Harvesting turnip greens out of our vegetable boxes.
Two years ago we bought a greenhouse. It was aluminum framed with plastic panels. Unfortunately, its profile was not as wind-resistant as it needed to be for our campus. So last semester we built three vegetable boxes and salvaged the plastic panels from the greenhouse to build low-profile cold frames. These turned out quite nicely, and the Middle School’s Student-Run-Business’ Gardening Department have been experimenting with different types of produce.
Assembling the side panel for the cold-frames. The front and top plastic panels were salvaged from our aluminum-framed greenhouse.Cilantro growing out of our raised beds with the cold-frames removed.
The wood for the raised beds and the frames for the cold frames were purchased using funds from a grant by the Whole Kids Foundation and the pieces cut at the TechShop.
Initial reports indicated a chicken with a broken leg; some rumors suggested the chicken had gone missing as well. These reports instigated an investigation by the Chicken Committee. They determined that the chicken was there, but something was wrong. They sent out a call for medical assistance.
X-ray of our chicken.
Help came in the form of Dr. Emily Leonard from the Cherry Hills Veterinary Hospital (who happens to be a mom at our school). She took the chicken in for examination.
Based on the X-ray, there were no bones broken, so the issue must have been something else. The large egg that showed up on the radiograph suggested that the chicken could have been egg-bound, however, 20 minutes later, the chicken laid the egg.
So, the chicken is still under observation.
After the initial examination, Dr. Leonard brought the chicken back to school. It needed to be isolated and observed–which is something we now know to do in the future in any other case of injury–and the head of the Chicken Committee (the Chicken Head) made the call that the animal should go back to the hospital for the weekend.
Dr. Leonard deals mostly with pets, so she had to do quite a bit of research. “I learned a lot about chickens today,” she told me afterwards. This is a message I hope the students internalize. With the ready access to information we have today, it’s not so much about the facts you have memorized, but more about having the flexibility and ability to deal with new challenges by doing research and then applying what you learn are essential skills.
Last year, our middle schoolers named their business Chicken Middle. I was a bit skeptical, but the name stuck. This year, thanks to a lot of help from the school community (thanks to the R’s for the Ruby Coops), we finally have chickens (thanks to Mrs. C. for fostering chicks for us over the summer).
And today, we had our first egg. The students were a little excited.
It looks a little lonely sitting there by itself in the egg carton (thanks to Mrs. D., Mrs. P., and everyone else who donated egg cartons), but with a little luck it will have lots of company soon.
While our farm program is nascent and small, we’ve been trying to minimize the use of synthetic chemicals. Yet it would still be difficult and require a lot of paperwork to acquire an “organic” certification. One alternative that looks promising is the Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) program that uses peer certification (other CNG farmers do inspections) and has a much lower bureaucratic burden.
The last two weeks have been peak dandelion season here in eastern Missouri, so I’ve been experimenting with the culinary uses of the flowers.
Dipped in batter and fried, the flower heads did not taste like much. Probably too much seasoning and too much batter. It was good advice to cut off as much of the green outer covering (the sepals) because they are bitter. However, if you cut too close to the base of the petals they fall out all over the place, which is good if you want to collect just the petals.
Dandelion flower fritter.
Collecting the petals only is great if you’re trying to make dandelion wine (I’m adapting the second recipe from here), except that I’m only using petals (2 quarts). I keep the same amount of sugar (3 lbs), oranges (4), water (1 gallon), and yeast (winemaker’s). This is the appropriate timing for this project since we just covered the differences between aerobic respiration and fermentation.
Two quarts (about 4 liters) of dandelion flowers for making a gallon of wine.
Now that we’re at the end of the academic year, our middle school business’ chicken coops have finally arrived (they were on back order). The kids had some fun finding the right spot for the coops, and we staked out an area for fencing; we plan to clip the birds’ wings.
Although, the coops came pre-assembled, the students needed to make some final adjustments.
Figuring out how the coops work.Delineating the area for fencing.
Tomorrow, during math, they’ll be finding the perimeter so we can order fencing, and finding the area so we can know how much space we’ll have per bird.
As of this Saturday, we have two bee hives. With bees. Ms. Mertz and Mr. Deitrich received a pair of nukes (bees with a queen in a box) that were driven up, overnight, from Louisiana. They let them acclimatize for a few hours, with the nukes sitting on top of their respective hives, before putting them in. The nukes seem healthy; we were able to identify two queens and the bees were out foraging immediately. Ms. Mertz is happy.
Students use sandpaper to prepare the outsides of donated hives for painting.
Ms. Mertz and Mr. Dittrich attended a beekeeping class last month. They were quite excited about what they learned, and it fits right into our Farm School initiative. They were able to secure a couple donated hives, which they’re busily preparing because queens are on the way.
Students also scraped the insides of the hives to remove old comb material.
