For the first time since Gilette in August, I walked under olive trees. But there was so much more. Pomegranates, persimmons, apples, lemons, nuts, and figs ripened on branches amidst the olive trees.
Corn, tomatoes, rosemary, basil, mint, peas, beans.
Gourds, pumpkins,lovely bay trees, maple trees, oak trees, manzanita, mountain misery, ferns of all types, and the majestic redwoods.
Cat tails, with their medicinal qualities (fighting diarrhea) growing next to the pond. Blackberry bushes, edible plants, roots, and leaves of many varieties. Grapes, of course, of many varieties.
Later posts will examine the educational aspects of this visit, with pictures of children at Farm School.
This entire experience is possible courtesy of a couple, Russ and Arlene, who own this land, and welcome groups of school children to camp there a week at a time.
In an era where most kids (including mine) grow up in cities, without any contact whatsoever with the countryside that supplies us with our food, Farm School is a singular blessing.
I grew up in a different place and a different era.
Then, maybe 20% of the population was still engaged in farming, as we had been since time began.
Now, less than one percent in the U.S. are farmers and they support all the rest of us.
I remember my father's generation, those born early in the last century. Most of them not only knew how to grow food, they also knew how to fix machines, build houses, and gather edible foods from the land.
My Uncle Ed, for example, knew mushrooms, which were edible and which were poisonous. (Both looked the same to me.)
Of course, one week at Farm School is not enough for children today to acquire this kind of knowledge. No, but they can perhaps to start to learn to not be afraid of grasshoppers, lizards, or mysterious noises in the night.
Maybe they can learn to no longer be afraid of the night itself, its blackness and its unknowableness.
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