The Village School
May 17th, 2021
Forest Garden
Present
Kids: Irsa, Forest, Gaia, Luca, Luuk, Max, Meira, Ramona, Stone, Willow
Adults- Gabriel, Diana (notes)
Agenda (60 minutes)
05- Meditation
05- Announcements
Proposals/discussions:
15-Chick care plan
15-Kids Strawberry Patch
15-Open Topic
05- Review box and tasks
Announcements
Desire for a Paradise Pond Plan for the day when it’s 87 degrees
Stone has a stepmother now
Chicks seem to be recovering
The kids seemed to be having a wonderful time at the Toe bone and the Tooth ritual, and they did a great job helping at the ritual. They gathered 14 bones.
Tasks:
From last Council:
Willow and Irsa pick up wire cage and chicks tomorrow morning from Liz’s site before school. They’ll have to leave Market early to do that task to get here on time. DONE
Stone to complete chick shelter and collect bedding and waterer. IN PROGRESS
From this Council:
Max and Luuk to ask Carmen if the chicken progressive paralysis ailment is contagious to other chicks.
Irsa and Forest to be the official Chick Watchers today, taking notes on how they’re doing, re the two white chicks’ paralysis.
Irsa to talk with Liz about work trade for her in exchange for chicken food.
Luka and Stone to read about growing strawberries in our books in the school library.
Weed the grass patch and help encourage the little strawberry plants there to grow bigger. (Task not assigned.)
Stone to talk with Eli about how to amend the soil, and putting more plants in the strawberry patch.
Chick care plan
Carmen looked at the two white chicks and saw that they probably have a progressive paralysis disease she’s seen before, which usually gets increasingly worse and the chicks die. Is it contagious or not? Could Merlin/Marlene catch it?
We didn’t ask Carmen that, good question. Max and Luuk will see Carmen tomorrow when Carmen comes to their house and ask her.
Today the two white chicks seem to be moving around more; maybe they’re better.
Liz visited the chicks at least once and saw that they didn’t have any water and she needed to refill it. How do we ensure that the chicks have what they need?
We could check on them more than once a day.
We should see how they’re doing today, and not yet make a plan yet to kill them or keep them alive until the end of the school day. If they’re better today, keep them alive; if they’re worse, decide to kill them
Are we killing both of them or just one?
We should elect someone to take notes on chick behavior today to see how they’re doing. Irsa, Forest, and Max volunteered. Irsa and Forest will be the official Chick Watchers today, and anyone else can join them and help.
We ran out of chicken food here at the school. Liz gave us some chicken food, and we owe her some work in exchange for that food. We need more chicken food here before we run out.
Irsa can talk with Liz about the work trade.
They ran out of water recently too. What will our plan be, as we have the responsibility to make sure they don’t run out of food or water.
I might have spilled some water when the cage was sloping. Also I drained their water before carried the chick pen over to the school so it wouldn’t spill and make a mess.
Right now the coop is on a slope. Some of the kids move the chick pen to more level ground.
We should set the pen outside with a way the chicks can get out and scratch around in the grass.
Meira’s family has a lot of chicken and duck food.
We already have a source of food – Liz. The problem is not not having a source of chick food, but we need a specific plan for never running out of it. We need a plan for knowing we always have enough food for them.
What about having a trail camera?
But then we’d need someone would have to pay attention to the trail camera. Every day at the end of school we could check their food and water to see if they have enough for that afternoon and overnight.
We could figure out how much food is needed for the week and get a container large enough to bring and store that amount of food at the school.
Someone could ask Liz what work we can do in exchange for the chicken food. (Irsa volunteered earlier to do this.)
How can we get enough food for them over the weekend?
We could check on chicken feed during Contribution Time every day.
Which Contributions Team? Hearth. Field. Fire. We decided the Field Team will be the best team to check on whether the chicks have enough food and water throughout the school day.
It’s been working out fine for Forest & Ramona to take the chicks home over the weekend.
Kids Strawberry Patch
There already is a Kids’ Strawberry Patch in the Hut Hamlet. How does it work re who can eat the strawberries.?
There aren’t enough strawberries there yet for kids to eat them every day.
Some plants have green strawberries.
There are plenty of strawberry plants, but they don’t have enough strawberries on them yet for many kids to be able to eat them very often.
There are not actually plenty of plants, just 5-6 plants. We’d probably only get 10 strawberries a year per plant. With all these kids there aren’t enough plants for all the kids to eat strawberries there often.
Be careful where you step when you’re harvesting, so you don’t step on a plant and hurt it. After five years or so strawberry plants die.
There are not enough actual strawberries, because now the plants are all small and so they don’t produce enough; if they were bigger plants we’d probably have enough strawberries.
If strawberry plants die after 5 years, we’ll need a new place for a kid’s strawberry patch.
We should check with Eli about whether she wants some strawberries from this patch for herself.
When you’re eating strawberries there, you should save some for other people.
We’ve had a rule to only eat the ripe ones; the last time I was there I saw some kids eating the tiny half-ripe ones.
Is there something wrong with the plants that we don’t have more strawberries: are they at the end of their life, or is it a soil problem?
Eli already has plenty of strawberries and this patch was just for the kids.
There are enough berries, but people shouldn’t eat too many of them or they’ll use them up ad other people can’t eat them.
There’s no need to check with Eli about how many she wants, because these plants are just for kids.
The Kids’ Strawberry Patch was a gift from Eli to the kids, and it’s awesome to think about her and her needs. This strawberry patch is for the kids to take care of and harvest from. We should check with Eli if we want to put more plants there.
We have good gardening books here and someone could learn about best ways to grow strawberries.
Luka and Stone will do this.
Maybe we should give up on the patch and let the plants die.
No it’s a soil problem: we should add new soil, or soil amendments, and mulch it to make the soil better.
We could use the soil test kit to test for soil nutrients.
I found some strawberry plants by field where they’re harvesting grass, but they seem unhealthy and full of weeds. Someone should weed that patch and help encourage these little strawberry plants to grow bigger.
Stone will talk with Eli about how to amend the soil, and put more plants in the strawberry patch.
If I see only 5 ripe strawberries in the patch, can I eat all 5?
No!
Can I come back in 10 minutes later and eat another one?
No!
We shouldn’t eat more than one per day. When we go to the patch and see how many strawberries are there, should tell people how many there are and let other people know that they’re there and available.
Does Gabo get to eat any strawberries since he’s an Honorary Kid? The Honorary Kids — Alina, Matt, Thomas, and Gabo – can only eat one strawberry every other day from the kids patch.
Open Topic
Someone took my bike; I suspects it may be X, and I’d like to know where it is. The bike is Willow’ Rose’s older bike that we used as the Dairy Delivery bike, and I have permission from Willow Rose to use it. I’m using this bike only until another bike is available to be used to help the Dairy Delivery cart.
I saw the bike behind the holly tree on the Village Green.
Ask that no one take my bike without asking me first.
Some think it was Maize who took it, because he knows how to ride a bigger kid’s-sized bike: I’ve seen him do it.
I also think someone is taking bikes as this has happened to my bike a lot. But Maize is only four so he’d have to ride standing up and hold his hands up high to reach up to the handlebars. The bike is 10 x too big for him, and he couldn’t ride it up a hill.
I feel concerned when Y rides the bike as I think that he didn’t ask permission.
I thinks it’s X who takes my bike and rides it, like how this happened once before. This makes me believe X doesn’t care about my feelings . I wants to be able to ride the bike itself and also to know that Y does care. (some facilitator assistance and translation in order to get to this statement)
X, are you willing to do something to show Stone that you do care about his feelings in this situation?
I do care. Yet, sometimes I also want Y to take responsibility for things, and feel hurt when it seems to me he’s not taking responsibility.
It seems to me that when people use the bike they think they own it.
Y, what did you hear X say?
That she thinks I don’t take responsibility for things and that makes it hard to express feeling care for my feelings.
Yes, and also that she does care about your feelings.
Thank you X and Y for honestly and vulnerably expressing your feelings and what you wanted.
In the Box:
Bell agreements
Kids strawberry patch
Hut Hamlet playground
Bike workshop
Human powered school shuttle
Nature museum
Dairy delivery cart 2.0