turnips in the baskets to get washed.  We shared that we compost the leafy greens so that it will soon decompose to help create more fertile soil so we can grow more organic veggies.  

Next, it was some chicken time.  The group has become familiar with the tasks and some of the kids took the lead and grabbed the bucket of fermenting chicken feed and went ahead and fed the chickens.  Then they went ahead to collect the eggs.  “Cheeks” the chicken greeted us for some snuggles.  

We played a really fun game of Capture the Flag. The kids ran and ran and ran all over the big open field. They worked together to strategize their plan for capturing the flag, which was quite impressive and heavily included the little 3-year-olds doing a sneak attack!  Here’s a video for you.

Banana boats…yummy!  Although nothing in these banana boats came from the farm, the practice was more about learning how to cook food over the fire, just like humans have always done.  We re-discussed the rules of fire building, we harvested the tinder and wood and watched our teen assistants, Teague & Danica, build the fire.  Then we had to let the wood burn down into coals and while that was happening, we created our boats.  Can they tell you the ingredients and the steps?  The boats were then wrapped in foil and laid over the coals for about 5 minutes and voila, ready to eat!  With sticky hands and chocolatey faces, it was time to do the dishes.  If you ever want your kids to help more with the dishes, set up a wash station outside and they will get done!

See you all on Thursday for our final day of camp together!

~ Miss Tammy