Feeding America is an incredible organization that is doing so much good work! One of their tenets is that "when we better understand hunger, we can end hunger". They have developed an incredible tool to explore hunger in our country - it is a map of Food Insecurity and is well worth exploring with your student. With the map and associated resources, you can explore and discuss food insecurity and ways to solve it.

Is your family in need of support or looking for assistance with immediate needs? Please check out the Community Resources page.

Wondering how you can support your community? Help a food bank in the middle of a pandemic. Follow this link to Feeding America to learn how.

One of the movies that I had hoped to show at MITCH this past year was The Biggest Little Farm. Turns out, there is an online screening of the film and interview with the farmer and director this Saturday! More details can be found here. Tickets to the "event" must be purchased to attend. Use the code NEON25 for 25% of your ticket price.

This is the last lesson of the 2019-20 school year! I am so proud of everyone for making these two last months of school as healthy as they can. We have almost 20 tomato plants, and the same for pepper plants in the ground at school. Ms. Blood will be tending to them, making sure they are watered and have enough soil fertility to provide lots of tomatoes and peppers for our community! There are cucumbers and squash planned for the garden as well.

There may be a chance for an Agroecology Camp in the garden this summer! Stay tuned, we are very hopeful and are doing everything we can to organize a safe and healthy educational experience for students.

The same goes for volunteers in the garden this summer. Ms. Blood will be working on developing a program that keeps everyone safe and healthy if they would like to come volunteer and care for our garden over the summer.

Students' Ag Books and all of the work they completed over the school year will be distributed to teachers and sent home at the pickup and drop off event on June 9th from 3-6pm. Stay tuned to Fox Tales for more information!

In our last lesson we learned about systems. We learned about the 6 parts of the plant that work together, using synergy, to help the plant grow. Plants are systems, our school is a system, and don’t forget the solar system! A system is made up of parts that use synergy to reach a purpose or a goal. Plants have 6 main parts that help the plant grow, the solar system is made up of planets that rotate around the sun, and our school is made up of people that teach and learn ways to make the world a better place for all. In this lesson, we will learn about the ways human systems create waste, specifically food waste, and what we can do to reduce our food waste. Watch this video with Ms. Blood as she explores the history of composting and the ways we use it at our school.Then use the resources in the rest of this written lesson to dig deeper and reduce your waste at home!

Follow this link to the entire written lesson and your assignment on the Agroecological Activities Page.

This month is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has a really cool cultural care package that is full of poems, films, and other resources from the APA community. My favorite is the Kitchen Remedies from the People's Kitchen Collective! I hope it inspires you to send your recipes from Ag Lesson 4 to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

Is your family in need of support or looking for assistance with immediate needs? Please check out the Community Resources page.

Wondering how you can support your community? Contact your local food bank to volunteer to ask how you can support their work.

This comic from Politico was a really great synthesis of How the Pandemic Has Changed the Natural World. One of the coolest parts is the link to NASA's satellite image showing a huge reduction of pollution in the Northeastern United States! Some animal populations are rebounding, while some are suffering from increased poaching while tourism receeds.

The local non-profit, Neighbors Nourishing Communities, had our plant handout behind MITCH last Saturday, and it was a huge success!

I saw Mrs. Butler and two MITCH students that came to pick up tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and flowers. They are taking those plants home to grow food for their community! Many MITCH family members showed up in spatially-distanced support. It was truly a wonderful event.

NNC received 50 NEW growers and had a total of 80 gardeners from all over Tigard, Tualatin, Sherwood, Beaverton, and Lake Oswego. All growers will be donating 20% of the produce they grow to the local food bank. We have high hopes this year for our biggest donation year yet!

More students have found their way outside and sent Ms. Blood photos of the fun they are having. Keep it up, Foxes! Find photos of you and your classmates on the Same Moon Photos page. Pictures of the Neighbors Nourishing Communities plant handout can be found there as well. Please keep sending me your photos! It helps us all to feel connected.

This week's lesson is another one that can involve cooking different plant parts. I'd love to see your recipes to add to the Fox Family Cookbook, or pictures of students in the kitchen. Please send all photos and recipes to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

This week’s lesson will continue to explore the concept of Synergy through James Baldwin’s retelling of the ancient story, The Blind Men and the Elephant and 6 plant parts: the root, stem, leaves, flower, fruit, and seed. Also embedded in this lesson is the consideration of an important life lesson: A whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This social value is especially important for us to recognize as responsible citizens and environmental stewards. Every creature, element, and human has an important role in our world. We will define and discuss systems, what they are made of, and the many forms they take.

Start the lesson in this video with Ms. Blood. We begin by harvesting radishes in her home garden, observing the different parts of the plant. Then listen to the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant and consider it’s message. They teach us that the different parts of the elephant cannot stand alone to exist as an elephant. The trunk, legs, tail, body, tusks, and ears of the elephant must all be connected and work together to fulfill the animal's purpose. This is Synergy: when different creatures or elements work together. We find this pattern in plants too! Plants have six parts (among many others), that all work together to help the plant grow and live.

Follow this link to the entire written lesson and your assignment on the Agroecological Activities Page.

In the school garden, the herbs are lush, radishes are almost ready to harvest, and greens, carrots and parsley are growing. When the produce is ready, sometime around mid to late June, we will start a program to get food to those who need it most. If you are interested in helping with and/or receiving fresh produce from the garden, please contact Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

For assistance with other immediate needs, please check out the resources on the Community Resources Page or contact Ms. Blood.

I've been thinking about how it can be hard to see the big picture when we are limited to our immediate surroundings. What can we do to keep our minds thinking outside the figurative or literal box? Similar to pondering the incredible depths and mysteries of the soil, the same can be done for the stars. Carl Sagan has always been a great inspiration to me, and reminds me of the beauty and mystery that we occupy "on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". As Carl says, we are "starstuff pondering the stars". Not to give you more screentime, but if it would help our minds to delve into the beauty of the universe, Carl's incredible show Cosmos is available to watch here. He starts with one of my favorite quotes of all time, "If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

To restore some of the beautiful mystery and awe we may feel has been lost in these times, this incredible children's book called You are Stardust is an excellent remedy!

The Neighbors Nourishing Communities Plant Handout is this Saturday from 11am-1pm at MITCH! Free plants and seeds in exchange for 20% of the produce grown donated to Schoolhouse Food Pantry. Find more information in the NNC newsletter.

Masks are encouraged, and maintaining a 6 foot distance is required. It will be a great opportunity to do a drive by to see what is growing in the school garden! All seeds and plants are free with the commitment to donate at least 20% of your produce to the local food bank. NNC can also help find gardening space that is local to you! Please contact Ms. Blood if you are interested.

Check out the new photos from students of their outdoor, agricultural and food-based experiences on the Same Moon Photos page! If you are cooking fun spring recipes or celebrating holidays like Ramadan, Mother's Day, Easter and others, I'd love to post your recipes on The Fox Family Cookbook page. Ag Class Lesson 4 is a fun one for the kitchen! Learn about the importance of food traditions and how to read and write a recipe! Send photos to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org and they will be posted to the Same Moon Photos webpage.

Synergy & The Serengeti

Our understanding of Synergy (noun): when creatures and elements work together, grows through Jerry Pinkney's telling of the Lion & the Mouse fable! Watch the read aloud by Mr. Swider's 5th Grade Reading Group. Jerry Pinckney was the first African American artist to win the Caldecott Medal for his book, which he set in the Serengeti. The Serengeti is a region in Tanzania, Africa. Learn more about the Serengeti and how plants, animals and people work together in this video lesson with Ms. Blood!

The Lion & The Mouse fable teaches us the important life lesson of synergy. It is always better to work together! The lion doesn't think that a mouse, so much smaller than he, could ever be of any use to him. When the mouse saves the lion, it is clear that no matter our size, we can always be helpful to others. What ways do you find you are helpful to other people? How do you help plants and animals? How do people, plants and animals help you?

Click this link to find your assignment and the rest of the written lesson on the Agroecological Activities Page.

Howdy MITCH Foxes!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

I am so grateful to be your teacher, and to be a part of this incredible community. I have learned so much about compassion and resilience from my fellow teachers these past years and especially the past couple months. For our weekly check-in, I hope folks will look at the updated Community Resources Page. There are a few new links there to help connect families to food and basic necessities, as well as social-emotional support and community gardening opportunities. The Oregon Food Bank is doing incredible work to make sure food is getting to those in need. Their website not only connects folks with food, but

• child care

• multi-lingual resources

• health care

• immigrant and refugee support

• unemployment support

• housing

• wifi & cell phone service

• transportation

The NNC Plant Handout will be from 11am-1pm on Saturday, May 16th! We will be observing physical distancing guidelines right behind MITCH. Masks are encouraged, and maintaining a 6 foot distance is required. Our most recent newsletter has more information. It will be a great opportunity to do a drive by to see what is growing in the school garden! All seeds and plants are free with the commitment to donate at least 20% of your produce to the local food bank. NNC can also help find gardening space that is local to you! Please contact Ms. Blood if you are interested.

Check out the new photos from students of their outdoor, agricultural and food-based experiences on the Same Moon Photos page! If you are cooking fun spring recipes or celebrating holidays like Ramadan, Mother's Day, Easter and others, I'd love to post your recipes on The Fox Family Cookbook page. Ag Class Lesson 4 is a fun one for the kitchen! Learn about the importance of food traditions and how to read and write a recipe! Send photos to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org and they will be posted to the Same Moon Photos webpage.

Foraging, Diversity & Resilience

In collaboration with Mrs. Hill's Kid's Heart Challenge, we are going to focus on foraging! This week's lesson takes us on a video tour with Ms. Blood through the garden and woods as we look for native edible plants! Native edible plants have some of the highest levels of nutrients found in food. Foraging is a fun activity that gets us outdoors and using our critical thinking skills!

Safety First! Here are important safety rules to follow when foraging for native edible plants.

We'll discuss the history of the land we are on and the tribes that are native to this area. Remember to use the native lands website!

Native edible plants are the ancient ancestors of our younger agricultural crops. Learn more about the history of apples and their journey from a native edible plant of Kazakhstan to world-wide food phenomenon and art inspiration in this article!

Click this link to find your assignment and the rest of the written lesson on the Agroecological Activities Page.

Hello MITCH Foxes!

Happy May Day, International Workers Day, & Labor Day!

May 1st has been an important day throughout history since the 1800s. It is a day when workers all over the world gather and advocate for workers rights. There are many workers throughout our state, our country and our world that are not treated fairly. Did you know the food system provides the most jobs out of any other sector in our country? Today is a day to learn more about labor injustice and practice ways that we can change it for a more equitable world! Here is a great short film to start learning from the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

Check out this great resource from the Workers Rights Consortium that tracks which large apparel brands are acting responsibly toward suppliers and workers during Covid-19.

One of Ms. Blood's role models and an incredible leader in the food workers movement is Dolores Huerta. There is an incredible film about her that third graders watched some of last year. You can watch the trailer here.

Speaking of equity and basic necessities, it's time for our weekly check in! If your family is needing any kind of food or resource assistance, please check out the Community Resources Page on the Agriculture Class Website. If you can’t find what you need, please email me or your classroom teacher and we will do everything we can to connect your family with the necessary resources, no questions asked.

The Kids Heart Challenge has begun with Mrs. Hill in PE! Make sure you are taking photos of your interactions with nature and your healthy meals to send to Ms. Blood! Check out photos of student work and play on the Same Moon Photos webpage and keep sending your photos to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

If you are looking for more healthy meal inspiration, Our Table Cooperative has a healthy eating blog in English and Spanish!

The NNC Plant Handout is happening on May 16th, and will be held as a drive through pick up at the MITCH carline! We will have plants prepared for contact-free pick up. Find more information here. There is more information on the way! All seeds and plants are free with the commitment to donate at least 20% of your produce to the local food bank. NNC can also help find gardening space that is local to you! Please contact Ms. Blood if you are interested.

Are you interested in starting your own garden or want some research-oriented information? Oregon State University also has some great videos on Stay at Home Gardening that they are sharing specifically due to our current situation. Check them out! We also have gardening videos en español.

The Oregon Ag in the Classroom Calendar Art Contest deadline is May 6th! K-5 students, get your entries in for cash prizes! Find more information here.

As we explore all the ways we can be resilient, this week’s lesson will introduce us to a special group of creatures to learn from. These creatures are called pollinators, and they are one of the most important parts of the food system. Bees are pollinators, and just like the food traditions we explored in our last lesson, bee keeping is an important food tradition that cultures all over the world share. Learn more about bee keepers from around the world in this podcast from the British Broadcasting Company. To learn more about the ancient history of honey and bees, including Egyptians that believed bees were the tears of the gods, listen to this episode of the Gastropod podcast!

What is a pollinator? A pollinator is a creature that carries pollen from one flower to the next. When that pollen is exchanged, the plant is able to turn the flower into a fruit, nut, seed, or berry. Pollinators are not spreading pollen on purpose, they are looking for flower nectar - something they love to eat! Luckily for plants, the pollinators’ search for food helps them to reproduce, creating food that humans eat and seeds that can be planted. Some of the insects and animals that act as pollinators are thousands of kinds of native and non-native bees, butterflies, beetles, hummingbirds, and bats. Even ants and ladybeetles can be pollinators! There are so many different kinds! To have many different kinds of pollinators means that there is great diversity in the pollinator kingdom. For more on pollinators, listen to this clip from the But Why podcast, in which Vermont Farmer and beekeeper John Hayden tells us about pollination. This clip from The Prarie Enthusiasts about native pollinators, plants and buzz pollination is really cool, too!

Follow this link to the entire written lesson and your assignment on the Agroecological Activities Page.

Hello MITCH Foxes!

All the teachers and staff at MITCH are thinking about you every day!

First, our weekly check in! If your family is needing any kind of food or resource assistance, please check out the Community Resources Page on the Agriculture Class Website. If you can’t find what you need, please email me or your classroom teacher and we will do everything we can to connect your family with the necessary resources, no questions asked.

It is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day this week! Learn about the very first Earth Day on April 22nd, 1970. At MITCH, we celebrate the earth and its power every day through our school garden, and by being responsible, resourceful, respectful, safe & RESILIENT! But it sure is fun to know the world is celebrating with us!

Check out these fun Earth Day resources to celebrate from home:

• Make a pledge to help our planet! Create a sign and post it up in your window and on social media to support Earth Day Oregon. #myplanetmypledge

• Watch Earth Day Live with youth from all over the world! From April 22-24th. There will be speakers, music and even yoga classes!

• Create your own Earth Day Neighborhood Safari with National Geographic!

• Submit your entry to the Oregon Ag in the Classroom Calendar Contest by May 6th!

MITCH students are getting lots of fresh air and exercise! I have loved seeing all of the mandalas that students are making outside. A lot of students are also planting gardens and starting seeds at home. Check out photos of student work and play on the Same Moon Photos webpage and keep sending your photos to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

The NNC Plant Handout is happening on May 16th. Find more information here. All seeds and plants are free with the commitment to donate at least 20% of your produce to the local food bank. NNC can also help find gardening space that is local to you! Please contact Ms. Blood if you are interested.

Are you interested in starting your own garden or want some research-oriented information? Oregon State University also has some great videos on Stay at Home Gardening that they are sharing specifically due to our current situation. Check them out! We also have gardening videos en español.

Through stories of the Atfalati tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, we have been learning the ways that plants and people stay resilient when life gets challenging. Plants are a very important part of human resilience. All of our food comes from plants - even meat, which comes from animals that eat plants. Preserving food traditions and important cultural recipes is another powerful way that people stay resilient.

Our food traditions and memories are important parts of who we are. They keep us connected to our loved ones and community members. This week’s lesson is going to be about those food traditions and memories - the recipes and ingredients that keep us connected, healthy and strong during life’s changes and challenges. Different plants can be ingredients that have been grown, saved and cooked by communities for centuries.

Follow this link to the entire written lesson and your assignment on the Agroecological Activities Page.

Hello MITCH Foxes!

All the teachers and staff at MITCH are thinking about you every day!

What an incredible week of sunshine we have had! I hope everyone is finding time and ability to go outside and get lots of movement and fresh air. I know one thing that keeps me happy is when I think of my good friend Mrs. Lau, and try to find as many shapes, colors and patterns as I can in the plants, clouds, and things that I see outside. I’d love to see the interesting sights you are seeing in nature! If you are able, take a picture and send me your findings at cblood@mitch charterschool.org.

As always, I first want to make sure that everyone has their basic needs met. If your family is needing any kind of food or resource assistance, please check out the Community Resources Page on the Agriculture Class Website. If you can’t find what you need, please email me or your classroom teacher and we will do everything we can to connect your family with the necessary resources, no questions asked.

In community news, the Neighbors Nourishing Communities Seed Handout was a great and safe success! We had a record 27 growers attend and pick up seeds to plant in their gardens. They will donate 20% of their produce to the local food bank. If you missed it and are in need of seeds, please contact me. If you are interested in our next event, the NNC Plant Handout, it is happening on May 16th. Find more information here. All seeds and plants are free with the commitment to donate at least 20% of your produce to the local food bank. NNC can also help find gardening space that is local to you! Please contact Ms. Blood if you are in need.

Are you interested in starting your own garden or want some research-oriented information? Oregon State University also has some great videos on Stay at Home Gardening that they are sharing specifically due to our current situation. Check them out! We also have gardening videos en español.

So many MITCH students are getting outside to explore nature! Keep sending me pictures of your agricultural and food related experiences, whether they are outside or in the kitchen.

For those students who have completed last week's lesson, Lesson 2, I would love to see some of your photos of native plant identification!

Visit the Same Moon Photos page to see everyone that is sharing their exciting Agricultural experiences from home.

An incredibly important part of the Neighbors Nourishing Communities Seed Handout were the FOUR VARIETIES of seeds that came from crops that MITCH Students grew and saved from our school garden!

Your hard work provided the gift of free fruit and vegetable seeds to your community. Kindergarten and 8th grade grew and saved North Georgia Candy Roaster Squash seeds. 2nd grade grew and saved Luther Hill Sweet Corn and Magic Manna Flour Corn seeds. 3rd grade grew and saved Hopi Black Dye Sunflower seeds.

Your hard work is feeding our community! Thank you, Foxes!

A project that I would like to start working on together over the next few weeks is a collective recipe book from MITCH families. More specifics are to come. In the mean time, brainstorm what recipes you and your family value the most? What is a recipe that you would like to share with our community?

Here are some Yummy & Healthy Recipes for Kids from Slow Food USA to get you thinking! Or this short film called Alter-NATIVE: Kitchen, where Native American chefs prepare and share their traditional and innovative recipes.

Last week’s lesson taught us about the true history of the land that we now call our home. We learned about the people that are native to these lands, such as the Atfalati Kalapuya tribe, and the ways in which they were forced to leave their homes and create community in new places. Native communities all over the world have shared this challenging experience through a process called colonization. Native people have lost many of their lands, their foods, and their languages, but not all! Throughout these challenges, tribal communities like the Grande Ronde Tribe have stayed strong by holding on to their cultural practices and foods that keep them connected.

Another story about the strength of farming communities staying strong in the face of challenge is this great short film called The Palestinian Seed Queen.

This week, we will take the lesson of their strength and explore the challenges we are experiencing in our lives today. The ability to stay healthy and strong when life changes or gets difficult is called resilience. Growing our food, eating fruits and vegetables, and getting fresh air and exercise for our bodies and minds help us stay resilient when times get tough.

Plants can be resilient too! Watch this video with Ms. Blood to learn about the many different ways that we can stay resilient and grow plants at home.

Your assignment:

Choose one or two of the following activities to try at home:

1. Edible Schoolyard Garden Bean Sprouting

2. Growing food from kitchen vegetables and herbs with Jag Singh of Daisy Creek Farm

3. Growing seeds from your cupboard with Fresh Farm

4. Growing food from kitchen scraps with KidsGardening

Take a picture of your experiment and send it to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. She will post them up on the Same Moon Photos Page for students to see each others work.

Hello MITCH Foxes!

I said this in the last newsletter and I'll say it again. All the teachers and staff at MITCH are thinking about you every day!

We are so proud of all of our students that are staying home to keep our community safe and healthy. There are a lot of people that are making sure people get the help they need during this time. If you know of anyone that may need access to food or other necessities, please let us know. You can also check out the Community Resources Page.

One of the organizations that is continuing to offer support in the way of free seeds and plant starts is Neighbors Nourishing Communities. They will be having a free seed handout this Saturday, April 11th, from 11-1pm. Physical distancing restrictions will be in place. Thank you for your patience and understanding! Please click the link to find out more.

Some of the available seeds will be ones that were saved from the MITCH Garden! North Georgia Candy Roaster Squash, Magic Manna Corn, and Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers.

Are you interested in starting your own garden or want some research-oriented information? Oregon State University also has some great videos on Stay at Home Gardening that they are sharing specifically due to our current situation. Check them out! We also have gardening videos en español.

I am so proud of all the MITCH Foxes! So many students completed the Mandala lesson. A lot of students are exploring and observing unique and important parts of our environment. Thank you for sharing them with our community and keeping us connected!

Visit the Same Moon Photos page to see everyone that is sharing their exciting Agricultural experiences from home.

Speaking of the same moon, did anyone see the Pink Super Moon on Tuesday this week? It was the First Full Moon of Spring! According to the Farmer's Almanac, it is called the Full Pink Moon because it happens during the early springtime blooms of a wildflower native to eastern North America: Phlox subulata— also called “moss pink.” Click here to learn more about what makes a Super Moon so super!

Finally, I saw a lot of different and diverse ingredients in the mandalas that students created for our community, which you know I love! Two of them were pinecones and tulips. Here are some fun resources to learn more about pinecones and tulips.

This funny video is a great learning tool to find out more about the way pinecones work and how they protect the seeds of the pine trees they fall from.

This video may be for older students, but is a great lesson from TedEd about the history and economics of tulips and something called TULIP MANIA! I'm totally serious!

These days, we are all staying safe and healthy at home. It may be hard, but it is so important that we take care of each other in this way! It has gotten me thinking about the places that we live and the story of the land that we live and learn on. In Agriculture Class at MITCH, we learned what it means to be Native: to be the first people to live in a place. We also learned that the Atfalati Kalapuya Tribe is native to the land that our school is on. Plants and animals can be native too! These native plants and animals that are a part of native diets are called First Foods.

Learn about First Foods of the Paiute tribe like Acorns and Chia in this great film from KCET & The Autry Museum.

The film, Broken Treaties, from OPB is an excellent way to learn about the tribes that live in Oregon.

This week's lesson will explore the tribes that are native to the land you now live on and occupy. We will also identify some of the native plants in your neighborhood. Where are the tribes now? Do they still live on their ancestral lands? If not, why? Is your family part of a tribal nation? Where is your tribe's territory located?

Use this Native Land Map to explore the tribes that are native to the area you live in, their language, and the US government treaties that forced them off of their ancestral lands onto reservations.

Here are two resources from Oregon Metro and the City of Portland to help you identify native plants in your neighborhood.

Follow this link to the entire written lesson and your assignment on the Agroecological Activities Page.

How things have changed since we last saw each other! However, there are a few sweet things that have stayed the same:

1. All the teachers and staff at MITCH are thinking about you every day!

2. The garden is planted and growing food for our community! We have peas, potatoes, carrots, kale, parsley, leeks, radishes, and lettuce starting to sprout!

3. Taking walks outside and digging in the soil is so much fun, a great way to keep learning, and to keep us all connected.

I have some things to share with you all that are both important and fun, thanks to the internet!

One is that I want to make sure everyone has access food and other necessities. If you are in need, we still have gift cards available for families that contact Jennifer Wytmans at jwytmans@mitchcharterschool.org. There are also Community Resources During C-19 on the Agriculture Website. Portland restaurants and businesses are offering free meals to children and anyone in need. Check out the PDX Mutual Aid Resource to find out where.

If you are looking for other ways to help, consider donating fresh produce to theh local food bank or non-perishables to Packed with Pride emergency school lunch program.

Two is that the Agriculture Class website has been updated and is full of learning resources and activities for you to do from home! Check it out with your students and help each other navigate through the resources and general prompts. There are a few resources en español. I will keep adding to it as I discover new, appropriate material, and welcome any that you think would work well for this format.

Three is that we are starting the Food Solutions New England's Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge! To learn more about how to get involved at home, visit the Agriculture Class Human & Social Values page and follow the link. This challenge specifically focuses on ways that we can create a more equitable food system as individuals and community members. A conversation that is so important to have in times of struggle.

Sending health and wellness to all,

Ms. Blood

I have been hearing from foxes that are getting outside, digging in the soil, and planting seeds at home! Each week, I'll share photos and news that I receive from our farming & food fox family. If you are getting outside and spending some time with plants, animals and insects, send me a photo or a story! I'd also love to hear from you if you are cooking a traditional or special meal at home. Maybe you found a special leaf or tree on a walk, a bumblebee you saw on a flower, or a worm you dug up and identified. Let's stay connected. Here are this week's farmers, with their photos included at the bottom of the newsletter:

Raya and Silas

These third graders have brought life to a shady part of their backyard by planting strawberries! Have you grown, picked, or eaten berries? What kinds of berries are your favorite and why?

Tate and Brogan

The Franks used some of the lumber they had at their house to build a raised bed and filled it with compost! They found a bunch of worms to share with their neighbors. Did you get to dig for worms in Agriculture Class? Where are all the places we have worms at MITCH? Have you ever found a worm where you live?

Miss Connie, Xander & Owen

Miss Connie lives on a farm and has been so busy! She has been planting baby trees, while Xander and Owen built a bonfire with wood from the orchard. They are picking kale, carrots, beets, and herbs from their garden, and planting potatoes, kale and pea seeds! What kind of spring plants do you see growing in your neighborhood? Outside your window?

Julian

Julian brought the garden inside by building a terrarium and planting it with Chia seeds! Did you know Chia is an ancient seed from Mesopotamia? Some people eat Chia seeds because they are full of nutrients! Have you ever eaten a Chia Seed, or soaked them in water? What happens to them?

Ben D.

This fifth grader is ready for summer! He planted all sorts of seeds in small pots inside, and is waiting for them to sprout and grow before planting them in his garden: peas, tomatoes, squash, and cucumber were a few! Dig you get to sprout a seed in Agriculture Class? How could you tell it was sprouting?

Check out pictures of these farmy students below.

This week's lesson takes us on an exploration of the Mandala. A Mandala is a symbol that is used in cultures and communities all over the world.

Mandalas are amazing pieces of artwork that humans create using many different materials. People from ancient Asian and American civilizations have made these symbols for centuries. What they all have in common is the shape of the circle. In Sanskrit, one of the oldest written languages known to humans, the word mandala means "circle". Sanskrit is an ancient language from India. It is one of the languages used in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Buddhism is an ancient practice that began in Japan, China, and Tibet. Today Buddhism is studied in many different places all over the world. Buddhists have used mandalas to symbolize the universe and cycles of life.

To see a Buddhist Mandala in the making, watch this amazing video of monks from the Drigung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism constructing a sand mandala at the Asia Society Museum over the course of five days.

Hinduism is an ancient religion that began in India, and today, like Buddhism, is studied by people all over the world. Mandalas are used in Hinduism for meditation, to help people relax their minds and find peaceful thoughts.

1st graders will remember that Mayans also use a mandala for their calendar. It is called the Tsolk'in Wheel of Time. Click here to learn more. Mayan farmers and calendar keepers use the growing cycle of corn and the Tsolk'in calendar to describe their understanding of time.

The Aztec culture has an important mandala called the Sun Stone, which is a symbol that represents the way Aztecs understand the universe.

Check out the natural mandalas of British artist Andy Goldsworthy for inspiration to make your own!

Your assignment:

Click on this link to take a walk with Ms. Blood as she makes a mandala with natural artifacts! Your job is to take a walk with an adult and explore outside to gather natural materials to create your own mandala. Do you see mandalas that already exist in nature?

You can also check out this activity to see more ways to make mandalas out of natural materials.

When you are finished, take a picture and send it to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. I will post them up for students to see each others work.

We had some mystery gardeners visit the garden before Kindercamp and get a ton of things done! Thank you! What amazes me is that everyone who has taken care of the garden this summer has done so out of the kindness of their hearts and their commitment to our school. I am so proud of our community. Kindergartners got to visit the garden that has been so well cared for, and learned to walk and whisper around all of the little live things we have growing.

The Brewers came out to install five Mason Bee Homes around the garden, and they look great! This included the Flow Pollinator House built and given to the school by 2019's 8th grade class. The proceeds from this Mason Bee Hive are donated to pollinator advocacy, protection and education. Click the link above to learn more about their work! The mason bee tubes built by MITCH students at Our Table Cooperative have filled one house, but we will be making more when school starts.

The Gardners came in to weed the rain garden and found grapes! They don't taste the best, but it was fun to find them ripened. We also harvested Armenian and Suyo Long cucumbers, Sungold tomatoes, and Strawberries. They grew vegetables with Neighbors Nourishing Communities this summer and made a fresh onion donation to the Schoolhouse Pantry Food Bank this week! Way to go!

Another beautiful surprise in the rain garden is that the Milkweed has bloomed. It is pictured above! Asclepias fascicularis, Narrow Leaved Milkweed, is an Oregon native that attracts and feeds the Monarch butterfly. To learn more, watch this clip from one of my favorite films, Wings of Life. Every autumn, Monarch butterflies migrate by the millions from Canada to Mexico. In 2018, a record low number of Monarchs were recorded by the Xerces Society, documenting an 86% drop since 2017. They have recorded a 99.4% drop since the 1980s. Monarchs are losing habitat and food to development and commercial agriculture. Milkweed is a vital food that sustains their energy in this journey. By planting milkweed in our rain garden, we are contributing to the Monarch migration and population!

1. Weed rain garden. The Gardners were out pulling the sneaky blackberries today - things are looking good!

2. Pull grass in beneficial insect mix area. Most of it is dry and has set seed, so if we can pull it by its roots or even just pull the seed heads off the plants to prevent them from seeding again, that would be great!

3. Weed stairs. They sure look great since our mystery gardeners came to visit! Similar to the rain garden, we will need to keep an eye on these guys to make sure the grass doesn't take over again.

1. Cherry tomatoes: Sungold, Black Cherry, Black Plum

2. Cucumbers: Suyo Long, Armenian, Summer Dance

3. Strawberries

4. Herbs: Lemon Balm, Mint, Shiso, Pineapple Sage, Chives

5. Edible Flowers: Borage, Calendula, Gem Marigold

Don't forget to weigh and write down your harvest on the scale and sheet in the shed!

The code to the shed lock (remember, it's sticky!)

is FOX3S.

All of the teachers are so excited to meet our incoming Kindergarten classes on Monday. We are all getting ready at the school, and that includes the plants in the garden. The tomatoes, cucumbers and flowers must know that they have visitors to impress because they have started fruiting and flowering like wild.

An incredible crew of parents came in yesterday evening to move teachers into their classrooms! We are so grateful to every one that came to support us as we get this next year in gear. There was a TON of HEAVY stuff. What a fantastic community we have!

Ms. Connie's beans are starting to climb their trellis in the garden, the Candy Roaster Squash in the Frontier Field are fruiting like mad, four different varieties of kale and Italian Flatleaf Parsley have been planted next to the tomatoes, and the Magic Manna Corn has burgundy colored tassels!

A creature that has been hanging out in the garden attracted the attention of some Kindergarten students in May. We were studying beetles in the garden, and this beetle looked so much like a ladybug, yet it also looked very different. On its shell (what we learned is called the elytra) are spots like a lady bug's. However, the rest of the shell is a lime green-yellow color instead of red. This beetle is called a Spotted Cucumber Beetle. They are named so because they love to eat any member of the cucurbit family (squash, cucumbers, melons). Happily for us, their numbers seem to have stayed low throughout the summer. What I expect is that this may be due to the Ground Beetle habitat we established in the garden last year. Ground Beetles are the Spotted Cucumber Beetle's natural predator. The area that is covered in a mat of flowers - to some they may look like weeds - is our beneficial insect and beetle bank area. I have seen a number of Ground Beetles crawling around in this area, and believe that they must be doing the good work of eating pests in the garden - They also eat slugs! Watch your feet and keep an eye out for our beetle friends in the garden! To learn more amazing facts about beetles, check out this cool clip from BBC Earth Unplugged. Or this National Geographic video about an entymologist that looks under bison poop to find the beautiful and very rare Rainbow Scarab Beetle. A great resource for the student that enjoys insects!

1. Remove tomatoes from compost and put in long compost pile. Volunteer tomatoes have popped up in our small compost bins next to the Hop House! They are taking over and need to be removed. A wheelbarrow would be helpful for this task!

2. Weed stairs! This task is time consuming but just so meditative. Have a seat on the stairs, use a small knife or sharp implement to help you pick the crab grass out from the cool, fuzzy ground cover that we are tryin g to establish called Leptinella squalida, a variety specifically named "Platt's Black".

3. Weed berries. The crab grass really wants to take over the blackberries and strawberries, but we won't let it!

4. Weed cucumbers and onions. The onions are just about ready to dry, harvest and cure! If they can wait, we will probably harvest them the first week of school with fourth grade. They planted the onions as third graders! Keep an eye out for cucumbers that are ready to be picked!

The fruits of summer have arrived! Don't forget to weigh and write down your harvest on the scale and clipboard in the shed!

1. Tomatoes: Sungold, Black Cherry, Black Plum

2. Strawberries

3. Cucumbers: Armenian and Suyo Long (look at our last newsletter for a picture of a proper Suyo Long Cucumber. Above is pictured an Armenian in fine form)

4. Edible Flowers: Borage, Calendula, Gem Marigold (pictured above - they taste like tangerines!)

5. Herbs: Lemon balm, Pineapple Sage, Mint, Stridolo/Sculpit, Chives

The code to the shed lock (remember, it's sticky!) is F0X3S.

Thanks to some little birds in the front office, I learned theidentity of the mysterious and magnificent rain gardenweeders! A HUGE thanks to 8th Grader, Lia and her family, who have been taking such great care of the rain garden this summer!

Newly sprouted plants are taking over the garden. Nantes Carrots, Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers, Komo (Hopi Red Dye Amaranth), Hera Dill, Florence Fennel, Rak Tamachat Cilantro, and Italian Romano Beans have popped above the soil and are protected by netting from visiting critters. Fingers crossed that these barriers hold up to the pressure! Many of these herbs and veggies will be ready for tasting when students are back in school, which is just around the corner!

Our first hot crops from thegarden have been harvested! Afew Sungold tomatoes and a Suyo Long Cucumber. Keep an eye out for more of them as they size up and ripen! Thecucumber in the picture above is what you'll be looking for. The Sungold tomatoes are an excitingly bright orange color and have flavor that is equally as excellent. Use pruners or twist cucumbers off at thestems. Sungold tomatoes will pop off just above the fruit, at aslight seam in the pedicel(stem).

Another new splash of color and activity in the garden is thearray of flowers that are opening in 5th grade's edible and fabric dyeing flower bed. Pictured above is Orange Flashback Calendula (orange), Shades of Gold Marigold (1 orange) Dyer's Chamomile (yellow), and Roman Chamomile (white and yellow). The calendula will be dried and used for teas and herbal salves, but its petals are also beautiful and tasty when sprinkled fresh on top of a salad! The Marigold and Dyer's Chamomile are being dried for fabric dyeing and ink making projects. Roman Chamomile gets dried for teas as well. Can't wait to have all these flowering colors and smells wafting out of theclassroom!

Alongside these flowers are theborage flowers, which taste like cucumbers and are an intense hue of blueish purple. Bees love them, and so does Lucy! Give them a try while you watch the bees go bananas. Add them to a salad, ice water or tea, or on top of ice cream. Borage, also called Starflower, is believed to have originated in Aleppo, Syria, and spread throughout the Mediterranean, where it grows wild. It is often used in a practice called companion planting. It is planted alongside other crops to benefit them in some way, whether attracting beneficial insects or pollinators, or as a"trap crop" to keep pests away from the main crop. Some farmers plant borage to attract bees and parasitic wasps to combat tomato and cabbage worms. It can also be chopped and used as a mulch to return organic matter to the soil and keep the soil covered and cool. What a powerful and delicious plant!

1. Weeding the Stairs: I know, right? Didn't we just do this? Crab grass is tough stuff, and we need to catch it in theact again before it takes over those lovely, soft stairs!

2. Weed pathways

3. Clip sweet pea plants and put them in the long compost. This is going to be an intricate and heavy duty job, but it could also be really fun! We will need to use pruners (in the shed, on theshelf to the left) to cut theplants' stems at soil level. We will leave their roots in the soil, because those roots have "fixed" nitrogen (protein for plants) in the soil. We will also need to pull the sweet pea plants off of their trellis, specially made by 2018-19's 5th grade class. It's OK if it falls apart, the world is always tending toward chaos! Just leave the branches of the trellis together in a pile. Have fun exploring all the parts of thepea plant and smelling theflowers! Some of theKindergartners learned how to identify the stem, leaf, pod, and tendrils last year.

1. Suyo Long Cucumbers

2. Sweet peas

3. Strawberries

4. Borage flowers

5. Sungold tomatoes

6. Calendula flowers

7. Roses

The garden has had many visitors this week! Elisabeth and Lucy, Ashley, Addi and Jeb, Renee, and Eric, a local farmer who is part of an effort to start a youth farming program at Working Theory Farm in Hillsboro. Everyone got some big projects done this week - weeding, spreading chips and clearing blackberries. The garden is feeling the love, especially with these higher temperatures projected for next week.

If you stick around the tomatoes and buckwheat for a few minutes, you'll get to see a really special type of pollination called buzz pollination, or sonication. It is specifically needed by flowers that lock their pollen up in the anthers of the flower. This is a solitary bee specialty - Honeybees cannot perform buzz pollination. Almost 10% of the flowers and fruits of the world are primarily pollinated using this technique. Tomatoes are at the top of that list! Bees literally hang on the underside of the flower, buzzing at a high enough pitch to shake the pollen out of the anthers of the flower. You can hear the pitch of their buzzing change with each stop they make! Watch an excellent clip and read about buzz pollination from PBS Digital Studios and KQED San Francisco.

Another exciting process to witness in the garden are the aphids and ladybugs on the sweet peas. The aphids are slowly taking over and the ladybugs are feasting! See how many lady beetles you can count! We may need to pull these plants out to the compost in the next few weeks, so make sure you pick your sweet peas soon.

I will be in Big Sky Montana Country for the next week, so we will not have a newsletter on July 26th. If you visit the garden, please send me your photos and updates! I love to see the garden through others' eyes and it brings me so much joy to see our students taking ownership of their space.

1. Pull volunteer tomatoes growing out of small compost(next to hop house) and put on long compost. This is in preparation for thebig compost move that George Fox volunteers will be helping us with on Serve Day in September.

2. Weeding the onions next to thecucumbers - some of them are getting close to harvest time!

3. Weeding around the herbs.

4. Weeding around the flowers(under netting)

5. Pulling the grass out of thebeneficial insect mix areas in front of the greenhouses, between the chipped area and the road. This is a labor intensive task, as the grass needs to be pulled from its roots. I've done most of the space, there is just a grassy 10x10ft. segment left. Once the grass is removed, it will be reseeded into flowers and more pollinating plants!

6. Pulling any grasses or weeds out of wood chipped areas.

1. Nasturtiums and borage flowers in flower section (below sweet peas and potatoes, covered with netting)

2. Strawberries (here and there)

3. Sweet pea flowers

4. Roses

5. Flowers from rain garden

What a bounty! Everyone was sporting their garlic pulling muscles on Tuesday, pulling over 100 heads of Lorz Italian and Khabar garlic! They are now drying and curing under the overhang outside the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms. We learned about the two different types of garlic, Softneck and Hardneck. “Softneck” refers to thesoft stem that grows out of the top of the garlic bulb and makes them easy, beautiful stems to braid once they are dry. “Hardneck” refers to thehard stem that grows out of the top of the garlic bulb and produces a “scape”, a flower stem that farmers snap off and pickle or grill up on the BBQ. Snapping this hard flower stem encourages thegarlic plant to put more of its energy into developing its bulb instead of producing seeds. The life cycle of garlic comes in many forms. Today, much of our garlic is imported from China, in fact, 75% of the world’s garlic is grown in China. That is a long way for those little heads to fly! Thelonger produce is in transit, the more nutrients and flavor it looses. Lucky for us, the Pacific Northwest has an excellent climate and soil profile for growing garlic. Growing our garlic locally decreases our food’s carbon footprint and increases it’s available nutrition and deliciousness!

Thank you to everyone who came to the garlic pull, and for those of you coming to volunteer, please help yourself to a head of the hardneck Khabar garlic on the top two shelves of the drying rack. If you are interested in growing your own garlic this fall, save the head and check out my favorite garlic growing guide, Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland of Filaree Farm in Washington. Theauthor goes into excellent historical and agricultural detail, and seems to resemble a great head of garlic, himself! Garlic is a fun, easy crop.

More exciting news from the garden is that our beans, sunflowers and amaranth have started to sprout! So far the squirrels have not found their way through the netting. Fingers crossed. This next week, the garlic bed will be seeded into carrots for MITCH students to harvest this fall. Fall kale and parsley will also be transplanted in the coming weeks. Tomatoes and cucumbers are starting to fruit - before long we will be swimming in them. The raspberries have been tied back and weeded, making the ripe ones easier to find. The edible flowers are also starting to bloom - nasturtium, borage, chamomile and calendula are just around the corner. These are so fun to put on top of salads!

Our top priorities for the next week will be:

1. Finish weeding the stairs. Just a bit weeds here and there. Make sure to pull those suckers by the roots so they don’t come back!

2. Spread wood chips inside the greenhouse with the dirt floor. Let’s beat those weeds! Chips are over in a pile past theshed. Help yourself to awheelbarrow by the Hop House, a shovel and a rake from theshed!

3. Weeding around the hop house. Just be sure to leave thecomfrey, between the structure and the Willamette Graystone wall. It has broad leaves with purple, bell-shaped flowers. Comfrey is a great pollinator plant and a bio-accumulator. It pulls nutrients from deep in thesoil and its leaves can be used in compost and to amend topsoil. It also has medicinal properties! The compost looks wonky, but it will be moved this coming fall. Steer clear!

4. Keep an eye on weeds in the rain garden. It is blooming like nobody’s business - what abeautiful place to spend an afternoon weeding! Help yourself to a few different flowers off of the unique native plants that 7th and 8th grade planted. They are vibrant and smell amazing!

5. Take pictures! Send them to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. Some of you have sent some fantastic photos of your kids in the garden. Thank you!

Wow - the sweet peas smell incredible! Please take some home with you! Remember to weigh what you harvest or note the number of stems you pick on the harvest sheet in the shed. For now, our harvestables are:

1. Sweet peas

3. Sweet bay (to the left of the rosemary)

5. Raspberries

6. Roses

7. Garlic (one head of thehardneck Khabar from thetop two shelves of the dry rack outside the 4th and 5th grade classrooms)

8. Mint (in one of thegarden boxes in front of theschool. It has started to flower!)

9. Flowers in the rain garden (just make sure to leave enough for thepollinators!)

Oh, yes! It is that time! Garlic pulling time. Our garlic pulling party will be this coming Tuesday, July 9th, from 12:30 - 1:30 pm. Meet us over in the garden. Come equipped with gloves, hats, water and snacks because we do not have access to theschool during construction. We have quite abit of it to pull, along with a new digging fork to try out! It is so much fun to pull those massive plants and see their roots that have been growing since October of last year. Everyone that participates will get to take home a head or two. Fresh garlic is great to work with in the kitchen - the skin just falls right off for minimal processing and the flavor is amazing. What we harvest will be dried and cured. Some will be sent to the food bank, and the rest will be saved for school lessons, braiding, cooking and next year's seed. The founder of the Tualatin Schoolhouse Pantry has told me on more than one occasion that he has never seen ahead of garlic in the food pantry, and how much folks would love to take some home. MITCH is going to change that! I hope to see some of you at the garlic pull party!

The new digging fork I mentioned came as part of a grant from Tualatin Soil and Water Conservation District. MITCH received $600 worth of new tools, including digging spades, a manure fork, hoes, pruners, weeding tools, bed labels, bamboo stakes, acompost thermometer, and tools for trellising. All tools came from Concentrates, Inc., the Portland Ag Community's best kept secret and organic farm supply store. Thanks to these two community institutions for supporting our Ag Program!

There has been a lot of seeding and re-seeding happening in the garden this past week, as well as a lot of stair weeding! Thesnap peas have been removed and seeded into romano beans from Ms. Connie, a variety she calls South American Flat Bean. Sunflowers, amaranth, gourds, basil, fennel and dill have all been seeded as well. Fingers crossed the netting keeps thesquirrels out! The tomatoes and cucumbers have been trellised, and the Japanese indigo has seen its first harvest.

Our top priorities for the next week will be:

1. Finish weeding the stairs. Only two sets left! The last set, nearest the shed, does not have the fun ground cover on it, so this should make it a bit easier.

2. Weed in the berries. The strawberries, blueberries and raspberries have a bit of grass and other weeds coming up around them, as well as in the concrete block walls. Hiding behind some of the raspberries are bigger weeds, if you can get to them! I will tie the berries back asap.

3. Weeding around the hop house. Just be sure to leave the comfrey, between the structure and the Willamette Graystone wall. It has broad leaves with purple, bell-shaped flowers. Comfrey is a great pollinator plant and a bio-accumulator. It pulls nutrients from deep in the soil and its leaves can be used in compost and to amend topsoil. It also has medicinal properties! The compost looks wonky, but it will be moved this coming fall. Steer clear!

4. Keep an eye on weeds in the rain garden. Some MITCH rockstars weeded it to perfection the week before last, but we have to keep an eye on those blackberries and canadian thistle to make sure they don't spiral out of control!

5. Take pictures! Send them to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. Some of you have sent some fantastic photos of your kids in the garden. Thank you!

We find ourselves at a transition in theseason, with much seeded and less to harvest. Here's looking to the future! For now, our harvestables are:

1. Sweet peas

2. Rosemary

3. Sweet bay (to the left of the rosemary)

4. Strawberries

5. Raspberries

6. Roses (once they grow back from their pruning)

7. Garlic (come to the Garlic Pull Party!)

8. Mint (in one of the garden boxes in front of the school. It has started to flower!)

9. Flowers in the rain garden (just make sure to leave enough for the pollinators!)

Hello Summer, hello Solstice! We have officially made it. Although these fantastic thunderstorms might suggest otherwise!

Summer solstice arrives each year on June 21st - the first day of summer. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is thelongest day of the year, when the sun reaches it's highest point, the Tropic of Cancer. If you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere, it will be the shortest day of the year, and the beginning of winter.

Solstice comes from the Latin words Sol (sun) and sistere (still or stopped). On the solstice, the angle between Earth's equator and the Sun's rays seem to stand still. Many communities use thesolstice to mark agricultural celebrations or planting days.

Here is a great article from National Geographic to learn more about the summer solstice: how it works and how it has been celebrated through the millennia. My favorite part is how scientists can tell that Earth's days lasted less than 22 hours over 400 million years ago. Enjoy!

You're looking at one of our stellar 8th graders planting grape vines in the rain garden! Last we checked, they had fruit. We'll see if they can hold on to it through the heat of summer, and if we're lucky, get to try a few berries!

The rain garden looks absolutely incredible - weeded and in bloom! Thank you to everyone who cared for that special space!

1. Weeding the stairs. There is a really cool, fuzzy ground cover that we are trying to establish on the stairs. It is called Leptinella squalida, a variety specifically named "Platt's Black". It feels soft to the touch, and likes when the ground around it is airy and not so compacted. After pulling the weeds out, try not to step on the soil around it. It is such a fun plant! Also near the stairs are gorgeous decorative oregano in bloom - wow!

2. Weeding the indigo. The netting will need to be carefully removed and then put back on. Watch out and make sure it doesn't snag any of your jewelry or buttons!

3. Weeding the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.The rasperries are a bit unwieldy at this point. I will prune and tie them back asap. In the mean time, we need to get the weeds while they are small. There are small, newly planted strawberries in this area - make sure they do not get unearthed.

4. Weeding the herbs planted around the rosemary bush. Small weeds are starting to come up - this is the perfect time to get them!

5. Weeding the flowers under netting.

6. Spreading wood chips in the small greenhouse. Help yourself to shovels and a wheelbarrow by the Hop House, and tote some of thechips next to the shed over to smother the weeds in these areas.

7. Training the hops around and over the hop house. Help those wild climbers find a less-haphazard way of winding around thestructure they are taking over. It will make a great shaded space on hot days if we can get the hops to cover the top of the structure!

8. Weeding the rain garden! It looks amazing and freshly weeded right now, but those pesky blackberries will keep trying to push through unless we beat them at their own game. Stay strong, team!

The photo above is our 5th graders from 2018-19, who planted our beautiful crop of sweet peas and lovely flowers. One of the varieties of sweet peas they planted is called High Scent, and is from a local flower grower, Arielle Zamora of Small Yard Flowers in St. Johns. She also donated ranunculus corms (tubers) planted in theraised beds around the school.

Have you tried a raspberry or strawberry from thegarden yet? I hope the squirrels aren't getting all of them! We have more that will be fruiting next summer. The great berry search should reveal a few, as well as some raspberries and maybe even a few ripening blueberries. Many of our berries were just planted this year and will need a year or two before they start fruiting.

The snap peas are also yielding enough to grab a few, despite their attack from squirrels earlier this spring. Soon they will be replanted into a romano bean. Thebean is called South American Flat Bean and comes from Miss Connie's Whiskey Creek Farm.

Here are all the items we have to pick:

1. Sweet pea flowers

2. Snap peas

3. Roses

4. Rosemary

5. Raspberries*

6. Strawberries*

The people power in the garden this week has been fantastic! We have had families out to tend and explore every day this week, and it shows! The garlic and onions are clear of weeds and free to grow. The tomatoes and cucumbers have trellises at the ready and will be tied up next week. What a great way to start the main growing season! Keep sending your photos - this energy is amazing!

In the tomatoes is a cover crop called Buckwheat. The flowers provide a haven for ladybird beetles and pollinators, and you'll find lots of them if you sit and watch long enough. Buckwheat grain is also used as a gluten free flour. The roses too, are home to ladybird beetles, and you might be able to see all four phases dwelling on the leaves, eating aphids: eggs, larva, pupa, and adults.

To help identify the ladybird beetles you are looking at, check out this identification sheet from Cornell University. They are working to find the nine-spotted ladybug, New York's State Insect! It once did such a great job controlling pests that, in 1985, it was nominated by a fourth grade student! How exciting is that. In recent years, it's numbers have declined as other introduced species have taken over habitat. Join in the search!

Our team makes garden care look easy! Things that need doing in the garden may have changed since I was there Tuesday. Here is the list I've compiled, in order of priority:

1. Weeding the rain garden and gravel area. The blackberries and hardy grasses are doing their best to take over in this space, but we will keep them at bay!

2. Weeding the stairs. There is a really cool, fuzzy ground cover that we are trying to establish on the stairs. It is called Leptinella squalida, a variety specifically named "Platt's Black". It feels soft to the touch, and likes when the ground around it is airy and not so compacted. After pulling the weeds out, try not to step on the soil around it. It is such a fun plant!

3. Weeding behind and next to the raspberries and native berries.

4. Weeding the garlic. If this still needs doing. I've been amazed what light work our crew has made of it this week!

5. Spreading wood chips in the small greenhouse and in between the greenhouses. Help yourself to shovels and a wheelbarrow by the Hop House, and tote some of the chips next to the shed over to smother the weeds in these areas.

6. Training the hops around the hop house.Such meditative work!

Sweet peas, garlic scapes and a few raspberries have come out of the garlic this week! Help yourself and remember to weigh and record what you have harvested.

1. Roses

2. Rosemary

3. Snap peas*

4. Garlic Scapes*

5. Raspberries*

6. Strawberries*

* Indicates that crops are at the beginning or end of their harvest. You may have to look hard to find something to pick!