Mud Mud Glorious Mud!
Happy feet in the Living School Kitchen Garden are dirty feet
The rain was falling on the morning of our second LSKG session as summer was becoming autumn and the immediate thought (as an adult, at least) was perhaps we should cancel.
What a learning experience lost that would have been.
The students’ voices rose with excitement as they entered ‘The Garden” with the realisation they had #permissiontogetdirty.
One of Living School’s keystone themes of the term calendar is Identity. What better way to teach what it is to be human than to provide a connection with the earth and its ecosystems.
If we can give children a chance to experience this relationship, they have a much greater understanding of their sense of self. The respected Aboriginal elder, Bob Randall, describes this as ‘Kanyini’ or ‘oursness’.
This immersion starts simply with our kindergarten students and becomes progressively more sophisticated as the school years progress and students enquire to gain a broader understanding of ‘who am I, how do I relate to others and what’s around me’. Eventually, this leads to ‘how do I find my purpose’.
In the LSKG, the year has definitely started with the type of energy that comes from such purpose.
Jabay (which means ‘a feed’ in Bundjalung) at the school’s Lismore campus takes place three times a week under Anna with Mylee, Kelly and the team. The wholefoods canteen has now been going strong for a couple of years and there is a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve.
Parents gather for their morning coffee to swap notes and what Living School brings to our children and their families.
The pull of a healthy delicious latte, chai or matcha - not to mention Anna’s lush organic gluten-free and dairy-free Persian Love Cake (as well as all the other naturally sweet treats) - brings an element of pride to everything we do. We’re also pleased to be able to provide the cheapest coffee in town!
Anna’s Jabay fun food facts
As summer officially comes to an end on The Northern Rivers, and we shift towards the cooler months of autumn the ‘rainy season’, it’s the perfect time to start to ease up on the sugar intake.
In traditional Chinese medicine, autumn is the time of the lungs and small intestine; a time of contraction and moving inwards, and a time of letting go of all that no longer serves us.
We also begin to reduce raw foods, which we eat abundantly over the summer months. It’s the time to nourish our bodies and protect them, both inside and out.
In Jabay, we can gradually introduce slower cooked foods and, in doing so, we fortify the immune system so we are strong and not susceptible to bugs during the winter months.
We have re-introduced our popular chilli con carne and bean chilli (our version of nachos!). A slow-cooked mix of seasonal veggies & organic beans seasoned with deep-flavoured spices and our farm-grown garlic. Think paprika, cumin & coriander (but there are no spicy chillies in these dishes!)
And for the meaty version, we use the incredible paleo mince from Locavore organic butchers in Byron Bay. It is nutrient-dense and loaded with minced liver & heart along with grass-fed and finished beef.
The bean chilli gets its protein hit from chickpeas as well as every kind of bean - red, pinto, lima, pigeon and black – all organic, much of which is coming out of ‘The Garden’. Both are served with organic corn chips and guacamole.
Finally, this week, we sent our compost, that had been beautifully breaking down over the summer, to the farm where it will feed and nourish the next batch of crops Aidan and our kids will be growing for us. It is so exciting to see the full loop of our eco-system at work with the farm and Jabay kitchen.
TIFF on ‘WHO’ is growing in the garden at the moment
Once the rain died down, the students were welcomed into the outdoor living classroom and the lesson began with ‘Who is growing at the moment’? ‘Why do we say ‘who’ instead of ‘what’? Plants are alive after all!
Can you find Parsley, Basil, Rosemary, Beetroot, Squash, Apple, Peach, Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes and Celery? Who else catches your eye?
Students are full of beans and are ready to scamper through the garden finding all the clues to the seasonal plants growing.
For the younger grades, a clue is often hidden to help identify a plant (like an apple in the apple tree, or sweet potato in the sweet potato vines), but most plants give so much away through their scent, leaf shape, or other small clues if we pay attention: a spikey macadamia leaf shape, or three delicate leaflets of a strawberry adorned with white blossoms, the smell of a crunched-up leaf of a lemon, a small pumpkin budding beneath a closed up flower.
A refreshing snack straight off the vine always finishes our garden treasure hunt. This year the students were welcomed by the tastes of plump figs, a giant cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and some fresh asparagus spears.
After we meet the plants and have a fresh nibble, we often follow with investigating the tiny hidden kingdom of soil life. From one second to the next, the garden becomes alive with colorful critters coming out of the woodwork! Lady beetles, beetles of all different shades, grasshoppers, butterflies, praying mantises both large and small, seem to all come out to greet us.
Students take turns holding a Millipede, Slater, or Earthworm, depending on who we meet. Their once tiny (now soil-covered) hands don’t look so tiny anymore, as we become the giants of the garden. I have found over my years teaching, the biggest smiles always come with holding a worm.
The life that abounds in the soil is celebrated as the students dig looking for more friends to collect on hands, leaves or in little habitat boxes.
We usually finish our day with our garden ‘Give before we Take’ practice, giving to the garden before we ‘take’ as the students prepare with excitement for a garden cook-up next week.
Students enjoy scooping manure with shovels and wheelbarrows, planting or watering seedlings, layering mulch, building a bed, or feeding the garden creatures with food scraps for the compost.
The Year Threes are remarkable with their attentive detail for planting seedlings, and Year Ones have a knack for gathering scraps to feed the worms, honouring the garden with every piece they collect for their newly met slimy friends.
We finished our day and left ‘The Garden’ feeling a little bit more alive than when we came.
AIDAN’s preparation
My morning ritual is a collection of cow poo. By 7:30am, the sun is already gathering heat. Mozzies arrive in gangs and have no difficulty poking their proboscis straight through my shirt. The school bus drivers chat and start their engines. I bumble the wheelbarrow down to the shady area where the cows rest. I continue to collect the poo to build garden beds. It won’t be long before I’ve got a team of young helpers to help me.
Love this! What a wonderful experience for those lucky kiddos