Join CitySprouts for the celebration of our 3rd annual Harvest Festival:

Saturday, OCTOBER 18 (rain or shine), 10 am to 3 pm, HAGGERTY SCHOOL, 110 Cushing Street, Cambridge (off Huron Avenue, near the Fresh Pond Reservoir)

Come for a delicious lunch or snack and have fun with your children. Explore the joys of children's gardening, good food, and autumn in New England.

Admission is FREE. We'll have:

• hands-on activities for children, including decorating pumpkins, pressing your own apple juice, making apple pops, designing vegetable print flags, exploring a worm bin, learning to dry fruit, and more!
• live music and a children's parade at 1 pm, featuring Roberto Cassan, local Latin-influenced accordionist.
• a raffle featuring top prizes from local restaurants and shops.
• kid-made crafts and other items for sale: bulbs, T-shirts, and more.
• delicious food provided by local farmers, businesses and chefs: Annie's Homegrown Mac and Cheese, Casablanca, Verrill Farms, Whole Foods Market, Chef Steve Johnson, Equal Exchange Coffee and Hot Cocoa, and many others.
• the opportunity to support and learn more about a great cause-proceeds benefit CitySprouts!

CitySprouts

Our gardens enjoyed the rainy summer. Here's some of the gardening fun we had:

At the Haggerty
We worked with the Strawberry Hill camp at the Haggerty School. Despite the weather we planted summer crops of peas, corn, lettuce, radishes, gourds, pumpkins, carrots, herbs, sunflowers and a rainbow garden of flowers. We cooked zucchini brownies, picked our own school berries, made muffins, dressings, herbed oils and vinegars and picked lettuce each week to serve salads at lunch. We ended the summer with a trip to Sergi farm where they let us pick and eat their yummy corn right in the fields. Look for
the beautiful colored posters and journals the students made depicting their experiences.
At the King Open (formerly Harrington)
We teamed up with the Sun & Splash campers, who planted and picked vegetables such as spinach and snow peas. They also picked strawberries all summer long. They tasted herbs and made sun tea with the herbs in the garden. They mulched the garden beds to keep down the weeds and to keep in the water. They made small tee pees for the existing beans to climb up; they made terrariums and vegetable art along with nature bracelets, and the boys favorite activity was learning about the compost--how it was made and what was in it and who was living in it. Each week the kids had a healthy snack to go along with their activities whether it was bought or picked. We ended our
summer with a parent breakfast and a tour of the garden.

At the Peabody (formerly Fitzgerald)
Over 85 summer campers enjoyed learning in the school garden this summer. Children got to plant, care for, and harvest successive crops of snow and snap peas, bush beans,
sweet peppers, red and green leaf lettuces, chives, strawberries, raspberries, and a variety of herbs. On our last day together, we picked herbs from the Herb Garden from Ancient Civilizations, and brewed up a jar of sun tea. All the kids enjoyed the process of
making the tea, and most of them ventured to sample and enjoy drinking their garden-made brew as well. On rainy days the children made their own custom-designed trail mixes, and learned about the nutritional value of various foods. We also made, harvested, and spread lots of compost, and learned many organic gardening methods.

Thank you to the many volunteers who kept our gardens beautiful throughout the summer.

CitySprouts, the Cambridge Food Service  and the Institute for Community Health have joined forces to bring more fresh fruit and vegetables to CitySprouts schools. In September, we had fresh corn-on-the-cob day for all kids in the cafeteria.

In October, the Growing Healthy partners will offer fresh spinach and other delectable spinach treats for kids to try on one day in each school. Also in October we'll inaugurate the new apple press given to CitySprouts by Whole Foods Market! We'll be setting up in classrooms and the cafeteria to demonstrate how fresh apple cider is made.

Laurie Gaines at the Haggerty School
Gretchen Friesinger at the Morse School
Amy Baron at the Peabody School, with Amos Alan Lans
Rebecca Pierik at the King Open, with Maureen Spinetti

CitySprouts emerged in the spring of 2000 from a confluence of several people's projects and ideas: Maria Rader, a Cambridge parent and teacher, had been gardening with children and teachers at the Harrington School for seven years; Alan Lans, an
outdoor education teacher, had been engaged in the creation of an outdoor classroom at the Fitzgerald School; Jane Smillie, inspired by school gardens on the west coast, began volunteering with classes at the Harrington and Haggerty Schools on food and environmental awareness. Jane and Maria, with a third Cambridge parent, Jen James, met through the summer of 2000 to develop a vision for a school garden program that
would support curricula, and help make school cafeterias a place where children learn about wholesome food and where it comes from. They envisioned that CitySprouts program would act as a model for many more school communities keen to implement
their own school garden programs.

In fall 2003, City-Sprouts operates garden programs in four Cambridge Public elementary schools: the Haggerty, the King Open, the Morse and the Peabody Schools. Supported almost entirely by volunteer labor and material donations for the first two years, CitySprouts now receives financial support from the four public schools which we serve, from grants, and from business and individual donations.

Board of Directors
Saeqa Dil Vrtilek
Betsy Grady
Parker Hudnut
Karen Kosko
Sarah Norman
Joseph Petner
Linda Richelson
Jane Smillie
Rebekah Smillie
Patty West

SOL Y CANTO

Sunday, November 2 11am & 3pm
$15 (includes Somerville Theatre $.50 restoration fee)
Somerville Theatre
55 Davis Square, Somerville
Reserved seating

Celebrating the release of its first recording for children, El Doble de Amigos/Twice as Many Friends, Sol y Canto offers an irresistible concert of Latin music for the whole family.