Gardening with the Girls

"Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer. Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life." ~Wendel Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating" It was a rainy, chilly day today, so for an indoor activity I had Caya make a "Garden Plan" of all the veggies/fruits/flowers she would like to grow in our garden this year.  She looked through magazines, found pictures of things that she wanted to grow, and then cut (or had me help cut) and pasted them onto a poster paper.  

One of the things I love most about Madison, WI is the local enthusiasm for raising hens, even in residential neighborhoods.  Our neighbors have several chickens, which they kindly take Caya to feed about three days a week in the warm months.  Kilia even got involved in the action yesterday.  She wasn't scared, but seemed not too sure about the whole situation.  My dream, in our "real life" (post-residency) is to have a small chicken coop (trailer perhaps?) so that the girls can help with raising hens and collecting eggs.  I think it would be a great way to teach about local food production, composting (chickens are great at that!), the economics of food production, and ecology.  I still have to get Ian on board (he's not so keen on the whole chicken idea), but I'm sure these two adorable girls will be able to convince Daddy to get them a few chickens someday.

Yesterday we planted red leaf lettuce in one of the deck containers.  Caya was very excited and quickly delved into helping dig holes and filling them back in.  Kili, wanted to be involved, but mostly just stuck her hands in the dirt and tried to eat as much as possible.  After finishing with the lettuce Caya said we should look for worms, so look for worms we did!  We found many worms, larvae, and grubs in our backyard rain garden under the leaf litter.  Caya didn't want to touch the "wiggly worms", but she was really interested in digging through the leaves and dirt to find them.  Last night as I was tucking her into bed she had so many questions about the worms and bugs: "Why did they curl up when we touched them?", "What do they do?", "What do they eat?", "What eats them?"  This led to a really great, 3-yr old level, ecological conversation about food webs and healthy soil.  Day-1 was a gardening success!