Winter Camp

February Log Cabin Camp

" Wow, I wish this day would never end!"

" This is so much fun!"

"I love camp."

" And we can do it again tomorrow?"

" I can't wait until tomorrow!"

"Can't we just stay here?"

"Do we have to go home? "

"I hate school. School is boring."

"I wish this were our school."

"I wish we could do this every day."

"I am so glad there is a February break so we could do this instead."

"This is better than recess! "

"I love working!"

" Look at this darling little egg! "

Log Cabin Camp has six children aged 6-12 signed up from 8 am to 4:00 pm Monday- Friday.

The children are on break from school and needed a place to be so their parents could go to work or catch up on work that needed to be done at home.

What does the camp look like?

It is red, green and white, with barns. Green roofs, red logs and white snow.

The camp is located in Hartland, Vermont at an elevation of 950 feet. There is about half a foot of snow on the ground today. The camp facilities include a forest camp, a two story log cabin, a barn, a sheep shed, chicken shed and a moderate sledding hill. The log cabin is heated only with wood and has no back-up furnace or central heating. The sheep are Merino- Colombian crossbreeds and are expecting lambs in April. The 26 chickens are laying 18 eggs a day and they have an outside fenced in yard where they eat kitchen scraps and get sunshine, fresh air and exercise.

A day At Camp

The first young farmers who came to camp were so excited they woke up at 3 am and asked if it was time to go to camp. They managed to fall asleep but were ready to go again before sunrise and they arrived so early that long walks up and down Rice road enjoying the tall maple trees and morning dawn were needed to pass the time before camp was ready.

They arrived half an hour early and enjoyed the proud display of the farm's two coppery-golden Buff Orpington roosters on the gates to the chicken yard.

The crew came in, stowed their sheepskin slippers in a row, put knitted wool hats in one basket, gloves in another and snow pants in a third, jackets got hung up on brass hooks on the dark stained log cabin walls of the glassy blue painted mudroom.

Soon two farm-campers arrived, so we began our opening greetings seated around an oval pine table with a pot of special tea. In a glass teapot the children watched how a magical blossom unfurled its leaves in slow motion as cascades of boiling water transformed a hard nut0-like tea ball into a work of art. We drank the jasmine tea and talked about the day and what we hoped to do.

I explained that real work was waiting for all of us and that we would be working like grown ups with tools to finish the sheathing on our new gambrel-roofed sheep barn for our two school sheep, Addy and Eve. We talked about what cedar trees are and why cedar makes a good building material. We had a good discussion that included first through fifth graders about where cedar grows, what its wood and properties are like, how to recognize ( identify) the tree and how it is used as a building material in times present and past. We also covered topics like tongue and grooved boards vs. ship lap and how to build to keep water out and walls dry.

The children were eager to collect eggs, feed the sheep and do farm chores, so we went over how the barn chores work. Before going out we ate a nice snack of two cups of tea, nutella on crisp bread and plenty of fruit. I said that we would be working hard and needed all our energy to stay warm all day so it was important we drank and ate enough when we were inside.

The big chore of getting dressed to work outside all morning then began. We stowed our warm slippers, found gloves, hats, snow pants, and jackets. Lastly big barn boots and off to the sheep shed. The sheep needed good hay in their manger and bedding hay so we learned how to distinguish between hay that has been rained on and hay that is dry, nutritionally good and sun dried.

The young farmers brought in flakes of hay, opened bales, stuffed the hay racks full, opened the sheep to their yard and fluffed out flakes of bedding hay to make the big sheep barn even more cozy and soft for the young ewes to lamb in come springtime. The comments about " this is the best camp ever " began to bubble up with the barn chores and kept erupting spontaneously all day as we transitioned to each new activity.

The sheep enjoyed their fresh green sweet smelling breakfast and stood calmly chewing at their stuffed hay rack to we could move on to the task of feeding the hens kitchen scraps and left over fruit peels from breakfast snacks. The campers had a personal relationship to many of the chickens, as they learned to catch and hold the same visiting pullets last fall during school farming block.

Math, Measurement, Skills

The time to build began. Everyone was equipped with a handsaw, hammer and rubber work gloves.

We rolled out black tar paper, measured it and cut it with a utility knife. Everyone took turns stapling the tar paper onto the plywood walls with a hammer stapler. Boys who just want to pitch themselves against the gravitational forces of the earth need this activity to feel something validating, something vital. This tool is a noisy, violent and satisfying way of securing sheathing to a flat surface in seconds. With this tool in hand, the chidren demonstrated that if you are only three feet tall and six years old you can do justice to this job and have parity with a grizzled 6'2' 220 pound construction worker.

The children measured, marked and cut cedar planks with hand saws and nailed them up for about three hours without a break. We flew threw the morning without the usual recess, snack and need for distraction as the work was so satisfying and demanding. The sheep were a bit confused about the commotion but the work got done and everyone kept the talk down to a minimum" like real carpenters" who don't say much but who work with their hands, not their mouth."

Singing, Poetry and Speech

At 11:30 I asked the little ones if they wanted to go up into the woods and they did- many hopeful ideas about fairy houses had been brewing for some time, I could tell. I started a fire up in the woods on the snow and the world changed. We had a center point, a place to bring focus and creativity, research and questions, excitement and wonder.The possibilities of a fire are endless. The trees around us creaked in the north wind and sang to us- son the children were singing back to the trees songs they made up about the wind. I talked to the trees when their creaking and wind sounds were surprising asking them what they knew, saw and felt. The children answered back for them.

The children said " It is a windy day." The fire changes directions when the wind blew so the children asked for less wind and noticed that winds grew still. Being up in the forest changed everything. The woods were alive with poetic activity, ideas, sounds, songs of delight the children just began singing out of the blue.

John studied the forest carefully- each stick and branch - searching for arrow wood and bow wood. as many a boy as done through the centuries of this world. He wanted to make arrows, bows and quivers.

Doug made a bow drill to create fire. To do this he worked with 12 year old Grace and asked her what she knew about Pi, and how the long the circumference of the circle would be as they needed to cut a strip of leather for the drill. They worked on a perfect measurement to make a drill that could make fire out of a greek formula, which was part of her learning this year.

I read a story to the whole mixed age group to find their centerpoint of spiritual interest in nature. I chose the story of Black Elk's Vision as told by Blue Spotted Horse medicine man. We sat around the sacred fire to make the circle which belonged to the story and to Grace's work with Pi. to make fire.

Two little girls began to sew Indian princess headbands after lunch. They were quiet, focused and introspective after so much work.

Lunch had started with dried mango, followed by organic green salads with maple caramelized walnuts, warmed goat cheese and pears. Then toasted and grilled Vermont cheese sandwiches, Nutella on Swedish crisp bread and fresh fruit.

Physics, Chemistry and Math

After lunch, back in the woods, the children decided more work needed to be done to discover the melting point of something they called the key whixch looks like an iron eye bolt. We all became blacksmiths, and a new game was invented to heat up iron in the beds of coals and embers and cool it in ice to make water and ash. This new research topic took up all the time to the end of the day at 4:30 pm.

By the end of the day the sheep were glad to have their evening meal from the trusty and enthusiastic young farmers. The hard working young scientists who had been keeping the sacred fires burning with hand- sawn logs all afternoon became farmers yet again! They gathered 18 lovely brown eggs in a basket and exclaimed with delight when one was as small as a Robin's egg!

The neighbor lady came down for her weekly dozen and was glad to have her eggs ready to go.

The day ended with sadness that it seemed to fly by too fast- and joy that in a few hours it would start all over again! Even more so on Tuesday!!