Outdoor School Harvests

Full Harvest Moon

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I'm falling behind again in my posting but this time because I am busy and working hard, not because I am off gallivanting. As my summer job came to a close I was lamenting my lack of employment for the fall and a friend suggested I apply for outdoor school. "You'd love it, and they'd hire you in a minute," she said. I sighed and agreed. "You're right, you're right... I know you're right."

Smith Lake, my office

For those of you who did not grow up in northwestern Oregon, a little background. Outdoor School is a residential environmental education program that started by the school districts in the counties around Portland in the late 1960s. It has grown into a beloved tradition for 6th graders to go to camp with their science classes and generations of high schoolers have come to outdoor school as counselor-teachers. Even with the budget cuts in recent years, the Outdoor School programs in the Portland area have survived and continue to give teenagers these really important and empowering experiences.

I went to Outdoor School as a middle schooler and counted the days until I could go back as a counselor, which I did 6 times before I graduated from high school and another time the fall after I graduated. I joke that I went to college to become a camp counselor and got my dream job working for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's science camp and outdoor school. I worked at camp for a summer and a fall before I decided that I wanted a kitchen, a dog, and a home in town rather than camp life.

Sunset from Camp

Seven years later, after a circuitousness route of work and school, I'm back at outdoor school. It's all the magic I expected and more. Within two minutes of meeting my co-workers I knew we were going to hit it off great and have a really fun fall. The work these last two weeks has been physically exhausting, emotionally draining and absolutely mind blowingly awesomely fun. The high schoolers rise to our extraordinary high expectations and the sixth graders bring energy like you wouldn't believe to our camp community. We adults pull together to support each other while making each other laugh until we cry almost every day. I can not discount the awesomeness of spending all day every day in the woods by the ocean surrounded by squirrels, racoons, chickadees and gulls.

The Harvest Moon

A touch of cold in the Autumn night

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Coastal Huckleberries, the best part of camp.

Coming back to Outdoor School reminds me of the harvests I have reaped from my own past experiences and the harvests I hope I am sowing now. I come back to camp because being a part of a community that really works feels so warm and loving. A good camp community is one where every person is working to make sure that every other person is succeeding and growing. Camp is a community pressure cooker, where we go from strangers to bosom buddies in the matter of a few days and where life long relationships begin. As a teenager, I met caring adults at camp who were able to identify strengths I didn't know I had and grow towards a wholeness I wasn't sure I could achieve. As I looked back over the evaluations my supervisors wrote and felt both intense gratitude and awe at how insightful they were. 

As I complete this week's round of counselor evals I hope that I can be even half as helpful to the teenagers I am working with as my staff supervisors were. I hope that these teen counselors can see a vision of themselves as confident leaders and knowledgeable teachers. I want everyone at camp, the staff, the counselors, the students, the kitchen staff and the teachers to see what a functional community looks like and maybe be able to take that experience into their futures. I want the students and counselors to have good emotional experiences in the woods and beach so they can begin to build a conservationist ethic. I hope that my actions here, and my part of this community, can do what Mother Teresa's words (which are posted in every bathroom at my camp) ask of us:

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."

My camp name and red vest of power

The full Harvest moon found me and my camp co-workers out on the beach for a bonfire. We played tackle catch with a glow in the dark ball, talked about the week and laughed a lot. The tide was exceptionally high (it was a spring tide) and we ended up having to move our active camp fire with our bare hands. The Harvest Moon asks us questions about the fruits of our labors in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms. Coming back to Outdoor School has left me thinking about my harvests this fall, and my hopes for future harvests. I really feel like I am working to make the world a better place when I work at camp. Even when we are at our silliest... or maybe mostly when we are at our silliest.

What are your harvests this autumn? What future harvests are you sowing for? Did you get to go to Outdoor School or other camps as a kid or young adult? How is autumn shaping up where you live?

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Harvest Moon 2011: C.S. Lewis on Praise and An Ill Harvest

Harvest Moon 2010: Harvest Moon 

Harvest Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon is New and The Moon When Squirrels Throw Acorns at You (Inexplicably, my most viewed post. Ir has been viewed over 500 times, more than two hundred times more than my second most viewed post. Curiouser and curiouser.)

An Ill Harvest

Full Harvest Moon

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You've been following the Occupy Wall Street movement, haven't you? Maybe you've read some articles, seen John Stewart's take on the protests or forwarded along photos, videos and other information on Facebook. Maybe you even joined the a march, rally or protest in your local area. Or maybe, like me, you've felt some kind of way about the whole thing and didn't.

I've been very curious with myself trying to understand my ambivalence. I am in support of the movement, at least in many ways and as I see it. I believe that our political and economic systems funnel wealth and power to an elite few while disadvantaging a majority of people. I believe that citizen should protest when their government doesn't support their rights and needs and believe that government should play a roll in redistributing wealth, creating social safety nets and limiting the power of the wealthy. I believe we should be spending money on schools, public infrastructure and health care so that no one in this, the richest nation on earth, would be without the basics for survival and the ability to make their lives better. I really do believe all of that, and still, I didn't go down to Occupy Portland last week.

One of my concerns, valid or not, is that a rally and a protest are not going to change things. My organizer friends remind me that the point of a rally is not to change policy (though that does appear to be one aim of the Tahrir square-like Occupy Wall Street protest), but to show the public how much support there is for change and give activists time and space to talk, share ideas and boost morale. I guess those are good goals, but I wonder if it is the best way for me to spend my energy.

Ultimately, I see that our unjust system of politics and economics are the results of generations of decisions, very few of which had the explicit goal of giving some people advantage at the expense of others (some people will argue with me on that, I really don't believe in a group of old white guys sitting around trying to screw the rest of us [with the exception of women's fashion, they really are trying to screw us there]). We are currently reaping the harvest of short sightedness, putting personal material gain above all else and general unintended consequences. It is an ill harvest, but I don't really think we can put the apples back on the tree and hope for new ones before winter.

I am glad there are people who want to brave bad weather, giant crowds and pissed off, power drunk cops to protest. I am also glad there are people who want to counsel prisoners and volunteer in African refugee camps. I just don't think these are my ways of doing the work to fix things. The world needs all of us to do what we can to make it a better place but we need to discern where our efforts are best used, what we can sow to reap the best harvest. Maybe I was being lazy or scared or just crowd averse when I didn't go downtown last week. I spent the day reading about critical pedagogy and integrated curriculum in middle schools, cooking food from my garden and resting my body that wasn't feeling at the top of it's game. I don't have a witty sign to show for my efforts on October 6th, 2011 but I think I sowed some seeds that I will be able to harvest in the future. I hope my actions on that day, and all others, ripple out into the universe. And I hope the rain holds off on the Occupy folks, at least for another week or so.

How are you feeling about Occupy? Are there rallies and camp ins happening where you are? Are you forwarding stuff on social media or talking about it with your friends and family? How are you planting seeds of peace, justice and goodwill in your life? What harvests, good or ill, are you taking in these days? Has it started raining in your neck of the woods?

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Full Harvest Moon 2009: The Moon When Squirrels Throw Acorns at You (Inexplicably, my most viewed post. Ir has been viewed over 500 times, more than two hundred times more than my second most viewed post. Curiouser and curiouser.)

Full Harvest Moon 2010: Harvest Moon

C.S. Lewis on Praise

New Harvest Moon

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Before the loaf, the snowy white flour
Before the flour the mill.
Before the mill the wheat and the shower,
The sun and Our Father's will.

I have been reading a collection of C.S. Lewis essays called Reflections on the Psalms. I've read a few other pieces of Lewis' non-fiction work, letters and essays, and greatly enjoy them all. He and I may differ quite significantly in some aspects but I do love reading him. I would love to have him as a neighbor or great uncle to visit with, drink tea and listen to him ramble on about God and life and such.

In his rambling on about the Psalms he comes to the issue of praise of God. He says that he never used to understand the commandment to praise God or the way some people seems to be bargaining with God through praise. He finally came to a realization that praising god is the scaled up version of the praising we do of all good things in our lives. "It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch. " We express our delight and enjoyment because that expression makes the enjoyment full. We delight and enjoy God and so can't help but exclaim that joy in words, songs and actions of praise.

Lewis makes the point that this praise is not only natural, but it is evidence of health. "The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all." A healthy attitude towards life leads to praising earthly experiences so a healthy attitude towards the divine would equally lead to robust and genuine praise of God. The question I have, though, in light of this current Harvest Moon, is which is the seed and which is the harvest? The healthy attitude or the genuine praise?

For our daily bread we thank the Father
We thank the sun and the moon and the stars
We thank the wind and the frost and the rain
We thank the earth, we thank the grain
The thank the beasts and all farming men.

I have been thinking a lot about gratitude, complaining, cynicism and acceptance lately. I've been more and more annoyed by negativity I see in people around I have been making an effort to not take part in that talk or thinking myself. I made a New Water Year resolution to not complain about the weather, a resolution I joke will lead me to an abnormally high level of complaining about my clothes. But then I think, clothes are something I can change so it's OK to critique them, the weather is not. Many great thinkers from Gautama Buddha to Viktor Frankl to Thomas Jefferson have said that attitude is the key to a fulfilled life. There is a space between what happens to us and how we react and in that space we make a decision about how we will react and what we will believe about the action. This is a space for optimism, for gratitude and for god.

I still wonder, though, which is the seed and which is the harvest? Do we have a steady bearing in the world because we make space for gratitude and praise in between events and reactions, or does a good attitude cause the space to open up? Maybe, like so many other complex systems, it is a matter of both elements playing a part. We nudge the system from whatever part of it we happen to be standing at in the moment - giving thanks when we want to complain, or inserting praise into the space we feel at the moment in between.

The seed and root beneath the earth,
The willful growing shoot,
The hopeful bud and flow'ring blossom
Turned to glowing fruit.
We thank the earth who grew this food from little bursting seeds,
And the keepers of the earth whose gifts fulfill our needs.

What harvests are you celebrating this month? Are you seeing a harvest in attitude, thanksgiving or relationship with god or is that a future harvest you are sowing for now? How is your garden winding up? Have you found any fruit trees in the neighborhood or great deals at the green grocer? How do you give thanks when you really just want to complain?

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New Harvest Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon is New

Apparently I didn't post a New Harvest Moon post in 2010, but I did post Harvest Moon during that month.

Harvest Moon

The new moon that occurred on Sept 8 is called the Harvest Moon in Annette Hinshaw's calendar. It is the time when all that you have worked for since the start of the cycle with the Death and Birth moons last winter are coming ready to harvest. It is a time of ripening apples and pumpkins to be stored over the winter, of putting up preserves and drying fruit as well as a time of assessing what other resources and accomplishments you have to stockpile against the upcoming dark season. It might even be a time to think about the lessons learned from longer cycles of planting and growth like seasons of a life or the lives of past generations.

This month has been a magical one all around. It started with the festival of Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Eid is the biggest festival in most Muslim communities and the convention center near my work was the site of a large prayer meeting. It was neat to see people from so many different backgrounds dressed in their Friday Finest walking to and from the morning prayers. The full moon this month coincided with the Autumn Equinox, a conjunction that hasn't happened in 19 years. It was a little cloudy the night of the full moon but both nights before and after I saw the enormous yellow moon rising above the trees. Jupiter also showed up, looking quite large because it is at the closest point in it's orbit to the Earth. Jupiter tends to bring wisdom, tolerance and plenty as well as a jovial, cheerful spirit - all trademarks of a good harvest season.

Photo by Paladin27.

This month was also a big month for me on a more personal level. My 30th birthday was just before the new moon and I have been celebrating for the entire month. I figure thirty days to celebrate thirty years is appropriate, right? I also had the wonderful opportunity to travel to the East Coast to visit two of my sisters. I spent a couple days with my little sister who is my best friend in the world, and a couple more days with my older sister and her family. It was great to see everyone and our conversations were deep and meaningful, when they weren't silly and lighthearted.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the harvests we can gather in from the seeds planted not only by our own selves, but by our family and ancestors before us. Its interesting to think that we can benefit, or be hindered, by things we didn't have any control over the beginning of. My aunt once reminded me of the ancient wisdom of the seventh generation. Every action reverberates through at least that many generations of a family and healing takes at leas that long as well. She brought it up in the context of how proud she is of the children of my generation in our family, how much healthier and happier we are than the previous generations she knew. Sometimes we forget that, lost in the overwhelming harvest of brokenness and hardship we have to deal with today. In Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, Hermes tell Percy, the half human son of Poseidon "Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related, for better or worse... and try to keep the killing and maiming to to a minimum."

Harvests, like families, are often messy. But they are exactly and only what we make of them - 15 pounds of plums can be a fruit fly party ground, or the best ketchup you've ever tasted.

Plum Ketchup
based on The Cottage Smallholder's recipe, but made my own

3 - 4 pounds of plums, preferably the small Italian plums, but a mix of whatever you can find
1 or 2 tart apples
1 onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 - 2 inch knob of ginger
2 cups vinegar, cider or wine
1/2 cup mixed dried fruit - raisins, cranberries, apricots, etc.
2 tbs dehydrated onion
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tbs garlic powder
1 tbs honey
2 tsp mild new mexico chile powder
2 tsp ground mustard
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp cloves
a dash of Worcestershire sauce

Remove the pits from the plums, chop the onion and apples fine, mince the garlic and slice the ginger into big slabs. Throw the fruit, vinegar and seasonings in a big pot and raise the heat slowly, stirring regularly to keep things from burning.

Keep stirring and mashing and simmering over as high a heat as it will take and not burn for, oh, three or four or five hours. You can put a lid on the pot, turn the heat off and leave it overnight if you need to. In the morning just bring it back up to a good boil for a minute or two, stirring to keep it from sticking.

Simmer until it gets to the consistency of a thin applesauce, not watery. Run everything through a food mill and then put back on the heat.

Check for seasoning at this point - or at any point. The seasoning above is approximately what I did this time but should just serve as a guide for you. Add more sweetner if you need, more salt, more garlic, etc. Keep simmering until it has a consistency just a little thinner than ketchup.

Pour into clean jars - my batch made about 2 1/2 pints - and either process in a water bath to seal or just let cool and store in the refrigerator. This ketchup is phenomenal with eggs, on a cheese sandwich or hamburger and makes the best barbecue sauce west of the Mississippi.


What are you harvesting this month and what are you doing with that harvest? Did you see the big full moon or celebrate the appearance of the new crescent moon? What's your favorite thing to do with Too Much Fruit?

The Moon When Squirrels Throw Acorns At You

As I have more closely watched the wheel of the year turn and gotten to know the major signs of the seasons I have started to notice the more subtle signs as well. It's fun to make up my own names for the seasons. There is a time in the spring I refer to as The Season When Little Birds Chase Big Birds. Starlings harass crows who get to close to their nests, crows harass hawks and hawks harass eagles. It's pretty funny to watch. In the summer there is the Season of Late Nights on Porches when it is too hot to hang out inside so all of our socializing happens outside. We have recently just moved into the Season When Squirrels Throw Acorns At You. The squirrels are busy and active building up their stores for the winter, and always seem to be chucking nuts at me as I walk under the trees they are working in. No one ever said squirrels were polite woodland creatures. Photo by Bourbon Familia.

There are some other fantastic signs of the season readily apparent as we settle fully into autumn. The sunlight continues to change, to get thinner. I met some friends for afternoon drinks the other day and we sat out on the deck and wore our sunglasses, but where I parked my car in the shade was still quite cool. The evenings and mornings are distinctly cold and I my dog is spending more and more hours under the covers with me rather than sleeping on her own dog bed as she prefers in the summer. The leaves on the trees are changing color and I am seeing more and more reds along with the common yellows and browns. The hills behind downtown Portland are starting to look golden green instead of just green as they do during the growing season.

Autumn is soup season, and root vegetable season. Here's a recipe from last autumn that combines the best of both worlds, and was made with turnips I harvested myself.

Harvest Moon Turnip Soup


4 or so cups of washed and chopped turnips
2 small potatoes, washed and chopped
1 small white sweet potato, peeled, washed and chopped
1/2 an onion, chopped
Couple tablespoons butter and olive oil
Salt, pepper, garlic powder and thyme
3 cups chicken stock, plus some more water
3 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
3/4 cup milk
Grated cheddar cheese
Croutons (bought oh, so long ago and finally getting used up)
Black pepper

• Sautee the vegetables in the butter and oil in a big soup pot along with the seasonings until they are starting to get soft or color or both.


• Add the chicken stock and scrape to get the crusties off the bottom of the pot. Bring to a boil, drop to a simmer and check for seasonings. Simmer until the vegetables are well cooked.


• Puree the soup in batches in a blender (being very careful! Volcanic hot spewing soup is not fun for girls or boys! Cover the blender with a dishtowel, and use the low setting on your blender!) or with a stick blender if you are cool like that. Keep the soup warm in the pot once it is all blended to your desired consistency.


• In another small pot heat the butter and when melted add the flour. Cook a few minutes until it is a little golden in color. Slowly add the milk, stirring until the sauce is thickened. Add the sauce to the soup and stir to combine.


• Grate a generous portion of cheese into each soup bowl (you could add cheese to the pot, but it makes reheating difficult, so I didn't) and ladle hot soup over the cheese. Stir to combine. Garnish with croutons, a little more cheese, and black pepper.

What season is it where you are? What creatures do you see being more active now and which do you notice by their absence? What are you cooking for dinner?

The Harvest Moon is New

As you sow, so shall you reap. That is the message of the Harvest Moon. It is the time of year when the fruits of the year's work at coming ready for harvest both literally and figuratively. As the days get shorter we are spending more time thinking and we have time to reflect on what we have and what we have earned. It is a time to fess up to taking too much responsibility and to own up to not taking enough. It is a time to reap the good karma of our loving, thoughtful actions as well as the bad karma of our thoughtless or malicious actions.

It is also the time of year to harvest the goodies out of the fields and gardens that we spent all year working on. I planted and tended a beautiful little vegetable garden this year and have really enjoyed the work and the harvest. The Harvest Moon is the polarity to the Seed Moon which adds symmetry to the fact that the last time I told you about my garden was in my Seed Moon post.

As I said then I was planning two gardens for this year, one at my parent's house and one at my own little house. The bed at my parent's house is 4' x 6' and I planted early season greens, peas and beets as well as an eggplant, a chile pepper plant and some flowers. My lettuce was a huge success and there was a time when I was harvesting more than I reasonably wanted to eat. The radishes, on the other hand, were a complete bust. Who knows why but the garden spirits just didn't feel like granting me radishes this year. Ah well, they made up for it in beets and chard. One of the big suprises in my little garden was the calendula I planted. I think I planted it late and didn't expect it to do anything but then one day I looked out and there was a gorgeous yellow sun of a flower. In fact, all the flowers I had in my garden were thrilling. Mostly they were bolted veggies like radish and mustard, but I loved my nasturtium, rosemary and pea flowers as well.

The little garden really isn't that much littler, but it did end up growing just one kind of food - tomatoes. Everyone needs a tomato plant or three and I had four. I grew a hybrid grape tomato and three heirloom slicing tomatoes. One set flower and fruit so late that I got only one single red tomato before the weather changed (note to self, don't buy that variety next year) but the Kellogs Breakfast Tomato and the Amish Paste both did respectably. The Kellogs Breakfast makes giant wrinkly tomatoes that ripen to an orange juice orange color. I am certainly growing those again next year!

Growing a garden is a deeply moving experience when you approach it as a partnership between yourself and the plants. I really enjoyed getting to meet new plants and new vegetables this year. I loved eating food that grew in dirt I tended with my own hands. I loved the work I put into my garden and loved showing it off. Of course, I am already making plans for next season. I put in more lettuce and radishes for the fall (maybe the autumn fairies will like radishes more than the spring ones did) as well as collards, kale and chard. I'm planning a garlic planting and daydreaming about another bed or two or three.

What are you harvesting this autumn? What did you grow in your garden? What did you grow in the garden of your life this summer? How is that harvest coming along?

You can see more photos of my garden on my flickr stream here.