Healthy Food

Learning  about healthy food doesn't have to get complicated. When we look at food as a compiltaion of nutrition facts and figures it can start to boggle the brain, but when we keep it simple, things start to make sense.

Today at the garden we discovered the bounty of yummy and nutritious foods growing right here in the city. We found strawberries, saskatoons and raspberries as well as snap peas and even some edible flowers. From our findings we made paper plate faces that were both fun and tasty! There were angry faces, and lion faces, and beautiful gaia princess faces. Making a fun activity out of eating was a great way to encourage the kids to experiment with tasting new foods.

After gobbling up our faces, we listened to a story about the different food groups. We discovered that grains such as wheat, rice, and quinoa give us energy so that we can play endurance demanding games like tag or hockey. The bright colours of fruits and vegetables provide us with antioxidants that protect our bodies from getting sick. Dairy foods like milk provide calcium for our bones to grow, and protein foods like beans, meat, and fish help build our muscles so that we can be strong. Healthy fats are also really important for our brains and organs, so eating foods like nuts and seeds can make us smart!

We enjoyed eating in our garden today, and learning about the foods we put in our bodies.  We all agreed that healthy food can be tasty, fun to eat, as well as good for us.

Wild Medicine

It is a warm and lovely morning as the kids begin to trickle their way to the garden. Hidden amongst the broad green leaves that continue to sprawl from our garden plot, lay the tasty fruit of our labour. We are so excited to see our garden bloom!

We are lucky today, as we have a very special guest. Kalyn Byrne, a Clinical Herbalist, is here to talk to us about responsible wildcrafting and where to find the abundant medicines in our community. Wildcrafting is a term people use when they talk about collecting wild plants. We learn that it is really important not to take too much of the generous plants around us and to be sure to leave a lot for both the animals that rely on them, and the future generations that may need them for their use. Ethical wildcrafting is based on the belief that we as humans are stewards of the earth, and we must protect and encourage the growth of wild medicines rather than exploit and monopolize them for our own selfish desires.

Kalyn has brought some special frames with her for us to create our own plant part collage. After receiving the rules about ethical wildcrafting, we set out to find pieces of plants to decorate our picture. Not only will these plant pieces contribute to a beautiful work of art, but they will help remind us of the plants we sourced, and their magical benefits.

The kids immediately dart off to find interesting shapes of leaves and colourful flower petals, while some of the parents pick Kalyn's brain about the properties and uses of some of the wild herbs we are discovering in and around the orchard. We learn that strawberry leaves contain high amounts of vitamin C, and that every part of the dandelion plant can be used as an effective medicine for our well being.

In a small area by the side of the gravelly road we find a variety of plants, all of which can be used as medicine. What many people see as weeds are, in actual fact, very powerful medicines over which we tread every day.

Finally, we finish collecting our plant pieces and begin to construct our collages. The kids focus on making excellent works of art that they can hang in their rooms and remember the plants they used.

Once we thank Kalyn for her generosity of knowledge, we decide it's a good time to enjoy a snack of sliced cucumbers and grape tomatoes. Then we have a fallen apple collection race, and everyone returns with a ton of apples. Everyone is a winner when we tell them what we will be doing with the bounty of fruit. Apple butter will be on the menu at our harvest picnic!

One more surprise is on the itinerary today, as it is International Day of Dancing! Everone gets on the dance-orchard floor and busts a move in a game of freeze dance. What a way to start the week-end!

Wisdom of the Orchard

Jim Hollicky holding up some of the fruit of his labour in Sunnyside Orchard

Jim Hollicky, dedicated steward of the Sunnyside Orchard, knows just how important producing your own food is. Growing up in a small town in Saskatchewan during the "dirty thirties," Jim experienced what it was like to live off the land and do without the convenience of grocery stores. We were so lucky to have him share these memories with us in the warmth of the sun-blissed orchard.

As we strolled together through the Orchard it was evident that these trees and plants weren't just items in a shopping cart, but to Jim, they were living beings with histories of their own. We learned about how the variable Calgary winters had affected the growth of the Valentine Cherries, and how important it is to thin out the immature apple fruit so they have room to develop into big tasty fruit. We also heard the lovelorn story of the pear tree couple and how, through an act of vandalism, one  tree was destroyed, leaving the partner to live a fruitless life. We also witnessed a miracle of nature when seeing for our very own eyes a baby fruit on the single pear tree in the orchard.  Jim suspects the pear received the pollen from another tree, a new love from the yard of a neighbour in the community.

The children were excited to discover the massive strawberry patch amongst the flowers in the orchard garden, and even more excited to hear that they were welcome to eat the delicious berries whenever they pleased.

After our orchard tour, we settled in to make pinwheels for our gardens. Pinwheels are great deterrents of birds and other animals intent on pecking away at the food growing in the garden. We coloured the square paper on both sides and cut toward the centre from each corner. Then we glued the holes in each corner into the centre hole. We placed colourful beads on the stick and put the hole in our pinwheels through the stick. We finished off with a few more beads, and Voila!

If you ever stop by the orchard, be sure to try an apple or strawberry, but also make sure to spend a little time doing some weeding or picking dandelions before they go to seed. The Sunnyside Orchard is a product of the community and it takes more than one person or plant to make it beautiful!