Diggin' In With FoodCorps Fin - April 16th 2021
Greetings, Friends!
I have a mystery for you. What do you think could possibly be inside these massive white warehouses in the middle of the Grande Ronde valley? And what’s more, why was I there?
The answer: POTATOES! Lots of potatoes. Quite literally TONS of them. You’re looking at the potato storage facility of Lane Farms, just outside of Hot Lake. Mr. Rob Lane so kindly offered to donate some seed potatoes to our school garden. He even let me pick them right off the potato sorting line. (You can see the video, right here)
I’m looking forward to planting these in just about a month’s time, along with all of the other seeds that I’ve started in the LHS Greenhouse. Check them out!
These are just the seeds that need a little extra time to germinate. Other vegetables, like beans, carrots, beets, and onions, don’t like being moved around, so I’ll be putting them directly in the soil around the same time.
In other news, our faithful Cougar Cooks were at it again in the kitchen, cooking a meal that tested their every cooking skill we’ve learned so far this year: Cauliflower Mac n Cheese! I’d been hearing requests for Mac and Cheese for weeks, but only this week did I feel that they were up to it. We used the cheese grater, knife and cutting board, measuring cups and spoons, the microwave, the stovetop, AND the oven, all in one recipe! It was a marathon, needless to say. But, as always, I was incredibly impressed with their adaptability and responsiveness. And after all that, who wouldn’t love what they had created. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can try our recipe!
However, since sports are starting up again, and the weather is so much nicer, this will have been our last Cooking Club session together. Who wants to make kids be on the computer when they could be playing outside?! I know I’ll miss it, but they don’t need me to cook. Next week, I’ll be sending home a cookbook of all the recipes we made together to everyone who participated, so they can keep cooking their favorites. Thanks to everyone who helped make this experiment work!
Last but not least, this week in 3rd grade, we took a FIELD TRIP! For our Oregon Geography unit, we decided to explore our local watershed at Mill Creek on H Ave and 3rd St (the nearest running water to our school). There, we sang a song about rivers, wondered about where it came from (notice the snow on the hillside) and where it would go on its journey to the Ocean. Lastly, the students played the roles of various groups in the watershed, (including Potato Farmers of Idaho, The City of Kennewick, Whitewater Rafters of Oregon, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation) in a debate on the lower Snake River Dams. They were experiencing what it’s like working out a contentious issue among people who have very different uses for water, but who are all connected through the watershed.
Thanks to the 3rd grade teachers and our administrators for making this fun activity possible! And thanks to you for reading!
Stay well, and have a lovely weekend.
Finley