Olivewood Wonders September 23, 2013

Monarch butterfly chrysalis

Harlequin bugs? I know they are a true bug, but I am not sure of the species.

Moon Beans

School Garden Workshop at Olivewood Gardens

Olivewood Gardens is a gem hidden in National City. Originally built in the late 1800s, the Victorian home is surrounded by vast organic gardens and demonstration gardens for hosting cooking classes, nutrition classes, and gardening workshops. I helped Diana Bergman, program director, lead a workshop called Starting and Sustaining Your School Garden. I taught sections on watering, weeds, critters and curriculum. And I learned so much from the other participants — dedicated parents from schools, Farm to School leadership teams, Natural Resource Conservation District employees, and others. What a wonderful group of people!  And Olivewood is a true paradise. Here’s a link to their website. http://www.olivewoodgardens.org

Olivewood’s giant worm composter

Beautiful hanging succulent frames

Veggie beds covered with translucent shade cloth. Flexible above-ground watering system can be rerouted as needed.

Painted tires become planters

Moon Beans

Olivewood’s well-organized shed

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Building a Cobb Solar Cooker for Solar Cookers International

Cobb is an age-old building method using a mixture of mud (clay), sand, and straw as a binder (apparently it produces lactic acid as it ferments, which binds the minerals together). When I was in Africa as a college student, I lived for a few weeks with a Samburu family. One night it rained hard, and the grandmother in the family rushed out into the rain. I wondered what she was doing, and then discovered that she was taking advantage of the rain to repair her house, plastering the outside with a mud-dug, grass mixture. She was an expert in cobb building, like every Samburu woman.
Joe Kennedy is also an expert in cobb building. An architecture graduate of UC Berkeley with MA’s in architecture from SciArch — Southern California Institute of Architecture, and in Peace Studies from Notre Dame, Kennedy has built cobb structures all over the world. In this project, he is teaming with Patricia McCardle of Solar Cookers International, to try to create a durable solar cooker that can be built and used in refugee camps in Chad. McCardle is the editor of the Solar Cooker International journal, and a former member of the US diplomatic corps. She has brought solar cookers all over the world, and has observed the problems with a variety of the cookers in large camps: durability. Her idea and Kennedy’s expertise will hopefully solve that problem.

A simple solar cooker — cardboard covered in cigarette foil — folds up into a dish of sorts held together by sticks and pointed at the sun. The blackened aluminum pot absorbs heat — 150 degrees and rising when we counted.

Boes of clay donated from an Orange County clay producer — a ton of clay!

Crushed charcoal — crushed by hand. In the boxes is clay donated from an Orange County clay producer; and hay bales provide the straw.

Crushed charcoal can be mixed with the cobb to create the black color needed to absorb heat inside the solar oven.

The inside of the cooker, darkened with charcoal. The blue is the bottom of the bucket, which will be removed to create an opening for the oven. Inside the frame, a panel of glass or plastic will allow the sun to pass through and heat the oven.

the bucket inside will be removed when the oven is dry. It is used to create an opening in the oven. A pillow stuffed inside, filled with straw, will keep the heat in the oven.

Volunteers adding cobb.

Stuffing a hand-made pillow into the opening of the oven.

Joe Kennedy and Patricia McCardle of Solar Cookers International and their almost-finished experimental solar oven. When the cobb dries, they will test it out!

More of Kennedy’s creations — cobb benches and a cobb fire pit — at Wild Willow Farm.

Yosemite Rangers Junior Ranger Geology Hike on Pothole Dome

Yosemite’s high country is the perfect place to see every aspect of geology you can think of — from volcanoes and lava, to glaciation and melting. The rangers can explain it all!

Farming 101 at Wild Willow Farm and Education Center

Wild Willow Farm lies in the Tijuana River Valley, about 3/4 mile from the Mexican border, and 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The farm has a farm school, teaching suburbanites like me to farm organically. Experts in horticulture and permaculture are teaching our class of 20 urban refugees of all ages — from 19 to 55.

So far, we have built garden beds, harvested kale and collards for the farms CSA — Community Supported Agriculture — and transplanted seedlings, and cleared hoop
houses.

we clean out a hoop house full of melons.

Harvesting chard

Magenta rainbow chard

Rainbow chard glowing with health!

Washing produce for the CSA in the giant outdoor wash tub

Can beat beets!

did you know that if you cut the water to carrots toward the end of their growth, they will become sweeter? Try it — it’s amazing! The absorb the nutrients from their leaves.

Amaranth leaves

Touche!

Land of a Thousand Frogs!

August in Yosemite’s Tuolomne Meadows, we found a high glacial tarn that was full of frogs. Everywhere we stepped, Pacific Tree Frogs hopped out of our way! And between rocks in the tarn were fat tadpoles. A thin ribbon snake slithered away through the rocks — doubtless, he was FULL of frogs. Later, a ranger told us that the reason this little lake had so many frogs while others had none was that this lake had no trout.

Principles of Outdoor Learning

Principles of Outdoor Learning

Getting children out into nearby nature has never been more important. This prezi will give you the tools to convince others in your sphere as to why it is such a good idea.