Lettuce in our garden

The Folk School’s vegetable garden provides organic, seasonal produce for our Dining Hall. This beautiful lettuce was harvested for our recent fundraising dinner, Springtime Folk School Feast. Humble heads of lettuce were transformed into gourmet salads with mint, orange, dates, and a sherry citrus vinaigrette.

Hours later, garden lettuce becomes a sophisticated course for our Springtime Feast

Poem Inspired by the Spring Garden by Carla Owen

Newest Spring spinach

Tiny scallions and violet flowers

Tonight’s sweet salad

Delicate edible violets

If you’ve visited our campus, you know that almost anywhere you choose to walk, you are surrounded by beauty and the peaceful serenity of the mountains.  This idyllic landscape provides an escape from the hurried city and invites us to turn inward and be renewed.  Now, thanks to the hard work of a recent gardening class, we have our own Folk School Labyrinth for those of us who might  need a little extra meditative push.

Paula Peace’s class was small, but the amount of work they accomplished in a week is amazing!  The class cleared a spot behind the Field House and gradually the mounds of dirt took the form of a spiral design, with a winding path to the center.

The idea of the labyrinth has been around for over 3000 years, and most cultures have some version of it.  Labyrinths can be constructed of many different materials, and found anywhere from a garden to a medieval cathedral, but the main emphasis is on the contemplative or spiritual path provided by the labyrinth. 

Here’s a video of the Earth Day mule plowing demonstration in the Folk School’s garden. Watch Buildings and Grounds Manager John Clarke plowing and singing the “Muleskinner Blues” and work study student Harrison Topp seems to catch on pretty quick, too.

The 2 mules, Jim and Joe, owned by Danny Logan.
Hal Hogsed, Muleskinner.
Jim Weaver, Plowman.
Video by Jan Davidson.

Last Friday, Folk School students, staff, and community members excitedly
gathered in the garden to witness something that probably hasn’t happened at
the Folk School in the last 50 years. Brasstown neighbor, Danny Logan
brought his mules to help do some ploughing. The mules, not accustomed to
such hard work (or spectators with cameras) put on a good show as they
helped ready the tomato beds in the garden.  The Folk School motto “I sing
behind the plough” is taken from a Danish poem and encourages us to find joy
in everyday tasks. The photo from the Folk School’s archives below shows Oscar Cantrell, the Folk School’s first blacksmith plowing the fields.

When Patryk Battle and Frances Juhlin were here at the Folk School teaching the Winter Harvest Cooking class in January they led the class out to the garden for a quick lesson/experiment in Winter gardening. The students planted lettuce and kale starts into a bed and mulched heavily with aged grass clippings and covered with a floating row cover. They assembled a series of plastic hoops over the bed and covered the hoops with a piece of opaque plastic. Within the next few weeks, Brasstown experienced not one, but two periods of extreme winter weather. Both times the temperatures dropped below 10 degrees for 3 consecutive nights.

Frances was here earlier this week and was anxious to check on the little ones. We peeled away the plastic and the row covers to find that the plants seem to have survived their January stress test and have even grown a bit too. Turns out the combination of the plastic tunnels and the floating row covers on top of the plants acted as a mini-greenhouse and provided enough protection for the plants during those frigid nights. We were able to remove the plastic and the row covers and let them breath a bit this week when the afternoon highs reached 68 degrees. So, it looks like we’re off to a good start with our winter garden adventure!