Class C Photos

Eating Rhuarb Crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert after lunch today. Thanks to Teresa for cooking such great food and including the farm produce when she could. Thanks to Patricia for making the effort to end every year with a visit to the Land School. Especially thanks to Patricia for including us in a moving and beautiful ceremony for the third years (any parents who took photos, please send one or two). Thanks to the chaperones, Paul and Lori. Thanks to Ms. Gus for a beautiful Nature Prints activity (hopefully we can scan some and post them - they are quite gorgeous). Of course thanks to the children for great enthusiasm, attention and love of the Land.

Welcome Class C!

When Patricia's class came off the bus, they were hit with a blast of hot air. Today has been both windy and hot and it really feels like a desert out there. We decided to do the orientation inside the air conditioned Homestead and then eat lunch inside instead of sitting out in the sun around the fire circle. After lunch we divided into three groups. One group planted sweet corn, one went on a nature hike and the last one did a nature prints activity with Ms. Gus. These went great, but we had to make accommodations for the heat for every activity. The hike stayed mostly in the shade and only hiked to the tree house. The nature prints, went out into nature, but quickly came back to work in the Homestead. The planters were allowed to take frequent breaks to get sprayed off with the hose. We all survived, and after a snack we had another activity rotation. Then we sent the 3rd years off to a dairy farm tour, while the 1st and 2nd years stayed back with PPP to plan the ceremony.

The children are here to make the end of the year transition. There will be time for the 1st and 2nd years to honor the 3rd years tonight. This is the last time this group will be together formally as a class and we are pleased to host them at the Land School. We love that the many class traditions have come to involve the rural campus.

Thank you Class C!

The Far Ravine

by Andy

I am curious about the far ravine.

The far ravine is a little visited place nowadays, only when a person is ready for a long hike. We go on the perimeter hike and when we get to the far ravine, we know that we are halfway around the edge of the Land School. By the time we get there on a hike, we often have to keep going to get to the next thing. No time to explore. It is a pity.

Last week with Class E, I took a group to the far ravine for the sole purpose of exploring. As I enter the forest, I am struck by how different the forest floor is compared to the woods behind the farmstead. There are flowers there in abundance that are rare in the close woods. Also, there are a number of large sugar maples there, unlike the predominant oaks around the farmhouse. By far my favorite part of the area is creek bed. The stream only flows when there is snow melt or a heavy rain, so all summer long the washed rocks are there for the picking. The variety and sizes of rocks in the creek bed would tell a story to someone who knew how to read them. There are massive slabs of some sort of blue rock. There are many small rocks of different types, deposited by size in different places. These include occasional agates, but also quartzes, granites and jaspers, and many other types.

As I was sifting through, looking for agates, I found a piece of an old teacup and I was reminded that at one point in the history of this land it wasn't the far ravine at all, rather more like the near ravine. At one point, there was a homestead just up the hill, in the open area just east of the creek bed. There are old apple trees in the clearing, and the remains of a model T in the woods. We have yet to find any well or foundation, but our neighbor tells the story of how they dragged the old house across the field to where our house is now. They lived in that house while they built the barn and then the house. They were the Pickards, for whom our road was named (before they took all the old names away and replaced them with numbers). At one time what we know as the Land School property was two 80 acre parcels and the Pickards combined them and abandoned the old homestead. The dry creek bed yielded other refuse that day, mostly old looking pieces of glass, brown, blue and clear. But the only thing I took home was the porcelain shard and a few agates.  

It is curious how completely the existence of a settlement in that area has been obscured by the vegetation and decay. Without the story, we would be clueless. Likewise, although we have found some atl atl points and arrowheads, we only have conjectures of the 10,000 years (or more) of human habitation before European settlers arrived. At the same time, the geologic history is plain as day in the creek bed; its hundreds of thousands of years of history are still in charge of the narrative in that place.

Community Garden Planting Day

Today we hope to get a bunch of stuff in the garden. Given the wet and cool weather that has dominated our spring, we are behind schedule on the planting and we are hoping to play catch up today. Herbs, tomatoes, sweet corn, broccoli, celery. Much more.

Update, post work day: We had three carloads of intrepid volunteers and we planted and planted and planted. I had us focus on the garden and we had six beds ready for us to plant into.

It is satisfying to "start the clock" on several of our favorite crops. Once they are in the ground, then we have to care for them, but we can't eat something that was never planted. Here's what we planted today:

Flat and Curly Parsley
Basil
Thai Basil
Kohlrabi
Lacinato Kale
Brussels Sprouts
Broccoli
Okra
Celery
Celery Root
Flowers. Zinnias, Euphorbia, Snapdragon, Rudbeckia, Tithonia, calendula, Gomphrena

In addition we weeded onions and saved them from the encroaching lawn.

Here are some of the other crops that we have already got in the ground:
more flowers
carrots, 2 kinds
beets
garlic
many types of onions
leeks
green beans
all of the pumpkins and winter squash
half of the tomatoes ( the early ones and the paste tomatoes)
popcorn
All of the potatoes

There is much left to do, but today we turned a corner. Thanks to everyone!

Class E Camp Heroism Report

by Andy

Today we finished up the three-day Environmental Education camp with Class E.

As we sat in a circle at the close of the trip, the students, staff and chaperones told stories from this trip and other trips to the Land School. Although individual students each told their own story, it was clear to me that these were shared stories. The children had just completed an intense shared experience and in a certain way they will be forever bound together by this and other shared experiences they have had as a classroom. For me, one E1 visit runs into another in my memory, but for each of these children this is the one and only time they will be here at the rural campus in this way in this group.Thus, each event that happened grows in scale and importance in the same way that a year when you are seven is like ten years when you are an adult. The stories were brief, but I sensed a pattern. I could see that in each story the storyteller was somehow heroic in a dramatic sense. Maybe the heroism was having found the most ticks on himself, or having been the one to discover the chert to make fire in the wilderness survival activity, or reuniting with a lost classmate, or making a log bridge to cross the pond. I was acutely aware of the awesome opportunity we have to set the stage for these important heroic moments.

As an instructor during a planting activity, I try to stress how important their work is to the community. I remind them that their work today is a necessary step towards all the boys and girls being able to choose a pumpkin at the Harvest Festival. During kitchen and dining room clean-up crews, I try to instill a sense of pride in returning the environment back to normal. With the clean-up crews, there is also the added responsibility to follow "certified kitchen" rules. It is heroic to have the whole community depend on you to do a job.  Despite our best efforts to design such moments of heroic responsibility, I think a great deal of the children's work involves negotiating their own role in the community of the classroom. It is heroic to struggle to get along with another child. It is heroic to resolve differences in a respectful way. It is heroic to support a friend when she or he is having a hard time. It is heroic to sing together (THANK YOU Mr. D!). It is heroic to simply play joyfully together.

This morning, after breakfast, Donna and I were noticing how many of the children seemed tired. The actual physical work was not that taxing, but having lived together in community for over 48 straight hours is enough to deplete the energy of even the best superhero. The children should be proud of their visit, but I would also be remiss if I did not mention the heroism of the adult staff and parent chaperones, especially Kit, who charged straight ahead and made meal after meal in a new kitchen and a new situation. Thank you to everyone who helped.  

Rio's Photos from the Class E Visit

On the bus. 

Nature study with Donna.

Trillium

Wilderness survival - Otter's basket of char cloth.

Llarry, looking daper for the wool work and animal care activity.

Garter Snake

Mr. Mullin brought his kite.

Pumpkins, ready to plant.

Pumpkins. Planted and ready to be watered.

Extra squash plants. Note the new cart - thanks John Hall!

Campfire. Almost s'more time.

Walking to the bus on the last day.

Donna saw these on her way to work on the side of the road.

Wild geranium

Jack in the Pulpit

Jack

Welcome Class E!

by Andy

Today Class E bounced out of the bus ready for fun. We met at the fire circle and as we did the orientation we asked everyone to yell because the wind was so high. It was a sunny day today, but with the wind a person could feel chilled pretty quickly, like when you are out on a lake. After lunch we moved into our rooms and divided up into activity periods.

There was a group doing wool work, another doing a nature study, another doing a wilderness survival class and then my group was planting pumpkins and winter squash. We planted 7 rows of pumpkins and squash and each row had 140 plants. That is close to a 1000 plants. Each plant will yield between 2 and 5 squash or pumpkins, if all goes well. We were like a planting train, with some students marking the spots, some laying the plants down and some planting while others watered.

We just had a great meal of chicken, rice, broccoli and orange slices, with gooey brownies for dessert. Yum! Looking forward to a presentation about owls tonight.

This just in: Mr. Mullin says Hello!