A Bushel's Worth. Kayann Short

this year, the kind of spring day when working outside feels like play. We are grateful for the community of Stonebridge members that returns us to the fields each day. The start of another farm season has begun with its familiar rhythm: We work, we wait, and the earth gives again.

      Like a sturdy and steadfast apple tree, my fifth-grade teacher inspired our first Earth Day lesson of caring for the natural world.

The First Earth Day—And Still Counting

      On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day, I was a student in Mr. Osborn’s fifth grade class at Sherwood Elementary. Between the Vietnam War and the dawning awareness of environmental degradation in the late 1960s, sometimes the world seemed a pretty dark place. But in Mr. Osborn’s fifth grade class, we students felt the hopefulness of a world blooming with new and exciting possibilities. Under Mr. Osborn’s gifted teaching, we engaged with important social events of the times in our own youthful way.

      The first Earth Day was organized by Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson to bring national attention to the growing problems of environmental degradation through grassroots actions focused on issues in local communities. On Earth Day, people were asked to demonstrate care for an earth whose gifts of clean air, water, and soil could no longer be taken for granted. Earth Day would not only create awareness of the steadily declining health of the environment, but bring hope of a better future for the planet.

      Our fifth grade class decided to join the first Earth Day celebration by turning the hard dirt outside our classroom into a beautiful garden of grass and flowers. All it would take, we thought, were some shovels and a few seeds. On April 22, we showed up with tools—the girls wearing pants, which wasn’t normally allowed—and worked like crazy all day to get that small square of soil ready for the plants we imagined would grow there. Mr. Osborn even let me run the block home for my wagon to haul away rocks and trash. With rakes and hoes in our young hands, we scratched tiny furrows in the soil to plant our hopeful seeds. A little water, a little weeding, and we’d have our first Earth Day garden. At the end of the day, we were dirty and tired, but proud to be part of something bigger than ourselves.