The parent meeting went well. The four of us met at Cafe de Paris and enjoyed doing the True Colours work shop and hashing out a few of the details needed to accomplish a community garden. If you're interested, you can look up ACGA's site and find "how to start a Community Garden".
True Colours is a course using simple techniques to help individuals recognize their personality style. It's based on very old psychology. I like it because it allows people to 1, see who they are and appreciate it, 2, see who others are and appreciate them and 3, learn to work together using everyone's strengths. My purpose for using it in for the community garden is to help those involved work as a community.
We looked thru the basic points of starting a community garden and agreed on a few things. One is that this is their garden, but they will allow it to be used as an example to the rest of the community. Another is that the first 2 goals are soil building and putting up a greenhouse structure. There may not be a huge amount of planting this year, perhaps watermelon. Watermelon, they've found grows from the seeds the kids spit out on the school grounds.
This was a wonderful discovery for me when I looked into buying in Costa Rica, but when I was still in Canada. I was having difficulties finding any seed companies whatsoever, despite my learning the spanish words for seeds, planting, and vegetables. The fact that Jessie said the watermelons grew from seed from their fruit and that seed is not readily available in a packet made me realize that this country has not yet been spoiled in the way of the seed.
Another focus kept coming up again and again in this meeting; learning possibilities. The potential for the kids to learn is, of course, the school's #1 priority, so it stands to reason that we keep going back to that. Seed collection is a dying art. Large seed companies make it their business to buy up small seed companies who've provided seed to specific locations for years. These seeds have been taken from plants and fruits that are hardy to that location. Each successive plant builds immunity to the pest and conditions of the area and the seed collectors then choose the best of the best. When the large seed companies take the smaller over, they then market seed that is conducive to a broader market, making the seed less viable in the various micro-climates. Because of the accessibility of the seed packets, and the buying power of the larger companies, other small seed companies are squeezed out of the market.
To make matters worse, our culture has rapidly moved away from growing our own food, so the knowledge of collecting, saving and trading seed has all but gone by the way-side. Del Mar Academy has the opportunity to be a pioneers in their part of Costa Rica; to teach their kids how to carry on the genes of the plants they grow.
We also discussed how we might gather enough green and brown material to compost enough for this project. The ground, as I saw it, is quite hard-packed which makes me believe that it's got quite a bit of clay. We'll be meeting at the school again this week to assess the site, the land and all it's pros and cons. Rainne brought a soil test so we can do a preliminary test. Where the simple, store bought tests test for ph, a full test, sent to the university will tell of more details, such as mineral content.
Another soil building idea was Kim's. She was informally voted in as the garden coordinator, and so it should be. She's a fireball. The ideas she's had and people she's contacted already amaze me. A compost barrel, turned on it's side with a turning handle, the whole thing suspended so that one can turn it daily to mix, is her goal. Even better, it's welded into a crocodile shape. The vegetables go into the hinged mouth, and the compost comes out the belly (I thought the trap door should be closer to the tail). Perfect for kids. Who wouldn't want to do that chore?
The last bit on the agenda was to name the garden. We haven't come up with anything definitive yet, but there were some good ideas. I'll keep you posted on that.
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