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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd major harvest of White House garden
  • Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:42:32 -0700



Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd major harvest of White House
garden
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/67300707.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

Mark Wilson, Getty/afp - Getty Images

First Lady Michelle Obama holds a sweet potato while harvesting the
vegetables with students from Bancroft Elementary School and Kimball
Elementary School, on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday.


WASHINGTON - Cupboards at a soup kitchen near the White House will be
spilling over for several days after a donation of fresh produce harvested
Thursday from first lady Michelle Obama's vegetable garden.

Mrs. Obama invited about 30 fifth-graders from two District of Columbia
public elementary schools to help with the project. One of the schools,
Bancroft Elementary, has helped with the garden since it began, preparing the
soil, planting the crops and harvesting in the spring.

"Are you guys ready to do some work? Are you ready to work really hard? Are
you ready to get dirty?" she asked them. "All right, let's go! Let's go,
let's do it, let's do it."

The students were divided into groups of three and paired with an adult who
showed them what to do. All told, they spent about a half-hour jabbing and
digging at the plot on the South Lawn with pitchforks and other tools.

They filled one wheelbarrow with huge sweet potatoes, and filled baskets and
bowls with carrots, fennel, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, turnips, eggplant,
peppers, tomatillos and greens, for a total of 223 pounds, Mrs. Obama's
office said later in the day. Most of the produce is being given to Miriam's
Kitchen for the next days' meals. Mrs. Obama helped serve lunch there earlier
this year.

Before Thursday, the garden already had produced more than 740 pounds of
food, Mrs. Obama said, bringing the total for the year to more than 960
pounds. Some has been served at White House events.

The first lady and her group first tackled sweet potatoes before moving on to
carrots and big bulbs of fennel. At one point, she held up one of the larger
orange-colored spuds and said: "This can feed an army."

Before the harvesting began, she said she and daughters, Malia, 11, and
Sasha, 8, already had helped themselves to some sweet potatoes.

The harvest was the second for the garden. More than 70 pounds of lettuce and
12 pounds of peas came out of a springtime harvest of the 1,100-square-foot,
L-shaped plot. After that, fall crops were planted, leading to Thursday's
event.

Mrs. Obama started the garden in March, saying she wanted to use it to talk
about the importance of eating a nutritious diet and show what good, fresh
food tastes like. She said it cost about $180 to prepare the soil and plant
the seeds and seedlings.





  • [Livingontheland] Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd major harvest of White House garden, Tradingpost, 10/30/2009

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