Beer Brewing 101: Oatmeal Stout

Students at Saturday oatmeal stout brewing workshop add molasses to the mix.

Our workshop season kicked off Saturday with a beer-brewing workshop taught by Master Brewer Paul Jennings. This was part one of a three-part brewing series Paul is offering at Better Farm this summer (wine making is slated for July 13—you don't want to miss it!), and the focus was on getting a batch of oatmeal stout started.

Paying it Forward

From left Rebekah Kosier, Jacob Firman, and Nicole Caldwell work in a neighbor's garden.

An integral part of Better Farm's Sustainability Education Program is community service work. These activities serve dual functions: to pay manpower forward and to teach students new skills that can be applied to future projects (and paid forward in future community service activities). Our belief is that a successful, sustainable community utilizes bartering, volunteerism, and the sharing of specialized skills to propel neighborhoods forward. This has been proven time and time again at Better Farm; where the volunteerism of our neighbors is largely responsible for how far the "better" project has come in four short years.

Here are the service projects we all took part in last week.

DIY Solar Oven, Part I

Katie Mollica and Jacob Firman teach children about building their own solar ovens at Lyme Central School on Monday.

We were invited to participate in Backyard Science Day this week at Lyme Central School in Chaumont by Cornell Cooperative Extension. For our presentation, we built a solar oven to show kids how they could heat up food with the sun alone.

DIY Soap

Soap is a very simple household product to make at home, with the added bonus of using your own herbs and oils to create fragrances and designs.

New Gates Allow for Easy Access to the Garden

The interns (with the help of instructors) last week put in two new garden gates to make accessibility a lot simpler for unloading compost, hay, and cardboard; irrigation, and simply moving in and out. This brings our number of garden gates up to three; allowing for pedestrian access (the main, existing entrance), easy access to and from the greenhouse (a four-foot wide gate, pictured above), and truck access (a double-hinged gate eight feet wide in the garden's back corner closest to Cottage Hill Road).

DIY Solar Oven

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

The yellow bricks of Chittenango, N.Y. Image from My Vintage Soul.

I was fortunate enough two years ago to receive golden bricks that once formed a road actually danced and trod upon by just about every cast member from the Wizard of Oz except Dorothy herself. This gift was the result of a string of events involving the town of Chittenango (where Frank L. Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was born and raised), harsh North Country winters, and two dear friends of mine, Walter and Sunny.

You can read the full story by clicking here.

Fresh Dill Bread: History and recipe

Ridiculously delicious dill bread. Photo/Holly Boname

By Kathryn Mollica and Rebekah Kosier

After planting in the garden all morning, the rains set in. So, we all headed indoors for an afternoon of baking bread and learning a little history about this universal food.

How's it Growing?

Pea plants growing out of a piano.

The nice, heavy rainfall a few nights ago clicked everything into high gear in Better Farm's gardens. Yesterday, our Sustainability Education Program students worked tirelessly to get weeds out of the way, baby plants from the nursery into the garden, and got the hang of direct-planting some bean seeds. Today they're continuing their work clearing beds to make way for new transplants and seeds; meanwhile, existing plants have had a serious growth spurt! Here's what's going on on the back 40:

Introducing...

From left to right Jessie Coyle, Katie Mollica, Jacob Firman, and Rebekah Kosier build new garden gates in an afternoon activity led by Greg Basralian.

Our Better Farm Sustainability Education and betterArts Residency summer program season has begun! To kick things off, there's a brand-new cast and crew we are happy to introduce.