Day #6: Seeds, Sprinklers, & Spirit!

One of those days

It was one of those days when we needed lots of garden boots and a great attitude.  The warm rain kept us in whimsical spirits.  We began today with a yummy cheese treat from Trout Lakes, Cascadia Creamery and donated pears from Diamond Fruit.  For the first time in many of our lives, we discussed how cheese is made, how to enrich flavor, and ways to serve cheese to enhance taste - essentially we "developed our palates".  We then dove into bread from Knead Bakery, located in downtown Hood River.

Maya Trook, local teacher and farmer

Maya Trook, local teacher and farmer, today's education speaker asked us, "Why should we save seeds?" 

Answers included:

• Save money
• Know where food and seeds come from
• When we save seeds from our own garden, we can choose plants we know grow well in our micro-climate
• Secure genetic diversity
• Self-sufficiency

Maya shared that 100 years ago, there were over 1500 varieties of plants.  Today there are only 30.  Also, over 50% of calories consumed by humans come from 4 plants: corn, rice, wheat, and soy.  Problems are arising in modern humans, because we are losing the ability to digest foods made from these 4 plants.

By saving seeds, we can continue to have plant diversity in our daily diets.  Maya encouraged us to grow and save seeds from rare heirloom plants.  Pepper and tomato seeds are especially easy for anyone to save.

Richard and Muir measuring
for new cedar raised beds



Ben sawing new cedar raised beds

 





We then headed into the garden for more planting, growing, music making, art-ing, and much more!

Leif relocating 'Panfish'



MacRae and the newly located 'Panfish'





And when the rain became too much, we came inside to silkscreen shirts in preparation for the "Procession of Species" Earth Day parade.



Gorge Grown Kids silkscreened image



Many hands needed to silkscreen







 



Todd and Michael always brainstorming