Tag Archives: garden

Youth Center Update

2017 Garden of Fire Kick-Off

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The Garden of Fire is back!

This year, with the Summer of Earth, we’ll be highlighting projects and themes related to life cycles, animal habitats, gardening, and so much more.

As always, the program kicked off with the reading and puppet show of the Garden of Fire Story. This week, Londyn (age 10) and Knightly (age 7) from the Addison Youth Center tell us their interpretation of the Garden of Fire story, as well as what they did this week at the program!

Friendship is a topic in the story of the Garden of Fire. It is important in the story because you need to treat your friends nicely. The characters in the story are the fox, eagle, dragon fly, bear, turtle, deer and Pauline, and they are all friends. They treat each other nicely. We have friends too and we treat them kindly. When one of us is sad or someone is being mean we stand up for one another.

Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.

We also learned about habitats and animals. Knightley’s favorite animal was Sophie the great horned owl because she has lots of ways to adapt to different habitats. Londyn’s favorite animal was the chinchilla because it was fluffy and it was the softest animal in the world. We also did a art project.

Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.

The art project was about the animals that Ian from Tanglewood Nature Center brought today. Knightley made a owl she thought it was a fun and exciting project. Londyn’s  favorite part was making a habitat for a owl. We also talked about what animals do for us.

Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.
Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher Photography, 2017.

Thanks, Londyn and Knightly – see you next week!                                      

Gardens, Youth Center Update

A Garden Growing In Hornell

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At the Hornell Area Concern for Youth, creating a garden has been a fun, educational, and nutritional piece of our summer program for the last six years.

We like to experiment with a variety of vegetables in our raised beds, and it’s been a learning experience. We have always grown tomatoes; the year that the region experienced wide-spread tomato blight, we used it as an opportunity to teach our students why and how blights can occur.

IanFromHornell

Last year, with the start of the Garden of Fire program, our gardening projects reached new heights. Ian, from Tanglewood Nature Center, came to us early on to get us started for growing season in a whole new way. He taught the students about our particular type of soil, and how geological changes like glaciers can affect the richness and nutrient content of soil in a given region.

He taught us so many things we hadn’t considered in the past, including preserving our vegetables to eat all-year-round. We learned to can our vegetables last year, turning cucumbers into delicious pickles, and our beautiful tomatoes into spaghetti sauce. Those were treats that we have enjoyed all winter.

Now it is time to start anew for this year. We have been so busy with our spring programming, that admittedly we got behind the growing schedule. Amazingly – count our lucky stars – Paul Shephard Jr., our Special Projects Coordinator, received a call from a group looking for volunteer opportunities.

Garden3

The camp counselors, all twelve of them from Camp Stella Maris came with gardening tools in hand to help us take control of the garden again. They took on the enormous task of weeding, adding organic fertilizers, and disposing of the grass. Then, with the aid of our youth center participants, the group planted a beautiful garden.

Garden 1

We are now prepared for another eventful summer of learning about the garden and how it can be a rewarding hobby. It really feels like the first days of summer when we look at the garden and it is weeded and planted. Now to keep it that way!

In a few weeks we will be building new garden beds for the Wimodaughsian Free Library in Canisteo.

Happy planting to all of the other gardeners out there!