Thursday, May 3, 2012

growin' in da city

A lot has been happening over the past few weeks. We are gearing up BIG for the spring fair, the CSA, and the start of another growing season. 
Despite all of that, I was just able to "get away" for a week and travel with some of the students down to Washington DC. Jared stayed here and held down the fort (and did a GREAT job!) with help from Ashley, Chris, and Mark. THANK YOU ALL!!!

DC was a blast. We walked all over our grand Capital, seeing the monuments, touring museums, taking in history and urbanity all at once. We only spent three complete days in DC - two additional days were spent on trains down and back - and we packed them full. There were many highlights to the trip: the monuments at night, the Native American History Museum, and the gardens. 

YEP, gardens! We met with Sam Ullery, the man in charge of DC's school gardens from both behind a desk and behind a wheel barrow! He showed us around the biggest of the DC school gardens at Walker Jones Education Campus. They have bees, fig trees, strawberries, a GREAT compost pile, rain barrels, cover crop AND delicious veggies all in the school parking lot! 

Our  next stop was Marion Street Garden which is run by Rebecca and Lola of City Blossoms, an incredible organization that is teaching, feeding, and activating DC neighborhoods. We conveniently visited on a Thursday, which is a meal-sharing day. We helped harvest and prepare a "shoots and noodles" dinner for 15+ people. Peas, chives, oregano, and thyme were sauteed over a camp stove and added to pasta with a little lemon and butter. Everyone waited for all to be served, then a ritual "blessing" was said in Spanish roughly translated as "to the top, to the bottom, to the middle, to the mouth!" It was an amazing visit, to say the least. 


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