Discover This!

As spring erupts stupendously around me on the farm, at the beach, and in my garden, Big Sur has been on my mind.  I wonder what the wildflowers look like lining the hazardous cliffs, how cold the lazy eddies are collecting sunlight in the rivers and streams, and I long to hear the calls of Red Tailed, Cooper’s and Red Shouldered hawks floating on the warm perfumed updrafts above me. I dream about the breathtaking views from Nepenthe’s porch and I also wonder what delicious spring creations are being popped out of their kitchen.

For those who have never experienced the beauty of Nepenthe, I cannot do the place justice through my words, better to toss the kids in the car and head down to Big Sur for the day to experience it yourself.  Not only is their menu amazing (and local), but they have a fantastic art and craft shop, an outdoor fireplace, and one of the best views of the coast I’ve ever experienced.  Do yourself a favor and read the history of the place before you go. It will make you appreciate it even more!

One of my favorite treats from the Nepenthe kitchen and cookbook are their Big Sur Lemon Bars.  We are lucky enough to have lemon trees on the farm that produce delicious Meyer lemons almost all year round. With the beautiful weather we have been having, I’ve been craving a snack that looks and feels like spring, and these tart, gooey treats are it!

They are also great to make with the little ones because they require no delicate touch, and are very hard to mess up!

Photo Credit: Jenna Weber–Eat, Live, Run

Big Sur Lemon Bars

from The Nepenthe Cookbook

Adapted from Eat, Live, Run

Prep/Cook time: 45 min, Makes 9×9 pan of bars

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup confectioners sugar

1/4 tsp sea salt

1 stick cold butter

for the lemon filling:

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

4 eggs

2 tsp lemon zest

2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 5 lemons)

additional confectioners sugar for dusting

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

KIDS! To make the crust, combine the confectioners sugar, flour and sea salt in a large bowl.

KIDS! Cut in the cold butter and work with your fingers until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

KIDS!Press into a greased nine inch pan

Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

KIDS! To make the filling, whisk together the granulated sugar and flour in a bowl.

Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each addition.

Cut lemons in half.

KIDS! Squeeze the juice out of the lemons.

Zest the skin of one or two of your lemon peels.

KIDS! Add the zest and the juice and mix until everything is smooth and combined.

Pour filling over hot crust and return to oven to bake for another twenty minutes. When done, the filling will no longer jiggle.

KIDS! Let cool completely in the pan before slicing and dusting with powdered sugar.

Plant Your Garden And Grow Cash!

Buy your garden seeds from Renee’s Garden Seeds and 25% of the order value will be donated to The Live Earth Farm Discovery Program. Here’s how it works:

Simply go to www.reneesgarden.com and choose from the wide selection of seeds for heirloom and gourmet vegetables, cottage garden flowers and culinary herbs, special seed collections and great kitchen garden cookbooks.

At check out, just enter the code FR338A in the coupon code box on the checkout page,
and that’s it! Renee’s Garden will send a year-end check to the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program for 25% of all orders who use this fundraising code. Code expires December 31 each year.  We raised $480 this way in 2012!

This is a year-round, on-going fundraiser, so order regularly for spring, fall and holiday gifts. Spread the word to your friends and family!

A Note From Renee Shepherd

I am excited to be partnering with your organization to grow cash donations through our fundraising program. Here’s a little background about my seed company:

At Renee’s Garden, I offer only the varieties that are very special for home gardeners, based on great flavor, easy culture and exceptional garden performance. This seed line is my personal selection of time-tested heirlooms, the best international hybrids and fine open-pollinated varieties. I harvest and use the vegetables and herbs in my kitchen to choose the most delicious, and cut the flowers for bouquets to select the finest colors, forms and fragrances. Our varieties are tested and guaranteed for every major US climate zone.

Our individually written packets offer beautiful watercolor portraits, with personally written descriptions, complete growing instructions, a quick-view planting chart, growing tips, harvesting information and cooking ideas. Inside you’ll find superior quality seed–the top germinating, reliable seed usually reserved for specialty growers. Renee’s Garden is my practical way to spread the joy of gardening as a meaningful, productive and satisfying activity that connects us to each other and the earth. Please join me!

6060A Graham Hill Rd. Felton, CA 95018 www.reneesgarden.com

Please visit

farmdiscovery.org/farm-camp

for 2017 information and registration

We have a really good time at our Summer Camps.  Summer is such a brilliant time on the farm.  The experience is warm, sunny, bright, and full of flavor.  Our days are filled with fun activities designed to encourage creative expression in many different media.  We make art, crafts, snacks, preserves, garden beds, and great friends.  During the course of the week we plant, weed, harvest, water, cut, cook, can, we weave, print, paint, all in the beautiful setting of Live Earth Farm.  We build a community of friends over the course of the week, and even dress each day in a different color.  You will notice lots of green in one of these photos from last year’s green day.

We have offered Art on the Farm Camp since 2009.  The campers make beautiful nature based art projects, work in our fields and garden and play in our beautiful wild and open spaces.  With its focus on art, campers produce about two art projects a day using various media to create both 2 and 3-dimensional pieces.  We use the farm as our inspiration and sneak in lots of farming and gardening projects along the way.  This year there will be two sessions available, June 17-21 and July 15-19, 3013.

Young Farmers Camp, June 24-28, 2013, is brand new this year.  In this camp we will focus less on art and more on farming and gardening projects.  Of course, we will spend some of our inspired energy on a little bit of art as well, because art provides a nice, calm, focused balance to a day of using farm tools, working our bodies, and tasting the fruits of our labor.  Campers will learn to use and care for farm tools safely.  They will learn to plan and grow a garden bed, and they will taste lots of fruits and vegetables.  In learning to prepare fresh fruits and vegetables in healthy ways, campers will also learn to use kitchen tools, food science, and nutrition.

Sprouts Camp, July 8-12, 2013, is also a new offering.  This camp is for preschoolers and their parents.  We will spend the morning using our 5 senses to explore the farm and garden.  Preschoolers will plant in the garden, find bugs in the hedgerows, pick fruit off the trees, feed and milk our goats, collect eggs from our chickens, and have a great time exploring our wild spaces.  Parents will make new friends with families who care about where their food comes from and have kids the same age.  We welcome folks to get in touch and ask lots of questions about this camp, as we are willing to be flexible about allowing siblings, and other family members.  We will limit this camp to 10 families.

Another really great part of our camp programs is our Leader in Training (LIT) program.  For each camp we have 3 positions for teens over 13.  These teens go through a training day, learning outdoor education skills, and take responsibility for a small group of their own campers, who become very attached to their LITs over the course of the week.  It is an awesome opportunity for teens to develop leadership and employment skills, while enjoying the outdoors with enthusiastic kids.

Register before April 15th to get the early bird price of $300 per camper for Art and Young Farmers Camps and $200 for Sprouts Camp.

10% Discount for CSA members, returning campers, siblings and coupon holders (only one discount may be applied per family).

Regular price of $350 per camper for Art and Young Farmers Camps and $250 for Sprouts Camp begins on April 16th, 2013

Save

Apples are the only fruit on the farm these days.  Sure, we had pineapple guavas for a while…and then there were some delicious oranges, but those dwindled out about a month ago…in the bleak fruitless winter, apples are in full abundance.  I cannot be alone, these apples (stored in the cooler) are my savior! I am trying my best to eat locally and when there is rarely a fruit around these days, apples come in handy.  To make apples a little more exciting, and even to dress them up as dessert, I thought this recipe might be a refreshing change of pace.  Hop on over to my favorite blog for the whole story, or see below for the kid friendly recipe.

Photo curtesy of Jenna Weber, Eat Live Run

Baked Stuffed Apples with Dried Cherries and Walnuts

Jenna Weber

Eat Live Run

Total cook time: 1:30 min, Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 large granny smith apples
• 1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 cup apple juice
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 1 T butter, melted
• 1/3 cup dried cherries
• 1/3 cup roughly chopped walnuts
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350.
2. KIDS! Combine the pumpkin pie spice, dried cherries, walnuts and brown sugar together in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Core apples carefully, making sure not to cut through the bottom.
4. KIDS! Stuff brown sugar mixture in each apple and set in a glass casserole dish with the apple juice poured in on the bottom.
5. KIDS! Mix together the maple syrup and melted butter and drizzle over the top of the apples.
6. Cover with tin foil and bake for forty minutes.
7. Remove foil and bake for an additional twenty minutes, or until tender.

Winter Work
As Wavecrest’s winter rotation comes to a close, we are excited to announce that their winter project is almost complete! This Field Studies group decided to build a herb spiral on their school campus for their end of rotation project.

They used their communication skills and great teamwork to calculate the amount of bricks and soil needed for the spiral and chose the herbs and flowers for the garden based on water needs and medicinal characteristics.  I can’t wait to see what it will look like when all of the plants are in place!

As the other half of their project, the Field Studies students are teaching lessons on water conservation and medicinal herbs to the students in the lower elementary.

One of the days the students were working on their herb spiral, Jessica came by to teach them how to prune their fruit trees.  Current helped too!

We also had a very special group out to the farm in January–a college group from Williams College in Massachusetts!  Professor Hank Art brought seven students out to the farm for a week as part of their winter field quarter.  This was an amazing group full of passionate, energetic young people.  They helped us prune quince trees, cover the strawberry patch with plastic, aerate and weed the garden beds, trim goat hooves, and harvest and pack for the CSA boxes.  They made some amazing meals and we had some great conversations before they headed down to the EcoFarm conference where we met up again!

Winter with Wishing Well Preschool
On Saturday the 2nd I had the great pleasure of touring the farm with Wishing Well preschool. It was a grey morning on the farm and the theme of the visit was winter. This group of families are visiting us four times this school year, one for each season. Our simple plan is to share the same farm spaces with the children so they may experience the changes the seasons bring to our farm.

It was a pretty dry visit for winter, and many of the changes are very subtle.  So we taste, touch and smell our way around the farm hoping the children will absorb these subtleties into their very being. Some day when they have erosion as a vocabulary word in 6^th grade science, they will have an inherent sense of what erosion is and maybe even remember our swaled hill, where perennial trees and shrubs hold that soil in place, drink the water that is an asset rather than destroyer, and produce those Meyer lemons that smell so good and shine so yellow on a grey day in February.

Event Docent

The Live Earth Farm Discovery Program has three new docent programs, providing opportunities for local adults to get involved with this successful farm-based education organization.  Monterrey Bay area residents can choose to become a Program Docent, an Event Docent, or a Garden Docent, receiving training for any or all positions.  LEFDP empowers 1500 local kids a year to make healthy choices for themselves, their communities and the environment, now local adults have an opportunity to participate as well.

Discovery Garden

In the spring of 2013 The Live Earth Farm Discovery Program will train Docents to facilitate learning on the farm.  Program Docents will help with farm field trips, running hands-on stations for students of all ages.  Event Docents will provide support leading up to and during the program’s four main community celebrations a year, as well as monthly community farm days throughout the spring, summer and fall.  Garden Docents will help maintain the Discovery Garden and Fields.

Program Docent

These new docent programs will help LEFDP achieve our mission of helping local under served youth build confidence in learning to be active caretakers of themselves, their community and their environment.  In addition, the programs serve to further our mission in providing an arena for adults to participate in our programs.  The trainings provided for the positions will include teach outdoor education techniques, sustainable agriculture theory and hands on organic farming skills.

The homeschool group came out to the farm at the end of January and we learned all about seeds! First, we did a quick review about the six plant parts (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds and fruit)! Then, we talked about how important seeds are in the plant life cycle, how seeds travel and how seeds look inside a fruit.

We played a seed matching game and then ventured outside to collect some seeds of our own! We collected cilantro seeds, corn kernels and flower seeds from the garden, and then planted fava beans in the field as a cover crop!

On March 23^rd, 2013 the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program will host the 4^th annual Sheep to Shawl event at Live Earth Farm.  Professional shearer, Bruce Wool, will demonstrate his trade throughout the day, while his wife spins yarn alongside him.  Guests will participate in hands on demonstrations of every part of the process of making wool into clothing and art.  For the first time this year Storrs Winery will provide tastings while their vineyard grazing baby doll sheep are shorn.

The Live Earth Farm Discovery Programs 4^th annual Sheep to Shawl event, will feature hands-on stations demonstrating the entire progression of processing wool, local artisans sharing their wares, and Storrs Winery sampling their local, wine.  The event will take place in and around our renovated turn of the century redwood barn rain or shine.

The Sheep to Shawl event is one of three annual, on farm celebrations open to the public; all of which aim to further our mission of helping local under served youth build confidence in learning to be active caretakers of themselves, their community and their environment.  Children and adults will delight in interacting with our sheep and shearer, dying yarn, making drop spindles, trying knitting and crocheting, and washing and combing yarn, all with expert help and child friendly tools.

Find more information on our Upcoming Events Page

Sign up and/or prepay for the event!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to our Live Earth Farm Community! We are so lucky to have your support in making our farm and our programs exciting and accessible. We raised $2675 in our year-end campaign! These funds will make the year of upcoming farm adventures amazing and possible.

We are gearing up for the Ecological Farming Conference next week by hosting 8 students from Williams College leading up to their and our participation in the conference at Asilomar. They will be learning about agriculture and the food system by working in the fields at Live Earth Farm, as well as several other agricultural operations in California.

We are looking forward to tackling some tough topics with these higher thinkers: What are best practices in sustainable agriculture? What are the trade offs, concessions we have to make to keep the farm financially, socially, AND environmentally viable? What are we doing right? What can we improve on? Where do theory and practice intersect or diverge? We would love to hear your answers to these questions too. If we hear from you, we will share your thoughts in the next newsletter.

After the conference we hope to hire a Program Assistant to help with the Discovery Garden, our growing community of volunteers, office work, and farm tours. We are taking applications now, so feel free to spread the word.

In February we will the planning for the Spring Fund Drive and our 4th Annual Sheep to Shawl Event on Saturday March 23rd, rain or shine. We will be shearing sheep, scouring, dyeing, carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, crocheting, and felting wool. We will have fiber artists on site to share their craft and sell their wares. We will also have Storrs Winery pouring their wine and their vineyard-grazing sheep. We very much look forward to sharing the farm and some old time farm skills and fun at the Spring Equinox with you.

Last but really not least at all, we are opening our Summer Camp registration. This year we are offering 4 weeks of camp, 2 of our tried and true Art on the Farm Camp for 6 – 12 year olds, 1 week of Sprouts Camp for 3 – 6 year olds and their parents, and 1 week of Young Farmers Camp for 6 – 12 year olds.

• June 17 – 21    Art on the Farm Camp, Session 1
• June 24 – 28    Young Farmers Camp
• July 8 – 12       Sprouts Camp
• July 15 – 19     Art on the Farm Camp, Session 2

Register before April 15th to get the early bird price of $300 per camper.

10% Discount for CSA members, returning campers, siblings and coupon holders (only one discount may be applied per family).

Regular price of $350 per camper begins on April 16th, 2013

Happy New Year from the Live Earth Farm Discovery Program!