Advertisement
Published: September 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Stone Soup!
The garden coordinator, Melissa, reading to the kiddies. This past week in Alamosa was pretty awesome! One of the big events for the community gardens for the Fall was this week - Stone Soup. Polston Primary School, where the largest of the two community gardens is located, hosts an event every year (for the past 7 years) themed around this children’s book. Some of you may be familiar with the book, Stone Soup; however I wasn’t until this week. To keep it short, the book is about three strangers who come across a village of people who are shy and selfish and have always kept their food and belongings locked up in their houses only for themselves to use. So when the strangers are hungry and have no food, they begin making a pot of stone soup (which clearly would not be very tasty. Slowly, the villagers each contribute something to the pot, so it transforms into a delicious soup! The strangers teach them how to open their hearts and realize that through cooperation they will all be better off. Very warm and fuzzy, I know. So basically, we help all 18 classes of kindergarteners and first graders pick vegetables Monday through Thursday, which is always entertaining having large
numbers of kids in the garden. Then, on Friday, we go into each class to read them the story, which was probably my favorite part. After that, the kids come outside so that each of then can drop a spoonful of vegetables into the big pots of soup we had cooking over a fire behind the school. Finally, at the end of the day, everyone gets to share in the delicious soup! The kids had such an awesome time. While it was a bit of a logistical nightmare, I think it really taught them a little more about how sharing is important. They also have a greater love for vegetables, which is also a plus for a public health major. AND most importantly, Stone Soup made me a celebrity in Alamosa! The Valley Courier newspaper put a picture of me stirring the soup on the front page of the Saturday edition of the paper! (Check it out here - http://www.alamosanews.com/V2_news_articles.php?heading=0&page=72&story_id=9463
The last day of my work week was actually on Saturday, when I got to go gleaning for the second time since I’ve been here! The first was last weekend, which went pretty well. However this past weekend was
The Rio
On my way to gleaning, I stopped in the middle of the road to take this picture. especially fun. I was responsible for a group of middle and high school kids from a church youth group (accompanied by their youth pastors of course). The kids worked really hard and were hilarious. We all had great fun digging up carrots, and they were able to fill about 40 boxes, which totals about 1,500 pounds of carrots!! The kids were so comfortable with me by the end of the day that we had a carrot-top fight with all of the greens they had pulled off the tops of the carrots.
Finally, my trip of the weekend was to Love Lake, a lake up near Creede, CO, where we went on Sunday to see the beautiful fall colored leaves of the Aspen trees. Ben and Sarah (my backpacking buddies) joined Kevin (my new German housemate), Brandy (who’s just awesome) and myself for the trip. The drive up to Creede is by far my favorite so far that I have found in Colorado. The road winds along the mountains, with the Rio Grande at its side. With the cold weather slowly creeping in, at least half of the leaves have begun to turn. The Aspens change from light green to
yellow to orange and are a breathtaking sight along the backdrop of Colorado Blue Spruce trees that line the mountainsides. As we climbed up the mountains to reach Love Lake, we had to stop several times to take pictures of the beautiful trees that surrounded us. Once my little SUV finally climbed the rocky road to the lake, the late afternoon sun gave us gorgeous lighting to enjoy the scenery. After a short hike around the lake, we headed up to the end of the road, where we found an amazing overlook that gave us a view of another valley of Aspens and Pines. The climb back down the mountain offered us more ridiculous views of the trees and the mountains, and on our way back to Alamosa, we were able to see the sun setting behind us. Needless to say, our adventures on Sunday made a wonderful end to a great week in Colorado!
P.S. Some of these pictures I stole from Ben, and sorry if you get sick of looking at trees. They were pretty, what can I say...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0196s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Brittany Goodrich
non-member comment
wow!!
megan- finally got around to reading your blog and lets just say ur livin my dream...this totally what i hope to be doing in the future...Colorado is gorgeous...wish i was there rather than LA suburbia...all ur tree pics were lovely...made me miss nature even more !!! anyways enjoy the rest of ur time there!!