hungry month 323 completely before starting over A quick inventory found our frozen beans long gone, but we still had sliced apples, corn, one whole turkey, and some smoked eggplant from last fall Also plenty of zucchini, quelle surprise We would not be the Crayola Family, then, but the one that survived on zucchini pie Pretty cushy, as harrowing adventures go Maybe March doesn’t get such a bad rap because it doesn’t feel hungry If it’s not the end of winter, you can see it from here Lily and I were now starting our vegetable and flower seeds indoors, puttering in earnest under the fluorescent lights of our homemade seedling shelves She had given up all hope of further snow days And one fine afternoon she bounced off the bus with the news that the fourth-graders were going to study gardening at school For a kid like Lily, this was an unbelievable turn of events: Now, children, we are going to begin a unit on recess! It wasn’t just the fourth-graders, as it turned out The whole school was that lucky, along with three other elementary schools in our county School garden programs have lately begun showing up in schools from the trend-setting Bay Area to working-class Durham, North Carolina Alice Waters founded the Berkeley programs, developing a curriculum that teaches kids, alongside their math and reading, how to plant gardens, prepare their own school lunches, and sit down to eat them together in a civil manner She has provided inspiration nationwide for getting freshgrown food into cafeterias But most of the garden-learning programs scattered through our country’s schools have been created independently, as ours was A local nonprofit helps support it, the school system has been cooperative, but our Learning Landscapes curriculum is the dream and full-time project of a green-thumbed angel named Deni She helps the kindergartners grow popcorn and plant a rainbow of flowers to learn their colors Second-graders make a special garden for hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies, while learning about pollination Third-graders grow a pizza garden that covers the plant kingdom Lily’s class was starting seeds they planned to set out in a colonial herb garden, giving some life to their Virginia history lessons Each grade’s program is tied to concrete objectives the kids must know in order to pass their state-mandated testing Virtually everyone I know in the school system feels oppressed by a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e 324 these testing regimes hanging over everything Teachers sense them as huge black clouds on the horizon of April For the kids it’s more like a permanent threat of air attack In our state—no kidding—they are called Standards of Learning, or “SOLs.” (I don’t think anyone intended the joke.) But Learning Landscapes works because it gets kids outdoors studying for tests while believing they are just playing in dirt Deni knows how to get the approval of a school board, but she has a larger game plan for these kids than just passing the next exam “One of the key things gardens can teach students is respect: for themselves, for others, and the environment,” she says “It helps future generations gain an understanding of our food system, our forests, our water and air, and how these things are all connected.” From a biological perspective, the ultimate act of failure is to raise helpless kids Not a parent I know who’s worth the title wants to that But our operating system values Advanced Placement Comparative Politics, for example, way, way ahead of Knowing How to Make Your Own Lunch Kids who can explain how supernovas are formed may not be allowed to get dirty in play group, and many teenagers who could construct and manage a Web site would starve if left alone on a working food farm Legislating Local The epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States has incited parents, communities, and even legislators to improve kids’ nutrition in one place they invariably eat: schools Junk foods have been legally banned from many lunchrooms and school vending machines But what will our nation’s youth eat instead—fresh local produce? As if! Dude, it’s going down In 2004, in a National School Lunch Act amendment, Congress authorized a seed grant for the Farm to Cafeteria Program, promoting school garden projects and acquisition of local foods from small farms The Local Produce Business Unit of the Department of Defense actually procures produce Benefits of these programs, above and beyond the food, include agricultural education through gardening, farm visits, presentations by local farmers, and modest economic gains for the community More than one-third of our states now have active farm-to-school programs; farm-to-college alliances are also growing hungry month 325 That’s hardly their fault We all may have some hungry months ahead of us, even hungry years, when a warmed-up globe changes the rules of a game we smugly thought we’d already aced We might live to regret some of our SOL priorities But the alumni of at least one Appalachian county’s elementary schools will know how to grow their own pizzas, and I’m proud of them If I could fit that on a bumper sticker, I would / My pupils in the turkey coop were not such quick studies The first hen who’d come into season was getting no action from either of the two males, whom we had lately been calling Big Tom and Bad Tom These guys had been fanning their tails in urgent mating display since last summer, more or less constantly, but they directed the brunt of their show-off efforts toward me, each other, or any sexy thing I might leave sitting around, such as a watering can They really tried hard with the watering can Lolita kept plopping herself down where they’d have to trip over her, but they only had eyes for some shiny little item She sulked, and I didn’t blame her Who hasn’t been there? I determined to set a more romantic scene, which meant escorting The USDA Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has a Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program for purchasing local food It provides coupons good for fresh produce purchased from farms, farmers’ markets, and roadside stands In 2006, some $20 million in government funds provided these benefits to more than 2.5 million people In a strong legislative move, Woodbury County, Iowa, mandated in 2006 that the county (subject to availability) “shall purchase locally produced organic food when a department of Woodbury County serves food in the usual course of business.” Even the prisons are serving local food, in a county that truly recognizes the value of community support For more information visit www.foodsecurity.org and www.farmtoschool.org STEVEN L HOPP 326 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e Lolita and one of the toms into their own honeymoon suite, a small private room inside the main barn, and removing any watering cans from his line of sight She practically had to connect the dots for him—no bras to unhook, heaven be praised—but finally he started to get the picture She crouched, he approached, and finally stopped quivering his tailfeathers to impress her After all these many months, it took him a couple of beats to shift gears from “Get the babe! Get the babe!” to “O-oh yess!” Inch by inch he walked up onto her back Then he turned around in circles several times, s-l-o-w-l-y, like the minute hand of a clock, before appearing to decide on the correct orientation I was ready to hear the case for artificial insemination But it looked now like he was giving it a go The final important event after all this awkward foreplay is what bird scientists call the “cloacal kiss.” A male bird doesn’t have anything you would call “a member,” or whatever you call it at your house He just has an orifice, or cloaca, more or less the same equipment as the female except that semen is ejected from his, and eggs come out of hers later on Those eggs will be fertile only if the two orifices have previously made the prescribed kind of well-timed contact I watched, I don’t mind saying Come on, wouldn’t you? Possibly you would not have stooped quite as low as I did for the better view, but geez, we don’t get cable out here And this truly was an extraordinary event, something that’s nearly gone from our living world For 99.9 percent of domestic turkeys, life begins in the syringe and remains sexless to the end Few people alive have witnessed what I was about to see Cloacal kiss is exactly the right name for it The male really has to extend that orifice, like puckering up for a big smooch Try to picture this, though: he’s standing on her back, tromping steadily and clutching his lady so as not to fall off The full complement of her long tail-feather fan lies between his equipment and hers The pucker has to be heroic to get around all that Robert Browning said it perfectly: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for? Paradise arrives when a fellow has kneaded his lady’s erogenous wing zones for a long, long time with his feet, until she finally decides her suitor has worked himself up to the necessary fervor Without warning, quick as hungry month 327 an eyeblink, she flips up her tail feathers and reaches upward to meet him Oh, my gosh! I gasped to see it It was an air kiss They really did miss Mwah! —like a pair of divas onstage who don’t want to muss their lipstick (Not Britney and Madonna.) But rare is the perfect first attempt, I know as well as the next person who has ever been young She wandered off, slightly dazed, to a corner of the dark little room He stared after her, his feathers all slack for once in his life, divining that this was not the time to put on a tail-shaking show He knit his caruncled brow and surely would have quoted Shakespeare if he’d had it in him: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; journeys end in lovers meeting She pecked listlessly at some grain on the dirt floor Probably she’d been hoping for better room service What’s to come is still unsure: in delay there lies no plenty Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure I left them there, to love again on the morrow Or maybe in fifteen minutes After all, they were kids / Animal behaviorists refer to a mating phenomenon called the “Coolidge effect,” a term deriving from an apocryphal story about the president and first lady On an official visit to a government farm in Kentucky, they are said to have been impressed by a very industrious rooster Mrs Coolidge asked her guide how often the cockerel could be expected to perform his duty, and was informed: “Dozens of times a day.” “Please tell that to the president,” she said The president, upon a moment’s reflection, asked, “Was this with the same hen each time?” “Oh, no, Mr President,” the guide replied “A different one each time.” The president smiled “Tell that to Mrs Coolidge.” Two weeks after our Lolita came down with lovesickness, the rest of the hens followed Now we recognized the symptoms Scientific as al- ... than one-third of our states now have active farm-to-school programs; farm-to-college alliances are also growing hungry month 325 That’s hardly their fault We all may have some hungry months ahead... the case for artificial insemination But it looked now like he was giving it a go The final important event after all this awkward foreplay is what bird scientists call the “cloacal kiss.” A male... system values Advanced Placement Comparative Politics, for example, way, way ahead of Knowing How to Make Your Own Lunch Kids who can explain how supernovas are formed may not be allowed to get