November 15, 2008
Oscarville harvest bounty.
Early Thanksgiving in Oscarville celebrates community garden harvest
By Debbie Michael, CWA, Health Educator-Diabetes
On September 20, Chris Meier, LKSD Site Administrator for Oscarville School, and Eliza Meier, RurAL CAP AmeriCorps Birch Volunteer, hosted a Harvest Festival in Oscarville.
Everyone who attended had a great time picking plants like turnips, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, parsley, and even some flowers for a small centerpiece and carrots.
After about an hour of gathering from the garden and taking pictures, we brought the riches into the school to rinse, prepare and cook for the post harvest festival participants and guests.
Among the guests were Janice Berry, Community Development Specialist from RurAL CAP, who supplied and demonstrated some "green cleaning," and Lorraine Gill and Deborah A. Michael from YKHC's Diabetes Prevention and Control Program who provided some blood glucose screenings and documented the event through photographs.
Some notable moments: The guests went into the greenhouse and found that the plants were not in rows and columns, but speckled in a beautiful jumble of colors with a variety of vegetables and plants anywhere there is room. Site Administrator Chris Meier explained the mix-up, "... in the springtime, when all the students and community members started the seedlings we forgot to mention labeling. And when it was time to plant, we had no idea what we were planting. That's why the garden looks the way it does."
Another time, Chris commented that the broccoli didn't do as well as expected because the kids kept chomping on the flowerets before they got big.
In the kitchen, right before the meal, one of the students was looking over Chris' shoulder when he was finishing up cooking one of dishes, and said, "Mr. Meier, we should plant some onions next year so we could put them into our cooking." It was heart-warming to hear that they were already planning for next year's crop. Chris replied, "Well, we'll just have to see how to grow them."
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