An update letter from teacher Federica

On the threshold of the resumption of work in the garden we receive from Federica Tempesti, a letter of thanks for the support that WWOOF Italy has recently renewed to the activities of the Pergola school garden. A more than deserved support as we can learn from reading the update Federica gives us on the state of the art.

Paolo Ciarimboli supports the teachers as always in the field and transformation activities, and new teachers interested in participating are finally appearing, putting back into play the secondary school that played such a large part in the development of the project. But we let the Teacher’s words guide us.

Dear friends of Wwoof Italy, even though the Christmas vacations have been archived for a while now, there is still time to wish all members, board members, coordinators, presidents and collaborators a happy 2024.
We want to thank you for supporting us again for this school year. Your input is always valuable and is an incentive for us to carry this project forward in the best possible way.
Work in the garden is currently at a standstill. We will resume with tillage and sowing before long.
Meanwhile, we continue with daily collection of wet waste from the school cafeteria to increase compost production in our compost bin.

In September, the children of Class 5^A harvested the Quarantino corn that had been sown in the spring. The corn was then placed to dry in an empty classroom at the school until shelling, which took place just before Christmas. Despite the heat and drought this summer, we had a good harvest: 85 kg of shelled corn is not bad for our small plot!
At the time of shelling, the boys also selected the seed for the next planting and that which will be distributed to farmers in the area who request it, since since last year we have officially been custodian farmers of the “Pergola Quarantino Corn.” The best and most heterogeneous cobs were chosen and the kernels from the middle part of each were isolated and stored. All this is done to preserve the rich biodiversity of our corn, which, because of the multiplicity of varieties it contains within it, in terms of the number of cob rows and the color of both the kernels and the cob, is configured as a “Quarantine corn population.”

Since we have not had the school bus available for educational outings for a few years now, the children unfortunately can no longer witness live the milling and packaging of the polenta flour bags as they did in the past. Now it is the teachers, accompanied by our friend and expert Paolo Ciarimboli, who take the corn grain to the mill, and sometimes this experience can turn out to be a real adventure! We will tell the details of the feat verbally the next time we meet; I can only tell you that due to a stone in the middle of the road, our three heroes ended up with a slashed tire, around a curve in open country, in 0° centigrade shade, and with no cell phone service. But since all’s well that ends well, we now have as many as 138 500 g bags of polenta flour that will soon be enjoyed by the children and their families.
And speaking of adventures, starting this year the secondary school will return to “adventuring “in vegetable garden cultivation. After Prof. Massimo Albertini’s retirement, in fact, no secondary school teachers had taken it upon themselves to pick up his baton and corn cultivation, which used to be completely managed by the older boys, had been abandoned by them, as had their membership in the whole project. We are very happy that two teachers, Prof. Domenichelli and Prof. Felici, understood and rediscovered the value and potential of the school organic garden and decided to contribute and involve their children again.

All that remains is to roll up our sleeves!

A big hug to all of you and see you soon.
Federica Tempesti