Student Corner: The Start of the (home)School Year
We had our first home school group of the school year last month. We were blown away by how many people want to be a part of our group! As of now, we have 32 families signed up for our September-December monthly meetings!
This year, we have decided to shape each meeting around a specific subject (we did something along the lines of this partway through last year). September’s subject was apples. 
We toured the farm, took a walk through the apple espaliers, picked apples to munch on as we learned about the history of the farm and the apples in the local valley. We talked about the locally famous Newton Pippin apple, and how planting Newton Pippin trees brought about start of the Martinelli Company in the 1860’s.
Before the end of the day, we got to make some apple cider of our own! October’s theme will be nutrition based, and we’re keeping the rest of the year a secret!
Notes from the Field Classroom: Apple Season
This is an incredibly beautiful month on the farm and in the fields. The weather is cool and crisp–just like a good apple! The mighty apple is a very important cash crop in our area with a long history. Apples are extremely versatile and can be eaten fresh off the tree, baked into countless varieties of pies, cakes, and tarts, juiced, dried, and sauced.As part of our fall tours with school groups we have been picking apples and pressing them in our old time-y hand cranked apple cider press.What is the difference between Apple Cider and Apple Juice? Apple Cider is made of fresh crushed and squeezed (squished) apples that hasn’t been filtered or pasteurized or sweetened. Apple juice is typically filtered to remove most of the sediment or particulates then pasteurized to increase shelf life.
The students love to throw the apples into the crusher and watch the juice get squeezed out. Almost everyone comments on how sweet and refreshing the drink is. Be sure to add water to your cider or it will be too sweet!
There are many varieties of apples and all can be made into cider, but we like to use Galas and Newton Pippins. Martinelli’s Co. has been making cider in the Pajaro Valley for 145 years and we are proud to be a part of that tradition in our own small way.
Harvest Festival 2013 Pie-Baking Contest
We are bringing back the pie-baking contest to the 2013 LEFDP Harvest Festival. Compete with the finest CSA and farming community members in the Monterey Bay area. Show off your baking skills and become a hero of this year’s festival. ; )
Anyone can be a judge. This year we are having a raffle to determine our judging panel. Everyone who enters a pie in the contest will receive one free raffle ticket vie for a spot as a judge, but no one will be allowed to vote on their own pie.
All ages are encouraged to enter the contest and awards will be given at 5:45pm during our community circle before the potluck dinner begins.
To enter the contest, please bring your pie to the Welcome Cart near the fire circle by 4pm sharp. We will announce raffle winners at 4 at the Fire Circle, so if you are hoping to judge these pies and sneak a taste before everyone else, please be there with tickets in hand. You must be present to win.
In your kitchens . . . grab your rolling pin . . . let the pie-baking contest begin.
The categories are:
- Best Apple Pie
- Best Pumpkin Pie
- Best Savory Pie
- Best Crust
- Most Beautiful Pie
- Most Local Pie (please list ingredients and their origin)
- Best Dietary Restrictions Pie (vegan, gluten-free, you bake it, we will judge it)
Harvest Festival 2013
On October 26th, the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program will celebrate harvest on the farm. This family friendly farm event will feature apple picking, pumpkin decorating, a pie contest, face painting, tractor rides, apple cider pressing, a hay bale fort and The Banana Slug String Band. Celebrate the harvest on your local, organic farm.
Watsonville, CA, September 24, 2013 – On October 26th, 2013 The Live Earth Farm Discovery Program invites the community to celebrate the harvest at the annual Live Earth Farm Harvest Festival. This event is the culmination of the fall tour season, welcoming all our fall students back to the farm with their families. Open to the public LEFDP celebrates the harvest with loads of family friendly fun including tractor rides, face painting, a potluck, live music by Mountain Folk and the Banana Slug String Band, a pie contest, apple cider making with Happy Girl Kitchen Company, and lots of local treats by folks like Penny Ice Creamery, and Three of a Kind.
Iyisha is a student at Watsonville High School who has worked with LEFDP through the spring and summer. “I stopped eating fast food five months ago after I learned from how far it came . . . and how it was made,” she says. “It didn’t really feel right to me. I like knowing that all my vegetables—when I grow them myself or work on the farm—are fresh and right there instead of having to come thousands of miles to get to me.” Iyisha will be back on the farm for our Harvest Festival to help teach our young visitors all she has learned.
Through LEFDP’s programs local, under served youth build confidence in learning to be active caretakers of themselves, their community and their environment. This is why the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program hosts three farm events a year for the community, to provide farm programming for all local families.
Sponsorship and volunteer opportunities are available, as well as tickets on our website.
http://liveearthfarm.net/celebrations-events/events/
The Success of Slice!
We are so grateful to EVERYONE who contributed to making Slice, our dinner in the orchard, a success. It is only thanks to everyone’s contributions that we are able to make the cash contributions go so far.
So thank you sponsors, auction donors, guests, growers, wine makers, artisans, chefs, student decorators, center piece makers, photographers, artists, musicians, student servers, luminaria makers, Live Earth Farm and Discovery Program staff, grocery donors, and friends and family, who ALL made this event the wonderful evening it was. The list seems endless.
Not only did we exceed our fundraising goal of $20,000, when we account for all of the in kind contributions, volunteer hours, student projects, and community good will, we find our selves exceedingly wealthy.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for participating, supporting us, and being our community!
The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon. -Maria Montessori
There were many delicious dishes served at this year’s Discovery Program fall fundraiser, but one of the crowd pleasers was this delightful apple crisp made by our Food What?! youth group. There are so many types of apples on the farm this fall, just take your pick and make this crisp!
Apple Crisp
From the book Betty Crocker Cookbook by Betty Crocker Editors
Ingredients
Crisp
| 4 | medium tart cooking apples, sliced (4 cups) | |
| ¾ | cup packed brown sugar | |
| ½ | cup all-purpose flour (see Note) | |
| ½ | cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats | |
| ⅓ | cup butter, softened | |
| ¾ | tsp. ground cinnamon | |
| ¾ | tsp. ground nutmeg |
Garnish
| ~ | Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream |
Steps
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of an 8-by-8-inch square baking pan.
- Spread the sliced apples in the pan. Mix the remaining crisp ingredients together and sprinkle the mixture evenly over the apples.
- Bake the crisp for about 30 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the apples are tender when pierced with a fork.
- Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.
Student Corner: Fall Tour Season Has Arrived!
Happy Fall! This past weekend we celebrated the autumn equinox, which is derived from “equal night” meaning that we experience about the same amount of daylight and night time during the spring and autumn equinox, but in the spring the days get longer and in fall the days get shorter. Fall is my absolute favorite season; the scarves, the changing colors, the pumpkin spiced lattes… Add to that the fact that fall begins our second tour season of the year and you have a winning combination!
We have tours scheduled for every single Monday and Friday in the second half of September and the entire month of October! That’s fourteen tours in six weeks! And that doesn’t even include the weekly Wavecrest visits, the monthly homeschool meetings or the Wee Ones and Small Farmers drop in programs!
Needless to say we are very excited about fall! Some of the fun things that we have been/will be doing with our tours are: apple pressing, nutritional relay races, visiting the goats and chickens, scavenger hunts and learning about the history of the apple, the farm and the local valley!
I can’t wait to reap the rewards of good food and good fun on the farm this fall!
Love Monday at Discretion Brewing to Benefit the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program
On November 4th, Discretion Brewing will host Love Monday for the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program. 20% of the days beer sales will go to LEFDP to support hands-on farm based education and nutrition programs for local youth.
The Live Earth Farm Discovery Program will be featured in the Discretion Brewing Love Monday program on November 4th, 2013. The weekly event supports local non-profit organizations by donating 20% of beer sales for the day. Funds raised at the event will help LEFDP provide ongoing opportunities for youth to visit Live Earth Farm to learn about organic farming, local food systems, and nutrition.
Through LEFDP’s programs local, under served youth build confidence in learning to be active caretakers of themselves, their community and their environment.
Discretion Brewing is a family-owned company dedicated to producing handcrafted organic beer of consistent high quality. They are known for quality and elegance in both their products and their presence in the community. The taproom is open every day from 11:30am to 9pm and serves food from Main Street Garden & Café designed to be shared and paired with the beers. The brewery and taproom are located at 2703 41st Avenue in Soquel.