The folks that originally helped us plant our fruit trees, Common Vision (look them up!), returned to give our students a lesson in proper fall pruning techniques. They also gave us a big bag of organic, soy-based fertilizer to help our trees go strong. Daniel and Logan prepared some a tomato/feta/olive oil/salt snack that we put over toasted bread. We plugged the toaster into our solar-powered charging station, and it worked! Mr. Berthiaume also led the group in preparing his own vegetable lentil soup (which the kids thought needed a lot more salt).
Our last class this week had us inspecting our garden's soil for organisms. We marked six different areas around the garden for soil testing. Teams then dug a cubic foot's worth of soil from their area and spread it out on a tarp, searching and counting organisms that they could find. They then set traps in the soil to capture wandering organisms, which we will check next week. Finally, we took soil samples into the science lab and set up Berlese funnels to extract the microorganisms from the soil. We'll be checking our results under a microscope next week! All of these observations will give us a good indication of the health of our soil. From there we'll be able to determine what needs to be done over the winter to improve out soil health.