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What to do this Earth Day?

By Andrea Lucy, Experiential Learning Program Lead

Hip hip hooray for Earth Day! On April 22nd, over 1,000,000,000 people around the world will take action to protect the planet. This 52nd annual Earth Day is a reminder to treat the planet with respect, kindness, and care for our current and future communities.

There are many ways to participate in Earth Day (and every day) digitally and in-person:

Great Worldwide Cleanup

Like Hansel and Gretel, humans leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of trash. It’s a very material reminder of our collective impact on the planet. All around the world, neighbours get together on Earth Day to clean up beaches, parks, rivers, and more. Or, try “plogging”, the popular new exercise started in Sweden of picking up trash while you jog. Bonus: you help clean up plastic pollution. Double Bonus: you get added stretching and strengthening.

Cleanups Near You

 

Restore Our Earth Lessons

Calling all teachers: Learn about restoring our earth while restoring our hope! This is a great learning resource created by the Earth Day Network covering, five opportunities for restoration over five days. The lessons include the topics: ecosystem services, carbon cycle, food sustainability, ecosystem restoration, and civic engagement. There are activity suggestions for elementary and secondary grades.

Restore Our Earth Education Lessons

 

Letters to the Earth

What world are you dreaming of for your future? What are your fears and hopes? Letters to the Earth offers community and education toolkits to create your letter in whatever way feels powerful to you, then share it with those who need to listen. Their education toolkit includes prompts, science experiments and drama activities to help classes get started. Send your letters out in a letter-writing campaign to politicians to let them know why they should care, what you want (like a wishlist), and what they should do now. 

Letters to the Earth Toolkit

Celebrate with Food, Art & Activities

Celebrate Earth Day with experiential activities created by Fresh Roots. Try our famous salad dressing, learn how food and climate change are connected, contribute to scientific research, and create art with food waste.

Fresh Roots Earth Day Activities & Recipes

Feel Empowered by Soil

It’s stressful and scary to learn about and experience climate change. Looking for a shimmer of hope? Some of us at Fresh Roots have been learning more about sustainable agriculture practices that care for the soil ecosystem. The neat added benefit? Healthy soil sequesters (removes) carbon dioxide from the air and stores it. Scientists estimate that if more farmers care for their soils with sustainable practices, climate change can actually be reversed. Care for the soil, and it will care for you!

Soil Carbon video by Soil Food Web School

What are you doing to celebrate Earth Day today and every day?

 

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Rethinking Weeds

By Andrea Lucy, Experiential Learning Program Lead

The farm is bursting with growth and food right now, but when visitors look around they tell me all they see is weeds.

What is a weed? It’s a plant…just in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the farm, we spend a lot of time pulling out these weeds because they crowd out our tenderly loved and cared-for crops. Weeds compete with our veggies for space, sunlight, nutrients, and water we were hoping would make our kale big and leafy and carrots long and sweet. But amongst the weeds, there is food and medicine, flowers for pollinators, and homes for critters. Do you think weeds are friends or foes?

Forage for edible weeds

Weeds are surprisingly delicious and nutritious! Our Edible Weeds Field Guide can help you identify some common weeds you might find in your neighbourhood in Greater Vancouver, including plantain, dandelions, chickweed, and more! The guide is just a starting point. It includes sustainable foraging guidelines and an Edible Weeds Bingo card you can bring as you go looking for snacks. Bring a plant ID guide, phone app, or mentor, such as a farmer or gardener, to help you start recognizing local weeds. iNaturalist is a good, free ID app to identify unknown plants and contribute to citizen science research. Please forage responsibly!

Edible Weeds Field Guide

 

Make a Transect Map

 

Get up-close with a weed. Explore how it’s connected with other living and non-living things around it. Using string, mark out an area to observe, called a “transect”. Like a field biologist, record and map out your observations within the transect. What do you notice? Try observing multiple different locations, from a field to a crack in the sidewalk.

Transect Mapping Activity Guide

 

Wanted Weed Poster

Weeds wanted! Create a “wanted poster” for a species of weed. Draw and label characteristics of the plant at different life stages to help other people identify it. Your wanted poster may be alerting people that this weed is bad and should be pulled out. Or, you may want to alert the public about how great this weed is for food and medicine! BC Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation’s (BCAITC) lesson plan has great background information, a field guide of more common weeds, and suggestions for creating your poster.

Gardening’s Most Wanted Activity bt BCAITC 

Invasive Aliens

Some introduced plants are so good at damaging our native plants and ecosystems that they are called “invasive aliens”. They often are quick at reproducing, have few predators, and are great at living in their new home. These are plants to fear! In Suwa’lkh forest, we spend a lot of time with youth every summer removing Japanese Knotweed, English Holly, Himalayan Blackberry and English Ivy. By the next summer, they’re all back again. Himalayan Blackerry’s fruit is delicious and flowers great for pollination, but this plant takes over large fields and stream banks, and is nearly impossible to remove.

There are lots of great interactive games and fun books to learn about invasive alien plants and animals in British Columbia. Or, if you’re looking for experiential learning about invasives, look for a local ecological restoration volunteer program near you.

Invasive Species Games & Activities by Invasive Species Council of BC
Book “Aliens Among Us” by Alex Van Tol 

Rainbow Rolls and more recipes!

What’s for lunch? There is lots of meal inspiration in and amongst our sidewalks and yards. Try adding weeds to create a delicious rainbow roll. Children at our summer camps love this version of a fresh spring roll! They also love dandelion fritters with honey for dessert. Do you have other favourite ways to eat or drink weeds? Share them in the comments section!

Rainbow Rolls Recipe Card
Dandelion Fritters Recipe Card

Do you think a weed is always a weed? What do you do with weeds?

 

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Fresh Five Ideas for At Home Learning #1

Welcome to the first edition of the Fresh Five!

Hey there, friends. This is Kat, your friendly local Experiential Learning Manager.

Wow, this is a different learning environment than we were expecting to be in this spring. I’m frankly devastated not to have you on the farms for the time being. But it’s been so deeply beautiful to see how educators all over the world are stepping up to meet this challenge. There are so many activities, digital resources, free concerts, Zoom webinars, and educational websites out there, and more coming everyday!

While all those resources are so great, I know it can be hard to sort through everything that’s coming across your email and social media feeds to find the things your kids will love (especially while you’re trying to parent your kids at home, or teach your kids who are now in 25 different homes). But never fear! The Fresh Five is here to help!

Each week, we will be sharing five of our favorite ideas for at home learning around the things Fresh Roots is known for: food and food systems, ecological stewardship, and community celebration. Some of the activities, like this week’s Super Seeds lesson are pulled from our collection of farm and classroom programming, and have been adapted for home learning. Others are recommendations from our partners and friends in the world of farming, food, and environmental education.  If you have an activity you’d love to see featured, drop an email to education@freshroots.ca and let us know!

We’ll be posting them here on our blog (you can bookmark freshroots.ca/freshfive to always find the latest Five), and sharing them on our Facebook,  Instagram and Twitter feeds. We’ll also be posting regular photos and videos from the farm on social media, so follow us to keep up on all the breaking veggie news!

OK, that’s enough intro. Here’s this week’s Fresh Five!

Carrot Fries

Every week at Camp Fresh Roots, our campers work together to make lunch for the whole camp. One of last summer’s hit recipes were these Carrot Fries with Lime Crema, which we served with homemade veggie burgers. It’s a great way to use that 5-lb bag of carrots you bought, and is super kid-friendly, both to make and eat. At camp, we’ll have an adult cut the carrots in half lengthwise so there’s a flat edge for them to sit on, then the kids cut them into quarters! (Oh, and camp registrations are still open!)
Carrot Fries Recipe

 

Signs of Spring-O Neighborhood Bingo

Are your kids (and, let’s be honest, you) getting tired of walking around the same 5 blocks over and over again as you try to get some fresh air and gentle exercise during these days of physical distancing? Print out this Neighborhood Bingo sheet! Look at your local environment in a whole new way as you notice how spring is blooming all around us.
Spring-O Bingo Card

 

Food and Farmworkers

I’m a podcast person. I have about 30 different podcasts that update regularly in my feed, on topics from food to mythology to history to linguistics. So when I heard a recent episode of the US-based economics podcast Planet Money about how COVID-19 is impacting American farm workers, I wanted to share it. This is a complex topic, touching on issues of food security, labour rights (or lack thereof), public health, and yes, econ. It’s sure to spark discussions, so we’ve made a bit of framing for it. I recommend listening with your older student and discussing it together. (And in case you’re wondering, Fresh Roots farmworkers are mostly local university students, and pay starts at $15.50/hour.)
Food and Farmworkers Activity Guide

 

Super Seeds!

One of our most popular classroom workshops is Super Seeds! And now you can try it for yourself! We’ve adapted our workshop curriculum to be done at your kitchen table, with just things you probably have on hand. If you have or can find Lima beans, I recommend them for this, as they are both very large (so it’s easy to see what’s in them), and the skins are relatively thin, so they are easy to peel.
Super Seed Activity Guide

 

Recycled Garden Gnome

The Whole Kids Foundation, one of Fresh Roots’ generous funders, has a collection of fun activities for kids and families. We thought this Garden Gnome was just super cute and we had to include it in this week’s collection. If you don’t have acrylic paint, or metal fasteners at home, get creative!  What else could you use to decorate your Gnome?
Garden Gnome Craft Sheet

That’s all for this week! May you plant love and peas, and be well.
Kat