Gleaning/Harvesting...

It's a fact, I just can't seem to get enough of the farm life!  It's Camp Mommy this week, so what fun activities did I plan for my girls? That's right, hard labor!  

First, on Monday afternoon, I took them to Green Gulch to join Marin Organic's "Glean Team."  My eager young farmers personally harvested about 4 cases of rainbow chard, fingers turning red  and yellow in the process.  They were downright joyful upon realizing that some of the chard perfectly matched to their hot pink shorts. Relate it to fashion and they will come! Unfortunately we were not able to avoid the wrath of the abundant stinging nettle and we all left with welts on our knees.  But it was a small price to pay for the great contribution we had made to Marin Organic's school lunch program.

This morning, I was happy to assure my girls that there would be no thorny encounters at the IVC farm, our next harvest adventure of the week.  The shoppers were already there when we arrived and so I promptly put the girls to work under Henry's direction.  They started by gathering basil and peppers, worked their way over to melons, climbed up the hill to pull corn from the towering corn stalks and concluded by picking beans. I caught them a few times eating the goods, munching on tomatoes like they were apples...or was that me, caught redhanded, not in the cookie jar, but in the tomato vine?

We now have a white board at the farm entrance to list all the produce that we are harvesting.  Besides the items already mentioned, we also had potatoes, lettuce, chard, flowers, cucumbers (big), zucchini (bigger) and crook neck squash.  And while our visitors enjoyed this new shopping tool, they were disappointed to find out that the stand would be closed next week when the new school session begins (the stand will reopen in following weeks). That message carried a bittersweet reminder for us Dharma Farm Club diehards, that next week a new round of Organic Farm students will have their first class and the farm would no longer be "ours and ours alone."   We're a generous crew though, and in the spirit of many hands make light work, we are looking forward to the camaraderie of a new batch of volunteers working with us side by side.

So what's next on the agenda of Camp Mommy? Pt. Reyes station and a visit to Bobby Foehr's chicken ranch. If any of you attended Steve's Chicken workshop, you'll remember Bobby- he's the guy that captured the swarm of bees outside Toby's.  Bobby's got chickens for laying and chickens for eating, so I think it will be an exciting life lesson for my daughters.