Cambridge New York

Please stop by the garden to meet Roisin (pronounced Rosheen) and Molly, who are our World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms volunteers.  Roisin will be here all month and Molly until the 19th.  They are doing great things for the garden, getting the kids' patches looking spiffy, and are being real troopers about this dreadful heat.  Yesterday they harvested all of the garlic from the blueberry circle, sat in the shade to clean the heads, and laid them out to cure on the shelves in the shed.  Future tasks will include turning the compost and bringing in well-rotted leaf mold from the Pearl Street town compost piles.

In other news, we now have approval to bring food to the Cambridge Food Pantry any day, Monday through Friday, between 10am and 2pm.  While Roisin is here she will be in charge of gathering veggies to bring over, both from the plots that were filled by the CCS kids and any spare veggies from private plots.  We'll keep a cooler in the shed with some ice packs in it and anyone who wants to add veggies before 10 am can do so.

The Kid's Garden Club has started and will be meeting Tuesdays 4pm-5pm.  A lovely time was had by all at last week's meeting, where the kids enjoyed just slowing down and noticing the bugs in the compost, looking at garlic scapes, heads, and cloves, and at leek flowers.  We also planted collards and radishes (which are already up!) and then walked the magical path through the Nature Garden to look at the beautiful new spirit house.

Today, depending on whether we meet inside or not, we'll plant some carrots and explore some of the smells of the garden: Borage, marigolds, peas, nasturtiums, calendulas, broccoli, etc.  We may also do some leaf rubbings (inside) and get acquainted with galinsoga, otherwise known as Peruvian daisy, and maybe with Purslaine too.

Here are some photos of the Cambridge Elementary students planting their seed starts at the community garden:

During the week of April 12th through the 16th, ten volunteers from the community garden participated in a spring seed starting program in all of the 29 classrooms in the Cambridge Central School elementary program.  We helped the students in grades 2 through 6 make paper pots and used peat pots in pre-K through 1st grade.  Each student planted two pots, one the assigned vegetable for their classroom and the other a flower or vegetable of their choice.  Seeds were donated by the Bentley Seed Company of Cambridge, New York. Potting soil was donated by Alexander's Hardware.  Peat pots were donated by Janet Britt.  Many of the classrooms had prepared for our visit by reading about seeds and some had their own growing projects already in action.  Everyone seemed happy to be participating.  Later in the spring the students will take walking field trips to the Community Garden to plant out their seedlings.

We will be hosting several volunteers from the program called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF).  They will be receiving free room and board from Community Garden members in return for 15 hours of work per week.  They will be working in the common areas and the plots started by school children.  Harvest from the school plots will go to the food pantry.