"Who loves being a farmer?"

Over the course of this spring, I've had the awesome pleasure of gardening with two different sets of young people-- aged two to eleven. I.E., I hosted two groups of kids' workshops in my front yard.

Back in February/March, we met to build, fill and plant raised beds complete with shallots, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and squash. In April when we gathered again for our monthly workshop, we tended the garden: identified and pulled weeds, staked tomatoes, etc. Finally, we're meeting in May to do some early spring harvesting. Our main crops are potatoes, shallots, and green beans. Although a few banana peppers are ready, the tomatoes are not. Give it another couple weeks. In addition, every week, we checked in on the bees in my backyard--managed by Heather Gamper, my neighbor and beekeeper extraordinaire. Lastly, the workshops visited with my family's new chicken flock-- acquired just two weeks before the first set of workshops. The kids have nearly seen the chickens grow from "bitties" to "layers."

Today, I had my final session with one of the groups-- that happens to be a self-organized group of homes-choolers that contacted me about doing a series for them. We picked green beans, washed, and canned them with garlic, dill and vinegar to make "dilly beans" or pickled green beans. Then, we made a fresh salad out of mustard greens and kale (growing elsewhere in my garden) with some of our shallots, olive oil and a little red-wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

Some of my favorite quotes and moments from the day include:

+Anna-eight-saying, "Who loves being a farmer with Mr Nathan? ... I do."

+When we washed the green beans (held in a bowl) with the hose, each and every child asked repeatedly to help rinse them. They wanted to hold the hose, to be at the center of the action: "Can I?" "Can I rinse them?" "May I hold the hose?" "Can't I?" And then, after everyone had the opportunity to hold it solo, five sets of hands invited each other to "help" and they rinsed the beans collectively again and again while all holding the hose together.

+Anna speaking about she and her three-year-old sister, "We're the gardening sister-pair. We like to garden."

+After all the children left, my father informed me that Anna attempted to leave her phone number with him so he could call her when the chickens started laying. She held all of them-- even our rooster "hen" whose new head-pieces have given his (!) identity away.

+Silas, Kai, Anna and Macy relaxing on my front porch tasting green beans and mustard/kale salad with occasional grunts of, "Ummmm, this is good. Can I have some more?" while Stephen kept his distance from the raw food saying, "I like green beans more when they're cooked."

+Kai saying, "Mr Nathan, could we do another recipe? Oh... okay. Well... could you give us another one so we could do it at home?"

It's been a blessing, indeed, to garden with such wonderful young people. Get ready: a new generation of food movement ambassadors is on the scene and they are themselves eating and growing. I anticipate amazing things.

Below are a few pictures to enjoy.

Why Can I Eat Bread in France, but not the USA?

Updated 10/31/2017 as the National Organic Standards Board meets in Jacksonville, FL. This may well be the most important thing you read this year for your health. (Originally written in 2015 while I was traveling-- and eating bread-- with my wife in France.) I've got a food riddle for you from Paris, France: Why can I eat bread over here when it makes me sick at home? I'll share my best guess in a minute, but first, a little personal background. Since my senior year of high school, I've not been able to eat much bread at all. For five years, I was severely hypoglycemic, and everything I ate had to have more protein than carbohydrates. That meant, in effect, that I spent my years of college beer-less and eating lots of salad with meat on top. I ate tons of vegetables, very little fruit, basically no carbohydrates to speak of, meat, nuts, eggs, and cheese. If I accidentally ate, say, meat loaf that was, unbeknownst to me, made with bread in it, I'd spend the n...

Man in Overalls - It's Like Washing Your Dishes

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Man in Overalls - Growing Great Soil

Good soil will basically grow your groceries for you, but how do you build great soil? The answer is that there are two options: a quick & easy way and a DIY, hard(er) way. So we're on the same page, I'm continuing my #GrowYourGroceries The Easy Way series by digging into the how-tos of growing great soil. These stories and techniques will likely make the most sense after reading Geeking on Good Soil , my last update. (I outlined where I was headed in The Big Picture.) As I was saying, the easy way to build a great soil is to fill raised beds with a terrific compost-based soil mix like my Magic Mix to jump start your food garden productivity from year one. From there, seasonally, you simply top-dress each season before planting with another few inches of compost-based soil mix. This is how I manage my own food garden and those of my customers. Why? Because at the root of things, I'm a lazy food gar...

Man In Overalls - My Compost System

Composting, they say, is an art form. But, truth be told, I'm just too lazy for all that. My own compost philosophy is, "Crap rots in the woods, doesn't it?" But really. :) Whenever I think of home gardening systems, I always reflect back on my grandmother. She gardened up until the week she died at 93. She planted by the signs and assured me that's why her collards were not eaten up by bugs and were able to grow for 3 years running and up to 8 or 9 feet tall. She had a little rototiller, planted straight rows, mulched by spreading leaves to keep the weeds down. She threw out a little 10-10-10 from time to time and kept the cabbage worms at bay with Sevin dust. She hoed if the weeds called for it. But mostly, she harvested. Her pots were always full and her freezer always stuffed with produce: collards, mustards, turnips, peas, tomato gravy, squash, you name it. Now, I don't use 10-10-10 or sevin dust, and I'm not big on tilling. However, the thi...

Man in Overalls - Summer Garden Blues & What To Do

Welcome to mid summer in the Deep South! If you're anything like me, you're actively looking for excuses to avoid going outside this time of year. The heat doesn't so much radiate down from the sun as it seems to rise from the side walk. Rain helps- for about ten minutes- and then simply adds to the humidity as it vaporizes on the payment, so that it feels like you need a snorkel to make it from the house to the car, but of course, it only gets worse when you turn on the AC, and that first puff of hot air feels as though someone just wrapped your face in a plastic bag - not to mention that if you cut your grass yesterday, you're going to have to do it again... tomorrow. And, lets not even talk about how fast the weeds grow this time of year! Or the insects seem to multiply! Oh, home... :) Here's the good news: If your garden looks a little worse for wear, it's okay. Really. Mine does too. As much as I aim for- and largely achieve- a productive & beauti...

Man in Overalls - How to Start a School Garden: Design

Before you get to build your school garden like this, before you can help kids get their hands dirty like this, or teach kids in your school garden like this, there are a few things you've got to take care of first. The #1 most important thing you've got to do is build your team. I say- with no exaggeration-- that human infrastructure is THE most important aspect of developing a successful school garden. But, I already wrote about building your school garden team last time. Assuming you're on track with that, a simultaneous step is to begin developing your school garden design. Here are a few things to should consider as you develop a school garden design: Purpose In your school garden interest meeting, one of the first questions you should ask is: "Why are you interested in a school garden?" Interestingly, this question serves two purposes. First, it helps the team gel because there will likely be a lot of overlap in answers. This will ...

Man in Overalls - When to Plant Tomatoes

" Plant 'em in the spring. Eat 'em the summer. All winter without 'em's a culinary bummer ," as John Denver sings in "Home Grown Tomatoes." So, just when should you plant* your homegrown tomatoes? Or, more generally, when should you plant your spring food garden? (For an abbreviated version of this post revised & published in Edible Northeast Florida, click here. ) Since tomatoes along with other spring favorites like squash, corn, green beans, cucumbers, peppers, and the like are "frost sensitive" (in other words, they'll die if it freezes), it's all about the "last frost date" for your area. Unless you're a weather savant and remember the last freeze for the past twenty years, you'll have to do some investigating. You could look up your Plant Hardiness Zone on this cool "interactive" map from the USDA, and you'd learn that Jacksonville is in zone 9a, Tallahassee is in 8b, and At...

Man in Overalls - An Ode to Collards (Now with my recipes)

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Man in Overalls

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