Wednesday

Weeding carrot beds at City Farm

This morning, we visited the City Farm, which is an acre of land in the middle of the city. The city allows these farmers to use their land and fire hydrants to water their plants. During our (rainy) tour, people found many things interesting and memorable. These include how some restaurants donate their vegetable scraps to the farmers to use as compost for the soil. This really helps the crops grow. In return, the farmers sometimes donate their vegetables back to the restaurants. Surprisingly, there were a lot of different types of vegetables being grown on the farm, including beets, carrots, radishes, cilantro, cucumbers, green beans, yellow beans, tomatoes, etc.

The chicken coop at City Farm

There is also a bee keeper that keeps her bees there, which helps pollinates the plants. There were 12 chickens on the farm, which will soon lay about an egg a day. After our tour, we pitched our hands in by weeding out two beds that carrots had recently been planted in. The weeds grow faster than the carrots, so it was necessary to take them out so that they don't take over the beds.

In the afternoon after lunch, we helped out in the school's garden. We picked lettuce, green beans, carrots, and radishes. We planted tomatoes, spinach, chives, flowers, parsley and basil. We also performed a few plant transplants and untangled bean plants.

Josephinum teacher Steve introduces us
to the school garden

After planting, watering and washing the vegetables, we went over to the nuns' house next to the school to give them cabbage. They really enjoyed seeing us and appreciated our hard work.

Tonight we will be going to Navy Pier and Millennium Park and watching fireworks.