Farm Master B

Today at meeting a lot of good things happened, but I walked out feeling sad.

Thursday April 8, 2010
Thursday afternoons have become the highlight of my week. This is how today went: At 1:30 after clean - up (a ten minute period where every student in the school is responsible for the cleaning of some part of the school) I met up with my group of kids aged 8-12, one other teacher and two brand new volunteers to walk to Benito's farm and learn farm skills. Each of these 15 kids and the other teacher is pretty fantastic and could constitute their own entry easily.

At the farm we met up with two more volunteers (one is an occupational therapist and has been working with some of my kids - thats a whole other entry, its fascinating stuff!) and their eight year old son and Benito. I like to think of Benito as Farm Master B. To give a taste of how cool he is, he is the one raising the baby sloth and who walked the 13 km walk-a-thon last year on stilts.

Today we divided into three stations:

1. Five kids on a rope swing. The Mother of All Rope Swings. It swings you 30 ft in the air out over the garden.
2. Five kids with me pawing through dirt, which is actually old rabbit poo, hunting for earthworms. When we find the earthworms we put them in a tin can so Farm Master B can put them in the cow manure pile, which it turns out they like better. The pawed through, supposedly but never actually worm free dirt gets put in a bucket and taken to the next station where
3. Five kids are planting fig trees and cauliflower.

I stayed in the earthworm pit away from the black wasps that sting even when not provoked. 16 kids (I know, you're thinking 5 X 3 = 15 but don't forget the OT's son. I don't know what group he ended up in) and seven adults and only one wasp sting today. Poor brand new volunteer. But Farm Master B put some plant on it that made it feel better.

Towards the end the groups started to fall apart as everyone migrated towards the Mother of All Rope Swings and there were some rabbits that had to be fed and cuddled with. Then we headed back to the school. All in all only one kid cried and that's because it was too hot and dusty. I told her to bring a water bottle next time and wondered to myself what she's going to do when the rainy season starts any day now.

I like these people and I like what I'm doing. I like that they were excited to claw through dirt and compare worms and find beetles and suck on bright red coffee beans plucked right off the bush. I like that they rotate without complaints and that only one kid lied about how many turns they'd had on The Mother of All Rope Swings. I like that half of the kids begged me to run with them to the farm and back again and when I said no they pointed to my "Virginia is for runners shirt." I like that Farm Master B is almost organic but uses chemicals to kill ticks.

(Ok all you grumpy "You haven't updated your blog"ers, are you happy now?")