One post, three challenges

Time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

1. Plant something:
Resina calendula and sugar snap peas from seed (good toward the Growing Challenge). Highbush cranberry, golden horn tree, salal, and nagoonberry (that's what was in the big box).

2. Harvest something:
Eggs, dandelion greens, violets, good king henry, sorrel, sweet cicely, and chives from our garden and yard. Garlic mustard foraged from a nearby abandoned yard (this is a new food to us).

3. Preserve something:
Made garlic-mustard pesto to freeze.

6. Build community food systems:
Some of the kids went home talking about the green smoothies--which turned out to be a new idea for some of the parents--and some kids are now gathering dandelion greens and giving them to their parents to eat. So I shared the "recipe" for our smoothies in one of my daily emails to the families in my program.

7. Eat the food:
I served the kids green smoothies three times this week, with mixed results (some love them, some don't--but I fear a bit of that is peer pressure). Lucy continues to love them. And all the kids love the idea of them, and love gathering greens for them, so it's going to become a regular snack around here (I trust that their taste for it will come with time--and with the arrival of fresh fruits!).

We also ate a yummy yogurt dip made with chives and teeny bits of other herbs from the garden (all I've got so far): plain yogurt, lemon juice, herbs, salt, pepper. It was great on green beans (1st day) and on roasted cauliflower (2nd day). And ate garlic mustard foraged from a nearby yard. Hated the recipe I used, but think I could like the greens. Will try again.

And then there were these. Oh, my goodness. Don't make these if, like me, you have trouble with--shall we say--portion size. I found the link here. Not the slightest bit local or sustainable, I'm afraid, but a good made-from-the-pantry treat.
...
Outside today, I finally removed a terracotta planter which sat at the base of this tree for a few years. We'd failed to take it in over the winter, so it had cracked to pieces, and it was so root-bound, I could barely get the soil separated from the pot shards. But I tackled the task today. To watch me, Lucy was inspired to climb up on the base of the tree, a new accomplishment of which she was very proud.

Once the pot was removed, there was a treasure-trove of insect life left behind: pill bugs, centipedes, and various larval creatures. Here, Lucy watches as the older children scramble to catch the fast-moving bugs to feed them to the chickens.