Late letter, I know. But 13 is Taylor Swift’s lucky number, so. That’s how I’m gonna talk my way out of this one… Happy March 13th!
I started this email last weekend from the farm that’s a part of my school in upstate New York, about two and half hours from the city. It was a warm morning, and I was perched under the broad, covered front porch, watching a distant stream of cars shuttle to the nearby ski slopes, listening to the trickle of the melting creek. I want to tell you about all the magic I experienced there the past two weeks.
For background: this year, I am working as an assistant teacher to two fourth grade classes at a school in Manhattan. Our school has a farm upstate where the kids go on overnight trips two or three times a year starting in second grade. The trips get longer in length each year—first a two-night trip, then three, then four. I rode the bus up to the farm with one of my classes a couple Mondays ago, then waved goodbye to them when they headed back to the city at the end of the week. My other class came last Monday, and we all rode back to New York on Friday afternoon.
When the students are at the farm, their days are filled with classes, shared meals, chores, group activities, and tons of free time playing outside. Everything is guided by systems—boy do I love a system. In farming class, the kids learn about taking care of the animals and tending the plants. Cathy and Annie show them how to work in the raised beds and greenhouses (one large high-tunnel greenhouse, and one smaller one off the kitchen) to plant and harvest vegetables that we eat in our meals. In cooking, Jenny leads them through lunch and dinner prep and teaches them how to bake delicious treats—apple cake and pound cake, zucchini and banana bread. The kids are responsible for barn chores at least once during their week; they collect eggs, clean stalls, and milk the cows. Everyone has house chores (sweeping, dishes, table setting, bathrooms) on the days they don’t have barn chores.
One of my favorite places at the farm is the textiles studio. It’s in its own building, just a little up the hill on the farm compound. Donna, the textiles teacher, builds a fire in the wood stove each morning, and the place becomes a snug, wood-paneled cocoon. Over the years they come to the farm, children participate in every step of the wool arts process—making yarn from freshly-sheared sheep’s wool, spooling the yarn, dying, and braiding, weaving, and felting with it. On this trip, Donna showed the kids how to use hand looms to make coasters—or as I’ve termed them, “mug rugs.” I’m going to trademark that, btw.
In my time at the farm, Donna took me on as a student, too. The first time I visited, she let me work on one of the majestic floor looms that operate by foot pedals. This time, she set me up on my own table loom project. I’m big into knitting and crochet, so getting to expand my understanding of fiber arts and work on such beautiful machines was a great treat. And she is an angel human being… I felt like an apprentice learning from some fabled Greek master-weaver goddess.
At the farm, the classroom teachers (the head teachers and I) are on duty in the evenings and overnight. Starting at 4 o’clock each day, we’d organize quiet time, dinner operations, after-dinner play time, an evening activity, then bedtime. As I’m sure you could have guessed, we know our way around a good camp game. Our nights were packed playing Ghost in the Graveyard, Fishbowl, Singdown, Panic, kickball, and hide and seek. We squeezed in a night hike up Thyme Hill, where the stars poured from the inky sky. Each class got a movie night in jammies with butter-licious popcorn. The schedule was tiring, but this kind of quality time with my students is so different from what we get in a regular school day that it felt worth it.
On Friday, I was back on the city-bound bus, returning to Manhattan with sixteen of New York’s finest fourth graders. They were brave and thoughtful and rambunctious all week. They sang, screamed, pushed bales of hay up hills, tapped sugar maples for sap, cooked suppers, hiked in the starlight, lodged snowballs, performed skits, wove on hand looms, bickered, solved problems, listened closely, didn’t listen at all, played and played and played, did dishes, and more dishes, and more dishes. On the road, the drone of the bus engine and the weak sun lulled us along. Calm, tired people being ferried from wide, sloping skies to the humming sidewalk on West 85th St.
I’m deeply grateful for the time I got to spend at the farm. For the kids, the fun times, the beautiful land. Most especially, for the other teachers. Spending twelve days there lit a new hope in me and renewed my appreciations for the end of winter and the first sparks of spring. And what felt really special was that when it was time to head back to the city, I kept thinking “I can’t wait to be home.”
Oh, I almost forgot to mention we had homemade pizza at the farm. TWICE. And on that note, I bid you a HAPPY PIZZA DAY! Till next time, much love.