(Don’t miss the slideshow below ↓)
Garden Work Day, Saturday February 26, 9:00 AM to noon
Help needed! We will be spreading wood chips around the Maker Space/Extended Care modular and moving the current parking lot outdoor classroom area to the dirt area and parking lot beside the modular. Students, children, and youth will be tending tomatoes for the tomato plant sale and having outdoor classes in this area for the remainder of the school year.
Annual Tomato Plant Sale: April 29-May 1.
School students will kick off a weekend of tomato plant sales at the end of the school day on Friday, April 29 and then the sale will open to the church community and the general public. We will have a “Garden Festival” on Sunday, May 1. Students and children and youth ministries begin planting tomato seeds the last week of February and the first week of March. This is the 9th year that Ascension young people have had a “tomato plant business.” Ascension tomatoes have a reputation amongst many master gardeners in the area as being the very best tomato plants in the Conejo Valley. Last year, we made over $3000 from selling tomato plants – all of it going to support our garden and nature programs for One Ascension.
Garden/Outdoor Classroom Program Current Happenings:
Both the ECC and Ascension Elementary School are Nature Explore Certified schools. Our elementary students have been studying birds in their outdoor/nature/garden classroom during the month of January. They have made peanut butter pine cone bird feeders, studied bird songs and made their own bird callers, studied owls and dissected owl pellets, and currently students are seeing if they can build as well as bird. In teams, they are gathering nesting material outside and trying to build a birds’ nest that will stay intact when moved and securely hold an egg.
Garden Pavilion Building Update:
The Garden Team continues to take steps forward in developing the area all around the Maker Space/Extended Care modular at the far end of the back parking lot. This is the future home of a dozen raised garden beds and rows of fruit trees. Students will be able to harvest and then go straight to the outdoor kitchen – literally go farm to table – to create and then eat wonderful dishes from the food that they grow themselves. We will also have adult farm to table classes. In addition, the area will include two outdoor teaching areas (and one of those will also be the dining area), a beautiful 16X35 greenhouse modeled from university teaching and enterprise greenhouses, an outdoor ampitheatre for worship, a campfire pit for youth and Life Groups to gather around, and nooks and crannies to pray and enjoy the wonder of nature. The “seed” of vision has been planted; pray for our One Ascension Garden Pavilion as we watch it grow together.
