Good Earth Farm & Day of the Dead

This past friday, we gathered in the chill of the morning, around the fire.  We prepared the garlic for the following day's planting, throwing the occasional rotted clove into the fire (mmmm...).  The nature weavings from the week before were still woven into the fence around the garden.

train carrying coal trundling by - we all pause and let out some steam with a lot of noise!!

This week our focus was on the Day of the Dead; we read a couple of books for some context and talked about what it was to celebrate life at this time of year. 

A few of the children have experienced the deaths of people close to them - a grandparent, and in a couple of cases, infant siblings - and we took time to share about our memories of them.  We talked about altars and a few of the kids told us about their altars they have made at home.

Our lunch for the day was potato soup and pain de muerto, a traditional Mexican sweet bread.  While the children prepared the lunch, a couple of us gathered materials and staked out a site for a communal altar that we could all work on through the afternoon.

As we were finishing the preparations after sharing lunch, we looked up to see these creatures flying towards us...

They jumped right in with the doings...stirring the mud...

Creating a stone and tile mosaic border to the altar...

...inventing shapes with the amaranth and the sassafras leaves, creating a beautiful, impermanent work-in-progress...

Kids moved back and forth between mask-making and altar building throughout the afternoon, which is always shorter than we think it will be...

And we ended our day with singing and sharing highlights around the fire.

Boo!