Celebrating a Historical Harvest
Learning from the Three Sisters

Author: Eve Pranis

“Keep it focused, keep it simple at first, and resist the temptation to go crazy,” says fourth grade teacher, Maureen O’Connor. The topic: creating a school garden and harvest celebration. When she launched these projects at her former K-5 school in Clifton Springs, NY, it may have sounded like a handful, but the focus on a single theme – which also supports social studies standards – made it manageable. “Our garden was solely a historical Haudenosaunee three sisters – corn, bean, and squash – planting,” she says. “Well, we also grew sunflowers, because these supplemented the Haudenosaunee diet with oil.

In the spring, Maureen’s Earth Savers Club planned the plantings and helped each classroom put in and tend a hill of corn and squash. While the club set up tepees for Bear Paw beans, fifth graders planted others in rows. Finally, students with disabilities sowed sunflowers. Once school ended, summer program participants and a garden committee consisting of representatives from each class watered and weeded. (Reminder postcards went out to each person on the signup list.) But come fall, all thoughts – and the curriculum – turned to the harvest. Students returned to find sunflowers, corn, and beans drying, and pumpkins and squash ready to be plucked. Maureen’s fourth and fifth graders harvested the goods and distributed armloads to other classrooms.

Growing Curriculum Connections

Finding Heirloom Seeds ”It took some time to find seed varieties that were grown in the region historically,” says Maureen. Through the Seed Savers Exchange and a state historic dedicated to the Seneca Indians, they obtained these varieties and more: Connecticut Field pumpkins, Green Striped Cushaw squash, Sweet Dumplin’ squash, Bear Paw beans, and several varieties of grinding corn.

“Each grade level used the historical garden, harvest, and culminating festival to address important teaching standards and themes,” says Maureen. In fact, a committee of teachers collaborated to write a curriculum to that end – and passed out lesson binders to colleagues in each grade. Some of the connections were “no-brainers”: Fourth grade studies New York and local history; fifth grade covers Colonial and American history. In the science curriculum, third grade covers communities of soil decomposers and fourth grade tackles the water cycle, weathering, and erosion. Even the act of preparing foods for the big event reinforced learning goals. For instance, third graders sorted and counted bean seeds for festival recipes.

The Making of a Harvest Festival

It took a village. Maureen tapped people in the community to join her students in bringing the festival to life. “Master Gardeners (from Cooperative Extension) were a huge resource at several stages,” she explains. The day of the event, they helped festival visitors make corn husk dolls and other traditional crafts. An owner of 19th century farm equipment brought a hand driven corn sheller and a corn grinder – and a load of dried ears of corn – so students and other visitors could get a taste of processing this nourishing part of the harvest. (Students ground their own corn separately so they could use it in festival cuisine!) Some native Seneca people, the librarian, and descendents of a frontiersman and an Indian captive shared stories. Parents, says Maureen, “came out of the woodwork” to help and serve food to 500 students and guests.

The students, meanwhile, made invitations and prepared food. Each class signed up for a preparation or cooking task. Some chopped vegetables; others made corn bread or cooked traditional dishes, such as johnnycakes and Indian corn pudding, right at the festival. Maureen’s class gathered all the foods in preparation for the following day’s celebration.

“We set up a big old cooking pot on an iron tripod in the garden,” says Maureen. The night before the festival, the organizers soaked beans so they would cook more quickly the next day. Then they started cooking the soup indoors using the student-prepared harvest. (“We used chicken stock rather than the traditional venison stock,” says Maureen.) At 6:00 a.m. the next day, Maureen lit a fire under the pot and students brought in onions and potatoes from home to finish off the hearty soup. Throughout the day, classrooms came out to enjoy the ever-thickening meal. Participants could also sign up for a host of activities. These included listening to stories and legends and participating in a “corn products relay.” (Just how many corn-based products can you name?)

How They Grew

It pleased – but didn’t surprise – Maureen that her students and other schoolmates aced the question on the state social studies test about the “three sisters.” By integrating growing, harvesting, and celebrating, her students could better grasp the connection between people and the foods that sustain them, and between the Iroquois and European colonists – and their edible legacies. “The project also really opened their eyes about the variety of uses of one garden product: corn,” says Maureen.

Then there were the less “measurable” rewards. “The kids worked hard nurturing and caring for the garden,” explains Maureen. “They had so much pride and looked forward every year to the festival.” The youngsters’ enthusiasm for the historical – and contemporary – harvest didn’t go unnoticed. Over the years, the festival was featured in newspapers many times and once on television.

Of course, some of what the garden stewards got from the experience may not be apparent for years. “I hope I’m growing keepers of the Earth,” she says. “It’s my passion.” It appears she’s had some success. “It’s always great to find out that my students who participated in the garden and festival have chosen to join the high school environmental club and to pursue creating gardens of their own.”