Thursday, March 7, 2013

OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM


PREFACE
Because of a series of unfortunate events, this month, the only person bringing home a paycheck is my 12 year old  daughter. She became a referee.
Both Sam iAm and I are currently interning.
The Ministry of Economy (Mamaspice), was therefore forced to operate some cuts.
Birthday budgets were the first on the list.
Birthdays normally celebrated in March: 2.

AN ECO(nomic) BIRTHDAY
About a 100 feet from my house lies the biggest (and only) urban farm of the city.
Nestled between the projects and the 280, there are three acres of cultivated French Countryside.
The land is owned by Park and Rec, and a number of volunteers turns it daily into food.
Whoever goes to the farm for a few hours, and puts in some work, can go home with a little harvest.
Wherever anybody saw dirt and weeds, I saw the perfect birthday party.
So this is where I took my now ten year old daughter, and her friends, on Sunday.
The girls spent the afternoon weeding, plowing, digging, planting and harvesting.
I have never seen anybody so happy to be shoveling manure.
While we were all working together we were singing, sweating and discussing the Oscar's Red Carpet.
After a couple of hours, the girls started gorging on fava bean leaves like they were Pringles (I'm guessing physical work had something to do with it).
Here's the picture to prove it.
Eating fava bean leaves

They were delicious, who knew?


We also particularly liked these "Ground Cherries", or Cape Gooseberries: it's like eating a tomato at first, and a plum, or cherry, in the aftertaste.










Ground Cherries


















And then we got to take home the harvest.

The harvest: lettuce, carrots, herbs.

According to my daughter: best birthday party EVER!
Cost of the entire operation $20 (mostly for the imported prosciutto in the sandwiches).

EVERYTHING ELSE, PRICELESS.


2 comments:

  1. Definitely Priceless!!
    We are still enjoying the fruits of their labor.
    We got a pet snail out of it too.

    Thank you!!

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  2. ciao ......io seguo il tuo blog...e se passi da me c'è una sorpresa per te http://quellocheunadonnadice.blogspot.it/2013/03/un-premio-virtuale-e-un-infinito.html

    ReplyDelete