To extract honey, we begin with honeycomb in a wooden frame. An electric hot knife is used to sear the caps off the pores of honey. Then, a sharp metal comb is run over the surface of the frame to allow the honey to flow more freely from it once placed in the extractor. The extractor is a large metal cylindrical tub with slots build into a rotating inner wall. The frames are placed in the slots, the manual crank is set into motion, and golden honey is forced out of the frame via centrifugal force.
We learned a deep appreciation for honey by acquiring it through a series of critical and challenging steps. Just like the appreciation we have for every fresh vegetable that grows at The Edible Schoolyard. It is safe to say that all of our precious honey will be spent with great consideration in the days to come. e.g. on toast
Box full of honey
Pulling the honey combs out of the box
Spinning the honey off the combs
Pouring the honey out of the barrell
The finished product
The dough consists of flour, brown sugar, salt, yeast, and water. We made it in advance to let it have a chance to rise before class, but gave out copies of the recipe, which students can easily make themselves at home. One particularly equitable student from each table group portioned out the dough, and we got to work rolling our individual portions out on the lightly floured table.
The most direct way to form a traditional pretzel shape is to roll the dough into a skinny rope, twist the ends together, and then flip the twisted end over to meet the other side of the circle. Both times, this was the shape I constructed, but the sheet pan quickly filled with far more creative pretzels–initials, braids, and coils of all sizes. Before baking, we boiled the pretzels in a baking soda and water solution for approximately 45 seconds. The alkalinized water is key, as it helps to create the perfect chewy texture. We then brushed the pretzels with egg wash and chose to sprinkle on one or all of our toppings: kosher salt, large sea salt, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds.
The pretzels took 10 minutes to bake in our convection oven at 450 degrees. We served them hot out of the oven with different styles of mustard and chatted about the summer and what to look forward to in 8th grade. We will be seeing the new 8th graders in the kitchen as soon as we return for the new school year, so it was a fun send-off and a great way to provide continuity for students and teachers alike in our Edible Schoolyard journey.
The board for pretzel day
Shaping the pretzels
One of the folded pretzels
One of the pretzels being boiled
Some pretzels coming out of the oven
Some people chose to dip their warm pretzels in mustard
Yum
This week, 8th graders are marking the close of their Edible Schoolyard experience with unforgettable pizzas made from scratch and cooked in the wood-fired oven. The garden is filled with the mouthwatering fragrance of pesto, caramelized onions, aromatic herbs, and garlic. Some students shared that they have been waiting for this moment since the 6th grade!
We began with an opening circle in the ramada, then split into three groups that rotated through various stations of pizza making. One group of students began in the kitchen. They harvested and prepared fresh toppings from the garden, including fresh marjoram, thyme, collard greens, and scallions. They also prepared dough for the following class, mixing together yeast, flour, salt, and extra-virgin olive oil and kneading the pliant dough into rounds. In between tasks, students were encouraged to create a reflection card encouraging them to draw or write their most memorable experience or lesson learned during their time in the kitchen and garden.
A second group began with building its own pizzas. Students shaped the dough and brushed the surface with garlic-infused olive oil. With a partner, they picked toppings of their choice: fresh eggs, herbs and greens from the garden, mozzarella, thin rounds of summer squash, kalamata olives, or tomato sauce and pesto students made earlier in the fall. Some pizzas were creatively shaped as a cat’s head or an alligator; others were dressed simply with cheese, garlic, and olive oil.
One corner of the garden was devoted solely to grinding grain into flour. Students furiously threshed wheat grown in the garden, releasing the wheat from the chaff. The wheat berries were then ground into flour using three different “technologies”–an ancient mortar and pestle, a hand mill, and a grain bike that produced fine flour. This station brought the experience full circle, bringing students into the creation of pizza from flour, to dough, to finished product.
At the closing circle, students responded to the question, “What wisdom would you pass on to an incoming 6th grader about the Edible Schoolyard?” Their responses resonated even beyond King Middle School:
“Try something new, even if you don’t like how it looks. You might be surprised that it tastes good.”
“Remember to have fun and don’t let the time pass by too fast.”
“Don’t wear your best shoes.”
This pizza party is a celebration of the students’ hard work in the garden and skills learned in the kitchen. It is also a time to mark the 8th grade students’ continuation on their journey into high school and the years beyond. Down the road, I hope we continue to hear from them and see them return to this garden and kitchen that their hands and hearts have helped to create.
Grinding the grain
Kneading the dough
Rolling the dough
Picking toppings
Raw pizza
Going in the oven
Ready to eat
When you plant potatoes it’s important to know the origins of your seed. Oftentimes store-bought potatoes are sprayed with chemicals that prevent them from sprouting and even potatoes from the farmer’s market could carry disease. The safest bet is to buy certified disease-free seed potatoes from a reliable source.
This year we are growing potatoes in the traditional way. We planted in a trough in the ground and then mounded up soil around the swollen stems as the potatoes began to grow. We are also experimenting with growing potatoes in potato towers, which is a technique used frequently by urban farmers and gardeners alike, as a productive space saving way to utilize vertical area and maintain a small footprint. This method is perfect for small urban backyard plots where you might not want to dedicate an entire bed to potatoes, and can even be successfully done in a space as small as a front stoop.
To build our potato towers, we used round wire cages (reused from our Oyster mushroom cultivation project) and lined the bottom with a thin layer of straw. Then we added about a foot of soil and compost, and lined the outside with straw to hold the soil in the cage (you can also use cardboard or newspaper to keep the soil from spilling out the gaps). We planted our potatoes in a ring, about six inches from each other and about four inches from the outside of the cage. Then we covered our set of seed potatoes with more soil and compost, and repeated this potato tower layer cake recipe until our cage was completely full. Soon enough we will see the green leaves of our spuds popping out from all sides of the tower. Come late summer we will have the pleasure of harvesting delicious potatoes grown in vertical space.
Below are a few highlights:
The raffle consisted of 16 boots with the various prizes clothes pinned to them. When a raffle ticket was purchased the buyer would put their ticket into the boot that corresponded to the prize they were interested in.
There was beautiful music and dancing
Our master pizza makers, making one of over 100 pizzas they made at the plant sale
Our fabulous Ms. Joyce setting up and managing the ticket booth
Everyone enjoying their food and relaxing in the garden
We began planning for the plant sale more than a year ago, with students grafting young apple trees. Now the successful grafts are flourishing and will be for sale. In November we took cuttings of some of our favorite herbs and currants and practiced vegetative propagation with students. The hardy survivors are looking great and ready for sale. In the winter we began sowing vegetable and flower seeds in our greenhouse– with the extra warmth and shelter, they grew quickly and now these potted starts are ready for the garden. We are especially proud of our diverse tomato plants; over twenty varieties of tomato are represented, covering the color spectrum with red, pink, orange, yellow, green, and purple fruit.
The plant sale is Saturday May 8th from 9 am to 3 pm, and Sunday May 9th from 10 am to 1 pm. On Saturday we will also have food and festivities, including homemade pizza and fresh salad, live music, face painting, Ici ice cream, Blue Bottle iced coffee, Bakesale Betty organic fried chicken sandwiches, tours led by King students, and Alice Waters will be signing her new book In the Green Kitchen. Come and join us!
The welcome sign
The greenhouse surrounded by the plants for the sale
Our Edible Schoolyard grown mint and lemon verbena will be in the tea
One of our many delicious looking beds of lettuce
All the proceeds from In the Green Kitchen go to the Edible Schoolyard
Our freshly mulched strawberry patches
See you Saturday!
Students review the anatomy of the flower from a worksheet they completed in class, and then choose a flower in the garden that they would like to draw, dissect, and label. We find the male and female reproductive parts of the flower (many flowers contain both parts), and dissect the ovaries to find the unfertilized seeds, the ovules. We explore how flower petals attract pollinators with bright colors, patterns, and sweet scents. My favorite part is the moment of understanding when students realize how the flower anatomy they learned on their worksheet applies to the actual fruits and vegetables that grow in the garden. One student gasped, “You mean a kiwi is actually a plant ovary? I’ll never look at kiwis the same way again.”
Some flower vocabulary:
Sepal: modified leaves which act as protection for the developing flower
Stigma: a sticky surface atop the female reproductive organ to trap and hold pollen
Anther: pollen-bearing part of the male reproductive organ
Here you will find pictures of just a few of the gorgeous flowers in the Edible Schoolyard garden right now:
- Check out those anthers
- Fuzzy sepals on the borage
- California poppies in bloom
- Our gorgeous flowering columbine
- Sepals protecting young kiwis
- Flowering pear, the ovary becomes the fruit
- Pollination in action
- Flowering quince
- Flowering rockrose
Many students learned for the first time the acronym EVOO on the recipe. Later, one of them told me he was watching the game show “Cash Cab” on the Discovery Channel the night after class where the prize-winning question was “What is EVOO?” I was reminded of how broad a meaning “life skills” can have!
Once the well was made, we all marveled at how the white flour with the yellow eggs in the middle looked just like a giant fried egg. Using a fork (which reiterated how simple the recipe is to make with everyday kitchen tools), the students mixed together the eggs and the oil and then pulled tiny bits of flour into the wet ingredients as they swirled the fork around. The well method is a great way to ensure a smooth, pliant dough, and has been used for generations to make fresh pasta.
After kneading by hand, the finished dough was wrapped in plastic to let it rest for the next class. The students cut and cooked dough that was made by the class before them. We had some amazingly creative shapes, some of which had yet to be invented! The pasta cooked in salted boiling water for 60 seconds, and we served it with more olive oil, Meyer lemon wedges, chervil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, ground pepper, and shelling peas fresh off the vine. I hope we hear from the 7th graders many years down the road that they continue to make this delicious recipe for their family and friends.
The recipe
Making the pasta dough
Rollin out the dough
Cutting the pasta
Boiling up the pasta and getting ready to eat
We start the class with some fact about bees. We explain that there are over 80 species of bees native to Berkeley, 1,500 species native to California, and a whopping 20,000 world-wide. We also tell the students that most of the species do not live in a colony, and are actually solitary and build their nests underground. We talk about how not all species sting, and that the only bees that do sting are female. We continue on with facts and history and then move into the garden to do some observing.
Observing bees and other insects brings the somewhat difficult concept of pollinating to life. Students learn that seed and fruit production are the result of this process and that the long-term sustainability of our food system depends on it. The students divide into groups and each group has a small net. We walk through the garden gently catching bees so we can take a closer look at the variety of colors and sizes that make up our Edible Schoolyard colony. After our careful observations we let them go and they get back to their important tasks.
By having a greater understanding of bees the students do not find them as scary, and see their immensely fascinating side. The observation also helps the groups appreciate all of the hard work and its importance in the life cycle of the garden, and our whole food system.
The board at the entrance of the ramada
Students catching bees in the echium
Observing one of the bees
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It seems like every place in the garden is more full of life than just a few weeks ago. The kiwis are leafing out, fruit trees everywhere are blooming and setting fruit, aphids have returned to the garden bringing with them their beloved ladybug predators, our hens are responding to longer daylight and laying more eggs, the winter cover crop is tall enough to be chopped down, weeds are growing faster than ever, and volunteer plants like amaranth and California poppies are shooting up everywhere. We even had the first ripe strawberry come in this week.
Not only did the equinox mark the start of spring, but it was a way for ESY to honor the tradition of many ancient cultures before us by sowing seeds with the new moon just before the transition of the season. In preparation for our Mother’s Day plant sale, we began sowing seeds on March 15th, which marked the new moon. By planting seeds according to the moon’s cycle it is thought that the water content and growth of the plants are affected. When the moon is new the light is stronger, pulls on the molecules of water within, and each swelling seed is pulled upwards away from the earth toward the sky. As the full moon wanes, we are able to take advantage of the opposite force and transplant the seedlings that will be pulled toward the earth and become rooted in their place.
Our greenhouse is completely filled to the brim with seeds that students have sowed over the past weeks and we have built outdoor tables to house our young plant friends that can germinate outside. Some of what we have planted includes 20 varieties of tomatoes, peppers, basil, parsley, cilantro, chard, collard greens, and kale.
The sprouting kiwi around the ramada
One of our vibrant green beds
It's spring