CHILDREN ON THE JOYS OF GARDENING IN TIMES OF CORONA

One of the gifts that Covid-19 has given to our community is the decision to work together in our gardens. Since March, we have been meeting 3 times a week – adults and youngsters, gardeners and those with no experience of this work. We did it to support regional autonomy in food supply and also for the joy of coming together. Here is a short essay written by our children, who have supported this initiative.

Lucia and Alma (both 8 years old), July 3 2020

In the Garden

In the garden, we are about twelve people.

In the garden we have already seen a rat, eggs of ants and a salamander.

In the garden we plant and we water. We do the garden because the old people cannot do a garden and because we can go to the garden together.

We plant vegetables because we don’t want cars to drive from Spain with our vegetables. Because in the cars there is petroleum. Because earth petroleum is the blood of the earth.

We, the Primaria, go every Tuesday to the garden. We are Alma, Kaya, Aron, Neo, Lucia, Sarah and Silvie. The Secundaria goes on Friday and the Kindergarten goes on Thursday. We plant broccoli, tomatoes, beans, pepper, spinach, carrots, fennel and more… I liked the most to work with the broadfork.

We prepared the vegetable bed alone. We did not use a tractor, because with the tractor we drive animals dead and because it squeezes flat small microorganisms. We are doing the compost by ourselves. We mix different composts. We experiment with “Terra Preta.” Because charcoal sucks in the water. Because this summer we don’t have so much water.