Week 1 of CJA's Agriculture Program

During the first week we harvested lettuce, cilantro, swiss chard, and arugula. We also took all the chicken droppings and placed it in the third compost bin. The chicken group had to make a pen and place the white hen in the pen because the white hen was overly protective of its eggs.

This week we learned several things:
1) We learned how to mix up the corn for the chickens by hand so that the chickens eat more.
2) We use shovels to mix up the compost so that it does not smell and in order to speed up the process of fertilization.

This is Dion with swiss chard:

How we got here

CJA students have worked for two years on the garden.  We built compost bins from shipping pallets, built raised bed boxes from reused lumber, built a chicken coop and a chicken run.  Now we're in our second growing season.

We learned a lot about how food is grown, and why it's good to grow it locally.

We've eaten eggs from our chickens, and basil, cilantro, bell peppers, arugula, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more from our garden.

This is what CJA looked like before we started our garden.

Here is a picture of us building a new compost bin:

Here is a picture of our first egg, in December 2009:

Here is a picture of us working in our garden in 2010: