Trip to Wisconsin Gold Harvest

It's not exactly related to the 4G garden, but it does relate to green and growing edible things at Lake View: We took a trip out to the Wisconsin Gold Harvest farm to buy popcorn directly from the wonderful farm family that grows it. Early in 2011, we transitioned from food-service popcorn packs laden with colors, flavors and assorted artificial ingredients to locally grown popcorn popped only with pure, expeller-pressed, sustainably grown, coconut oil from family farms in the Philipines and pure salt.

The farmers, Colleen and Carl, gave us a warm and gracious welcome. We toured the farm and the popcorn storage and packaging facilities, met the dogs, saw the harvesting equipment, and even received gifts for both children -- home-grown pumpkins in time for Halloween. We drove home happy with 100 pounds of popcorn, enough for two Popcorn Days at Lake View!

Fall garden cleanup and prep

Parent volunteers and lots of Green Teamers came out to work on the garden. Out with the old, in with the new! We pulled out all the scraggly old tomato plants and still-lush pepper plants that didn't yield much this year, but sure did look great.

The students worked very hard moving tons of earth into the brand-new beds that parents built a few weekends ago. Now we have a total of EIGHT raised beds!

Lush growth at the 4G

First summer for 4G

Lake View Fun Fair

Visitors to Lake View's annual Fun Fair could also stroll around our brand-new garden!

Seeding pickup

Community Groundworks at Troy Gardens was kind enough to donate tons of seedlings to us. We drove out and picked them up one sunny day in May. Nathan Larson, the education director, met us at the Kids' Garden. Lake View students who came along got to meet some friendly chickens as a dividend.

Lots of planting!

We got lots of planting done today at the Great Green Growing Garden.

Five Green Team Members came out in the afternoon and toiled for two hours under the warm sun. They were Mai Jai (someone please post the correct spelling!), Ethan, Devon, Lily and Lydia. Parent volunteers Vesna Kovach and Melissa Mooney were there, and so was teaching assistant Heather Reimer.

We got so much done, it was amazing! We finished building the square foot grids on the two remaining beds.

We caged the 12 tomato plants that Zivile and Vesna planted earlier this week.

We planted the 6 tomato plants and 6 sweet pepper plants that Melissa and Chris Mooney grew and donated from their home greenhouse and seedling operation.

We planted 12 squares of salad mixture.

We planted one square foot each of cimarron lettuce, radishes, basil, parsley, carrots -- and a square that didn't get labeled and I'm not sure what, if anything is in it but a blank craft stick sign!

Then we watered. And the kids went back into class.