Summer of 2011, I was almost free of the clutches of school when I decided, no more boring summers of just sitting at home. I wanted to get out and learn and do something for the world. There was only one thing I could turn to, summer camp. So I begged my mom to let me do something over the summer and we looked at camps together.

I thought about doing camps from theater to volleyball to music until I finally found something that fit this summer perfectly, BUGS. I read the info and saw that we would learn to garden and sell our produce and even cook… how cool is that? Being a newbie vegan I wanted to be able to learn to cook. But it was hard. I didn’t really have the motivation or patience to decipher boring recipes, so when I read that we would cook with mostly the vegetables from the garden that we grew, I was sold.

The first day was fun. It was a lot like school in the case that everyone is shy on the first day. We got to tour the garden and get to know the staff and our surroundings. We learned what to compost and the benefits of composting. I figure I could get used to this new summer set up and got comfortable… until our first task that is. It was about day 2 when Robbie, one of our camp teachers, told us that Mike, the gardener, needed help with the garden, and we would help by weeding. I was super enthusiastic about helping out and loved feeling the cold mud on my hands as I talked to some of my friends. But the more I worked, the hotter it seemed to get and the less enthusiastic and talkative I became. When lunch finally came around, I sat back and sighed. Gardening was so much more work than I thought it would be. I hadn’t even been prepared. I didn’t have anything to pull my hair back with and I was wearing black. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to wear but, you know, it seemed fine in my air conditioned house. So then and there i knew that if I were to survive the doggy-dog world of gardening I’d have to come equipped. And for the rest of the week I was able to somewhat enjoy weeding.

Once everyone was situated on week 2 our daily schedule went down like this: 2 hours of arts and crafts with Molly and 2 hours of science with Robby. (And of course if was had any extra time we would weed cause that was everyone’s favorite thing to do.) I loved arts and crafts! We would paint and write and mold clay and make collages. We even made an awesome stamp later in the summer! And the thing I loved about it the most is that it was primarily garden themed. Then our mini science lesson would start up and we learned about the coolest stuff! We mostly talked about plant, bugs and dirt (kind of like science in school) but here we had more hands on experience. We would look at steams and leaves of plants and their growing patterns, catch bugs, and study soil (some of the daring even tasted a bit of it). Through this whole time we would all go to lunched, starved, to see a satisfying meal waiting for us that some of the kids that worked in the kitchen that week had created. We all were curious about what the kitchen experience would be like and finally, I was rolling up my sleeves and bustling around the cooking area.

Although I enjoyed ever part of the program, I have to say that working in the kitchen was one of my favorites. Chopping vegetables made me feel like some sort of cooking pro. Even the clean up wasn’t that bad. Washing dishes is way more fun with a power washer. When that fun and busy week came to an end I was in the Farm stand. We counted money and thought of a universal greeting so we wouldn’t crack under pressure. We then compared prices from some of the Grocery stores we visited and found a price that we thought was pretty suitable. Right before we opened the next day, we finally got to harvest the vegetables that we had been taking care of for so long (yes the weeding did pay off). And get to be business people. We also got to dance on the side of the road with a sign that promoted our fantastic little store.

This summer was definitely an amazing adventure. I loved every bit of it. From the fun fieldtrips of rafting and going to restaurants, to working in the hot garden. I made tons of amazing friends that that I still keep in contact with and brought home with me the fantastic memories of Summer 2011.