Category — Children

By Susan LeVine and Tom Shepherd
Summerland Publishing
January 1, 2012

Many years ago, every citizen had a garden. Today, some of us are too busy or don’t know how to grow a garden. So, how do you make a garden and become a citizen farmer? This Handbook for Citizen Farmers was written by Tom Shepherd and Susan LeVine. Tom has been an organic farmer since 1973 and shares his secrets in this simple format to inspire children, families and schools to grow their own garden. Susan, a gifted artist, provides beautiful watercolor illustrations that help tell the story of growing a wonderful garden of your very own.

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The Truly Living Well Wheat Street Garden is one of several innovative efforts that The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation are supporting to give more families access to affordable, healthy food. (Inspiring video. Mike)

Truly Living Well Camp

Susan Mittleman
WABE News
2011-06-17

Excerpt:

ATLANTA, GA (WABE) – This Friday concludes the inaugural session of the first urban-farm camp in Atlanta. Truly Living Well manages four-acres of land in the Wheat Street Gardens, across from the Wheat Street Baptist Church and the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta’s historic 4th Ward. WABE News has more on this unique camp smack dab in the middle of downtown Atlanta.

Between the sounds of chickens, sirens and the swell of the hot summer heat, children’s voices can be heard singing camp songs .. of a slightly different variety.

Camp TLW is an arm of Truly Living Well, a four-acre urban farm based downtown at the Wheat Street Gardens, in the Old Fourth Ward. Once a housing project, now it’s a pastoral setting tucked between historic black churches and the chaos of the city.

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‘One o’ the kitchen gardens’ illustrated by Inga Moore, in The Secret Garden.

Moore feels a powerful attachment to the English countryside.

Excerpt from a Guardian article about Inga Moore

I was spellbound by The Secret Garden as a child, and always lingered over Charles Robinson’s colour plates. Looking at that old book now I’m astonished to see that it had only nine illustrations. Moore has provided more than 100.

Again the old house provides inspiration with a real secret garden of its own, just like the one in the story which becomes a sanctuary for Mary, a lonely, unwanted orphan, and her sickly cousin Colin. Thanks to the garden, this story of loss, loneliness and ill-health soon becomes one of physical and spiritual regeneration.

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Archive 2005 – 4482-A Beete/Geräteschuppen – Plant Bed with Shed. Rare item can be found at great expense on the Internet.

Playmobil toys for the City Farmer

From Wikipedia:

Playmobil (pronounced play-mo-beel) is a line of toys produced by the Brandstätter Group, headquartered in Zirndorf, Germany.

New products and product lines developed by a 50-strong development team are frequently introduced by Brandstätter. Some of these, such as promotional products, are only produced in limited quantities.

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Students mixing new soil with old in front of P.S. 20. Photo by Rebecca Sesny.

“We have all sort of lost touch with where our food is coming from.”

By Rebecca Sesny
CUNY J-School
Dec 14, 2011

Excerpt:

The administration agreed in the fall of 2010 to create a new program with initial funding coming from the PTA. Local farmer Zachary Pickens and Madiba Restaurant, which has its own rooftop garden, agreed to partner with the school to create this class. Mr. Pickens began the program in the spring of 2011, teaching third grade classes about composting and worm growing. The children grew their own lettuce and the chef at Madiba Restaurant came in to teach them how to make salads with their vegetables.

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“The main difficulty in our American mode of life now is that we are tending to obliterate the distinction between work and play, by crowding work into hours which ought to be devoted to perfect relaxation of mind and body.”

Scientific American Magazine
April 6, 1878

Excerpt:

As a rule school hours are intelligently adjusted with a view of taxing the young brain to a safe limit; and to put any more upon it, by compelling children, voluntarily or involuntarily, to absorb more knowledge of the kind which should be, if it is not, taught in school, and this during their play hours, is simply continuing work. Besides play that is of any value as play has its very essence freedom.

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Sweden, which is the the home of garden schools, takes the lead and has 2,000 of them.

Scientific American Magazine
Oct 27, 1900
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in America, began life on August 28, 1845.

From a Department of State pamphlet:

In France school farms increased rapidly, and in 1852 there were seventy, the number allowed by law.

The following are some of the advantages of the system: The children obtain an intimate knowledge and intercourse with nature, they learn about the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. It educates boys beyond the tendency to pilfer fruits and flowers in orchards, and instills in children a fondness of rural life.

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By Mary Quattlebaum
Illustrated by Laura J. Bryant
Dawn Pubns (March 1, 2012)

Old MacDonald had a … garden? Yes! Sing along with young Jo MacDonald as she grows healthy food for people and wild creatures. E-I-E-I-O! Find out how butterflies, bumblebees, and birds help a garden to thrive—and how you can help them too. And keep an eye on one mysterious plant. What will it become? Youngsters learn about garden ecosystems and stewardship through this playful adaptation of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

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Michelle Marcus proudly displays the seedlings for her Boulevard Veg! project. Photo by Vincent L. Chan.

Vancouver Foundation’s “Green Generation” Awards kick-start youth-run environmental projects

Wendy Szeto was a bit skeptical about the idea of planter boxes popping up on her boulevard in Vancouver’s leafy Dunbar neighbourhood.

“At first, we didn’t think we would participate in the project,” she says. “But we decided to give it a try. And we are so glad!”

Szeto lives on the same block as 14-year old Michelle Marcus. Marcus is shy and soft-spoken, but she’s also a keen environmentalist.

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By Lynne Cherry
Blue Sky Press
2003

Review by Shelle Rosenfeld
American Library Association

Little Groundhog loves eating from the neighbor’s vegetable garden–maybe too much. Perhaps it’s time he planted his own garden and, fortunately, Squirrel is willing to show him how. The two animals collect seeds, store them, and after winter hibernation and spring thaw, plant and tend them. By summer, Little Groundhog is joyfully harvesting and eating what they sowed. And such a plentiful harvest calls for sharing, bringing a wonderful Thanksgiving feast for all to enjoy.

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By Susan Grigsby
Albert Whitman & Company
Forthcoming: February 1, 2012
32 pages

Maya loves contests, so she is excited when her teacher announces they will plant a school garden like Thomas Jefferson’s garden at Monticello–and they’ll have a “First Peas to the Table” contest, just like Jefferson and his neighbors had each spring. Maya plants her pea seeds with a secret head start –found in Jefferson’s Garden Book– and keeps careful notes in her garden journal.

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By Susan Grigsby
Albert Whitman & Company
32 pages
Sep 1 2010

Sally is a young girl living in rural Alabama in the early 1900s, a time when people were struggling to grow food in soil that had been depleted by years of cotton production. One day, Dr. George Washington Carver shows up to help the grownups with their farms and the children with their school garden.

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Kindergarteners hand over their class piggy bank for the farm fundraiser. They raised $20.54!

Denver Green School seeds new innovation – growing their own food

Chris Cunnyngham
Big Think
September 21, 2011

Excerpt:

A previously abandoned one-acre field behind the school has been taken over by Sprout City Farms, a project devoted to “innovative urban farms on underutilized land, rooting farmers in the city and bringing good food to neighborhoods.” The food grown is then sold back to the school to be served in the cafeteria. As you may imagine, there were lawyers involved at various steps of the process but Allen Potter, 6th Grade teacher and founding partner of the school, was quick to point out that school district lawyers “were actually our allies in this.”

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An Algonquin Happy Book – No. 157

By Gladys Nelson Muter
Illustrated by F.Y. Cory
Algonquin Publishing Co.
1924

This charming, vintage book tells the story of some hungry bunnies and their love of vegetables.

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We’re chopped for hash and fixed for mash to make potato crust

Pictures by Florence Kate Upton
Verses by Bertha Upton
Longman’s. Green & Co.
1897

The Vege-men’s Revenge, first published in 1897, features Poppy, a little girl, who is coaxed by Don Tomato and Herr Carrot to Vege-men’s Land, where she is buried on the promise that this will make her grow. Poppy sleeps through a nightmare of all the chopping, boiling, etc., that makes vegetables edible and eventually awakes to take this same sort of revenge on the stuff in her garden.

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Sprout City Farms, in partnership with the Denver Green School, Denver Urban Gardens, and Denver Public Schools, is building a one-acre vegetable farm in a corner of the schoolyard at the Denver Green School (DGS).

DGS is a public elementary and middle school (pre-K to 8th grade) focused on environmental and social sustainability through a “hands-on, brains-on,” project-based approach to learning. The Denver Green School Community Farm aligns perfectly with the values of the school, providing opportunities for students to engage in the natural world, food production, and interaction with the local community. It also gives them space to run around outside chasing grasshoppers.

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Hunters Point Boys & Girls Club in San Francisco.

Today show’s Jenna Bush Hager (Jenna Bush) visits school garden for celebration of Chez Panisse’s 40th anniversary

Rosemina Nazarali
Foodista
August 25, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal has teamed up with Chef Alice Waters to teach Bay Area inner-city youth about sustainable farming and eating healthier.

“I grew up around gardens and growing my own food, my family did that a lot and that was real source of community,” the Source Code actor said. “Growing up, more than anything, I got to know my mother and father and my sister and they got to know me at the dinner table.”

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See the film here.

The Mother of the Locavore Movement Serves Up Her Gastronomic Curriculum

A short film by Lisa Eisner
Nowness
Aug 24, 2011

Restaurateur Alice Waters expounds on the inspiration guiding The Edible Schoolyard in today’s short film by Lisa Eisner. Waters’ pioneering project at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, California, has transformed a vacant lot into flourishing community farmland, combining horticulture, gastronomy and education. Visit any of the myriad farm-to-table restaurants defining the modern culinary scene, from Dan Barber’s Blue Hill to Suzanne Goin’s Lucques, and you’ll trace the chefs’ collective methodology back to Waters.

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The Perennial Plate Episode 67: Kids at a Farm from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

By Daniel Klein
The Perennial Plate Episode 67: Kids at a Farm
Aug 23, 2011

Excerpt from Serious Eats:

Janus Youth Programs has operated community-based programs for children, youth, and families in Oregon and Washington since 1972. They have a network of over 20 programs includes, including Janus Food Works, which employs 14 to 21 year-olds from Portland. The youth get involved in the planning, growing, selling, and donating of over 4,000 pounds of organic produce each year from the one-acre organic farm on Sauvie Island.

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A Manual For Teachers, Parents And Communities

Kraisid Tontisirin, Director,
Food and Nutrition Division
Mahmoud Solh, Director,
Plant Production and Protection Division
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Rome © FAO 2005
198 pages

Foreword

The keys to the development of children and their future livelihoods are adequate nutrition and education. These priorities are reflected in the first and second Millennium Development Goals. The reality facing millions of children, however, is that these goals are far from being met.

Children who go to school hungry cannot learn well. They have decreased physical activity, diminished cognitive abilities, and reduced resistance to infections. Their school performance is often poor and they may drop out of school early. In the long term, chronic malnutrition decreases individual potential and has adverse affects on productivity, incomes and national development. Thus, a country’s future hinges on its children and youth.

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