Two weeks ago, Theory started at a new school:  Kumara.

Old Firehouse School, where Theory was, has been a terrific experience.  Theory loves her teachers and the other kids, and we have met some wonderful parents.  But Win is itching to go.  He is so sad whenever we drop Theory off.  He has always been very independent and social, so we are very excited for him to have the stimulus.

But Old Firehouse only has enrollment in the Fall.  So Win was going to have to wait almost an entire year before he could go, given his October birthday.

The only option was to have them at two different schools – a logistic nightmare.  Besides, they are beginning to bond and play together and we wanted an environment which at a minimum would foster the possibility of being together during school.

So reluctantly, at the suggestion of several folks including the Old Firehouse School director, we visited Kumara.  Thrilled we were.   A big outdoor space with gardens and tree houses and a boat.  Tara and I each went separately.  I watched quietly both the chaotic open play as well as the more focused classroom time.  Also Reggio based, the instruction is heavily activity-driven and self-motivating.  I think that the range of offerings is going to suit them both really well.

Another strong attraction was the mixed age model.  Here is a great article on the benefits of mixed-age play:   The article continues here, and ends with this third installment.  Peter Gray is the author.  Here is a link to a number of his articles in Psychology Today:

I have witnessed how much both my kids become engaged when there are opportunities to interact with both younger and older kids – and the very different qualities of those interactions.  It allows them to both stretch and push at times while also exercising their more nurturing sides.

What I like about Kumara is the supervised opportunity for interactions across age while them having more age-oriented  teaching moments.  The youngest cohort, Win’s group, has an outdoor space that is dedicated, allowing them a safe space if need be.

So we are all very excited about the transmission.

I was very sad to hear that Moomah in NY was shutting its doors for the second time.  While in NY this past Spring, Tara was able to take the kids there for an afternoon of crafts.  I always felt that the Tribeca space was close to what I would have ideally created in an urban setting.

Apparently they are going to remold their business into a parenting magazine.  I hope it is a success, although I have to say that their article titled  YOU ARE MOM ENOUGH! THE PSEUDOSCIENCE OF ATTACHMENT PARENTING leaves a lot to be desired.

The article is suppose to elucidate the distinction between attachment parenting and attachment theory, but I feel like the article is read as a blanket condemnation of attachment practices in relationship to those parenting practices that are grounded in very different principles.  Nevertheless, the content of the article itself is descent.

While there are some great places here in Marin, such as the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and a couple of excellent places in SF, namely the Academy of Sceinces and Exploratorium, I wished there were more close by and one’s that captured the unique essence of the region.

So last week I was excited to hear that Tara had found it.  It is called Grow and it combines a native plant nursery with art studio, pottery studio, and space for events and rental.  http://growartandgarden.com/  We are very excited to take the kids, especially Win who has found a deep passion for painting.

The space looks amazing, the crew talented, and the classes in-depth.   It is based on short subscriptions.  Having just done a few swim-camps with Theory that lasted two-weeks, I really like the model.  It is a bit more of a commitment than a drop-in but not so demanding.  I would LOVE it if they would start to offer family yoga classes.

I also really like how it combines a native plant nursery.  So much of the North Bay is grounded in the gardening culture.  Each day we are surprised to see deer or jack rabbits or woodpeckers in the backyard.

This is partially why I enjoy the farmer’s market so much.  This last Sunday we bought some Achadinha goat cheese and were invited to come up to the goat farm and see how the cheese was made.

Having just come from the Game Developers Conference, as inspired by a talk by from Quest 2 Learn and the Institute for Play, I have been thinking a lot about what education options are available to them.

When we moved back to the Bay Area, I vaguely knew that Marin had some very well regarded public schools.  The promise of good schools was indeed a primary driver.  Tara and I were just appalled after watching Nursery University and knew there was no way we could afford private schools in NY.

But I have to say I made some assumptions about what the school experience was going to be like.  Being the hotbed of technology, I just (naturally) assumed that with parent involvement and the high incidence of engineers, programmers, and other technology-related professionals, that the schools would be heavily embedded with the innovative use of technology in instructional development.  I don’t mean having computers in the classroom.  I mean adopting the innovations of technology to pedagogy.

Instead I have found a radically different situation.  On the one hand, you have a bunch of preschools that are understandably play-based.  Any learning psychologist of the last decade would fully support the pedagogy but it also takes on a strong Waldorf-orientation.  Don’t get me wrong, my kids get plenty of exposure to technology at home so I do appreciate space that is very nature-oriented.  Waldorf, however, as a pedagogical system, based on Anthroposophy,  is staunchly anti-technology.  Not only does this miss incredible learning opportunities, it also ignores a lot of what has been learned about the psychology of learning – especially as kids get older.

Moving into k-12, I am also fearful that the schools, so bogged down with national curriculum, fail to innovate in their methods as well as subjects.  My assumption still is that these schools are able to meet these prerequisites while excelling far ahead in other subjects.  The high schools in southern Marin offer courses like “Principles of Technology” (an engineering/materials course) and “Web Design” for sure, computer programming and computer graphics courses too.  Their drama department gets accolades.  I understand, this is a great school system with lots of talented teachers and kids excelling.

It is not so much that the schools will lack content.  Rather I fear that they fail to innovate in the delivery of the education.

Look at the work being done by Katie Salen at the Institute of Play, applying systems theory and game mechanics to the learning environment.  The schools that they have opened in New York and Chicago, Quest2Learn, are rooted in systems theory from the ground up.  Subjects are examined in relationship to each other recognizing the ecological relationships between history, psychology, science, etc.

As a parent with children that already exhibit vastly different personalities, I worry that one child might thrive in a traditional teaching environment but not the other. What intrigues me with the Q2L model is how they ensure engagement and participation – by leveraged game mechanics.

The core principles that define the user experience at these schools are as follows:

1. Everyone is a participant – e.g. peer to peer teaching
2. Challenge is constant – create need to know.
3. Feedback immediate and ongoing
4. Learning happens by doing
5. Everything is interconnected
6. It kind of feels like play

So despite the fact that the Bay Area is the epicenter for technology in the country, perhaps the world, none of the innovation that is part of the fabric of the culture has seemed to seep into the way we approach education.  Instead I see people desperate for alternatives and turning to unschooling as the only approach that is feasible.

And when you think about it, the unschooling pedagogy actually has a lot of parallels with a systems-approach model.

1. organic participation of the child is central
2. it notes that children naturally will challenge themselves.
3. feedback is delivered in the moment from natural consequences instead of being dependent upon the delivery of grades/scores.
4. As will Reggio Emilio, the child is the driver and the learning happens more from experimentation and engagement then rote memorization or passive intellectual engagement
5. It allows parents to interweave all elements of life in a natural way
6. It piggy backs on the natural learning inclinations of children.

But I don’t want to unschool.  I can’t afford to unschool.  I don’t have the time.  If my employment were optional, the idea of focusing on your kids education as your primary job just sounds incredible.  I just really thought that the education system here would be more then just in the top quartile of the API spectrum.

I thought the schools here would just be more, well, innovative in the pedogocical approach.

Maybe I have missed it.  If someone knows were the educational innovation is, let me know.

He and I have been taking hikes in the afternoon on the fire roads behind our house, that butt-up against China Camp.  He is happy to be in the backpack and point out all the birds and planes.

Here are some pictures!

I go into the closet to get shoes and there he is, playing my pants. I put him down in the living room and see him from the window outside on the balcony, digging in the plants. So much of Win was stationary it is a strange transformation.

He has a tremendous joy and feeling of empowerment from being mobile. For weeks he has been increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach the things he wanted to interact with. Last weekend I gave Theory some ice cream and for the first time, Win is demanding to take part, persistently and tortoise-like pursuing Theory. She took her ice cream and went around the corner but sure enough Win cornered her. So with the mobility has come the inkling of possible conflicts to come.

Tara tells me that Win and Theory spontaneously gave each other a kiss yesterday so I am hoping some feeling of endearment are likewise developing. Win watches Theory intently, looking up to her with awe.

I took Win to the park over the weekend, just the two of us. He crawled along in the grass and I put him in the bucket swing. He loves watching all the other kids. It was one of the few outings, along with the farmer’s market and Whole Foods where it has just been the two of us. I am hoping he will be more into backpacking and bike riding then Theory – so I can have a companion for outings.

His eating habits have also suddenly changed. He only want to feed himself, so the intense period of purees has already, suddenly, ended. Instead I am cutting up mission figs and salami for him to eat. He loves the strawberries from the farmers market which are super sweet.

The decision was a journey on my part.  While one of my cousins had chosen not to circumcise their kids, everyone else in my family was circumcised.  I had not given it a lot of thought.   But when Tara became pregnant, and not knowing the sex of Theory, the issue suddenly was in front of us.

In general I have found that advocates on either side of the debate engage in a lot of inflammatory, manipulative, illogical reasoning to rationalize their point-of-view.  For example, I was recently listening to Lloyd Schofield the author of the proposed circumcision ban.  He was asked by Gena Kirby on her show about the medical reason to circumcise.  He argues that evolutionary forces resulted in the foreskin, and therefore it was healthy.  This is similar to the line of reasoning that birth is safe because it evolved.  One could argue that you should never remove a tooth because it evolved…

Where to begin – we don’t live in the EEA, the environment of evolutionary adaptation.  So while you could argue that the foreskin, and birth, were successful, you could only do so in the context of the EEA, which included really fit people have children at a very young age and having at least, on average, a bit over 2 offspring per generation.

It is a lame argument and it is a red herring.

So are stupid arguments that infants are tolerant to the pain.  Proponents of circumcision likewise put forth ridiculous arguments about cleanliness and health.

Likewise the argument about a boy looking like his father also always seemed odd to me, more of a reverse engineered justification then a cause.  My child does not look like me in all kinds of ways so the penis image seemed like a non-issue.  Where is the evidence of psychological trauma?  If your aim is to convince people not to circumcise, using bogus claims is not the best approach.

Another concern is the feeling of being an outcast.  This would be more of an issue if the plan was to raise our children in a strictly Jewish community.  In fact, we are not, so the chances are small that our boy would only see circumcised penises.  Circumcision rates in the US are now around 33 percent in the general population.  Even if this was not the case, I would not want to have simple conformity be a driver for our behavior.  We do a lot of things that are non-conformist and this is a value that we would like to teach our children.  Besides, this is a function of the community’s intolerance to begin with.

At the end of the day, there seems to be marginal costs and benefits of circumcision most of the time, assuming you don’t live in Southern Africa. Now if you believe in a non-interventionist approach to the body, in the absence of any other reason, you would leave the foreskin intact.

Other than being Jewish (Muslim, etc), in my mind there was no compelling reason to circumcise.

So the only reason to circumcise would be because I am Jewish.  But this was an emotionally powerful issue.  Not so much because circumcision is significant to me as an ethnic marker, but because I understood its symbolic significance to my family.  That is, the emotion comes from empathy with my parents – a second-order reason.

Circumcision and Tribal Identity: Being Jewish

Now I have long been an atheist, and I am also an anthropologist.  So the idea of body modification as a form of tribe identity is not so foreign to me- nor of course, circumcision as a Jew.

Indeed, I am proud of my heritage and having an ethnic marker on some level is appealing to me.  There are a lot of assets, cultural-capital, to be mined from my historical heritage as a Jew.  This is quite different from the notion of a Jewish lifestyle.    It is a pivotal difference.

A few years ago I attended a cousins orthodox wedding and spent most of the time observing the community that had come together.  I had strong mixed feelings.

On the one hand, the sense of community was visceral.  Within the safe space of the synagogue I could see the impact of extended family and networks at work – kids running around, confident, at home.  I remember how this felt – attending Camp Ramah from age 7 to 13, going on ulpan.

It is the one thing that I miss for my own kids and family.

But I feel like it also comes at a cost.  The orthodox communities that I have been exposed to are also closed, intolerant, judgmental.  It is essential to the creation of the boundary between us and them.  And I have made a hard choice to forgo the benefits of community to avoid the requisite definition of in-group versus out-group.  Indeed, some have discussed the decision to not be religious to be the “unnatural choice” in the sense that the brain is inclined to religious thought.  But then again, you could make the same argument about being monogamous.

I don’t keep kosher. I don’t daven.  More importantly, I don’t have congregation.  So by extension I don’t circumcise.

But should I be allowed to?

That is the question that has been raised by the proposed circumcision ban in San Francisco.

Circumcision and Parents Rights / Religious Freedom

Circumcision pits two core rights against each other – parental rights vs rights of minors

Tied up in the circumcision debate are a number of other issues that need to be unpacked as well.

On the one hand it is the right to not have the government reach into your personal life.  In this arena, I tend to fall a bit on the libertarian side.  Like all good Americans I fear a government that over-reaches its boundaries and begins to dictate about how I live my life.

This plays out in a number of ways.  Take the vaccine debate.  Unless the government can demonstrate a clear and present danger, I do not want them to be dictating to me what I need to be injecting into my child.  Hep B? No thank you.  The reason being that I do not trust government and believe that policy is subject to corruption by money and power.  Plus as I have discussed elsewhere on this blog, there are often conflicts of interest between the individual and the group.  Unless public health is a critical factor, one should expect a tragedy of the commons to take place.

When it comes to education, vaccine, etc., I want individual rights to trump government rights.

This bleeds into religious freedoms.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am a non-theist and have a real issue with religious thought.  But I am not comfortable with government trying to regulate thinking, no matter how ridiculous, unless it impacts others.

In the case, religion is impacting others — newborns.  In my mind, this is the core issue.

I am  a strong proponent of the rights of minors.  Children should be endowed with inalienable human-rights.  But the rights of parents should be very broad before the State can step in.  There is a biological imperative built into our legal system that gives parents power, as they are generally concerned about the welfare of their children and in a better position to make decisions about this welfare than the state.

This is not always the case.  Hence there is great latitude in the Family Court system.  Indeed, in some ways the family courts are the most powerful institutions in our country, as they do not recognize any private sphere.  Sufficient to say, the State probably already have too much power when it comes to intervening between me and my child.  It is much more likely that I will disagree with the State about what constitutes the best for my child than the chance that I will no longer be driven by protecting my child’s welfare in the first place.

Perhaps if mainstream culture was more inline with my own I would be more inclined to give the State more latitude – as the chance of finding myself on the outside of the norm would be small.  But that is not the case – and the thought of a civil servant making decisions about the welfare of my family sends chills down my spine.

For me, the issue of circumcision was more of a personal nature than a social policy issue.  I do not feel comfortable making permanent body modifications without a medical reason.  I also do not feel comfortable tattooing my child, in that it is irreversible.  That is my personal emotional response.

Despite my personal feelings about circumcision, from a social policy issues, given the marginal nature of circumcision, I cannot advocate that the State should be able to intrude.

Politics and Language

What bothers me is how the debate is playing out.

The choice of language is calculated.  Mutilation vs body modification.  Partly this is an issue of the emic (insider) vs etic (outsider) perspective.  Jews see circumcision as non-medical body modification, part of the covenant.  Intactivists see it as mutilation.  But those activists must then also classify ear piercing as body mutilation, as an anthropologist would.  Should we outlaw under-age ear piercing?  If not then we should be consistent with the language we use to describe these practices.  Otherwise it is more about a culturally-bound judgment of circumcision, not a judgment against body modification.

The analogy between male circumcision and female circumcision seems disingenuous and fallacious, an exercise in political framing.  But, if we are going to start to have a continuum of body modification, we need to have very clear criteria.  Why is ear piercing okay?  Why circumcision? Why (or why not) female circumcision.

Unpacking why one is okay and the other is not IS the essence of the debate, not the semantic assignment to the same category.

Anti-Semitism

Complicating the discussion of circumcision is the subtext of anti-Semitism that invades the issue.

Take the case of Foreskin Man.  The stench of the anti-Semitism that pervades the comic undermines the position of the intactivist stance that the issue is not veiled form of an attack on Judaism.  The portrayals of Jews as evil monsters does not progress the debate.  Rather it further entrenches the us vs them thinking.

Why Matthew Hess, President of MGM Bill, would choose to use a graphic novel genre is beyond me – taking an inflammatory issues and throwing fire on it by conveying the debate in medium that inherently dehumanizes.  Suddenly the topic is no longer about circumcision but about anti-Semitism.  It demonstrates in some ways, perhaps, the very nature of racism itself – a topic for another post.

(For references, here are movie posters from Der Ewige Jude

But perhaps Foreskin Man elucidates what is the core of the issue in terms of the ban.  The ban is rooted in conflicting world-views.  The Hess world-view in which Jews are outsiders who are engaging in unethical behavior.  The behavior is so intolerable that the State needs to step in. Jews on the other hand see this as the single most important act of their identity.

I am not sure it passes the litmus test for me of requiring State intervention.  But I also believe the State should extradite itself in many other ways from parenting too.

Rather than turning anti-circumcision into an attack on Jews, a very unproductive tactic, those people who want to eliminate the practice should engage in culture-change.  What is the fundamental cultural issue that drives circumcision? Ethnic identity and the cultural cognitive biases, such as conformist transmission and frequency-dependent transmission along with the other biases that make religious thought infectious in the first place (see folks like Pascal Boyer and Boyd and Richerson).

Circumcising is a strong visual de-marker, a high-cost high-fidelity ethnic marker in the words of my friend Francisco Gil-White.  If you want to eliminate it you need to make the marker unimportant or the demarcation unimportant.  I would rather concentrate on driving for a society that is secular then waste too much energy on each and every practice that derives from the religiosity of the society.

To me , it is a symptom of the a much larger problem.

Addition 07/26/11

I just saw the following video which I think is a good encapsulation of the two positions on the subject:

Heart pounding I grabbed her, still strapped to the seat.  Within seconds she was hollering and crying.  I had her out of the street – holding her to me.  Her mouth was bloody so I grabbed a wipe and did a quick check to see how serious it was.  I could see her lip bleeding and a cut on her chin but could not see clearly in her mouth.  I held her tight and repeated over and over that she was going to be okay.

I left the stroller and ran back to the car trying to stay calm, and soothe Theory and not make her feel any panic.

I called to Tara to get the dogs.  At the car, Theory had begun to calm a bit.  Tara and I had a brief discussion as to weather we needed to head to the ER or go home.  We decided to go home.  We drove down the street and grabbed the stroller.  Tara managed to squeeze between the carseats and talked to Theory in a soothing voice.

We got home and I carried her up the stairs.  We cleaned her up and checked her again, stripping her down to just be sure.  After some ibuprofen and magical bandaids, the security of being home enabled us to all take a deep breath.

Theory’s lip was swollen and she had a cut on the chin, a few scratches.  We watched a few minutes of Lion King and she fell asleep.

It was the first time Theory has gotten hurt beyond a stubbed toe or a splinter.  In fact, I had just thought about how we had done two years and had avoided any emergency with her – and how thankful I was.

I felt horrible.  I had not been careful enough to make sure the seat had locked into the stroller.  Seeing her cry and the blood on her chin created a pit in my stomach.   It just makes me realize how much she and Win depend on us, trust us to know and do what is right.

Two days later Tara took her to the doctor for something unrelated.  Her eye was a bit swollen from a stye but we wanted to be sure that it wasnt somthing from the fall.   Tara prepped her with what to expect.  Everything was fine and the Dr said we made the right decision not to go to the ER.  Theory was a trooper during the exam and waited patiently to get her lollipop.  The ouchies have receded in to the past.  I know that bumps and bruises and even trips to the ER are in my future.  But I am not looking forward to it.

Theory has since remarked a couple of times about how ouchies heal. Yesterday I caught my thumb in a window and hollered. Theory came to comfort me and said “It will be alright.” So yes, an important lesson learned.

It made me think about Gever Tully’s TED talk, “5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.” Play with fire. Own a pocketknife.

I try hard to create a margin of safety that allows Theory freedom while also making her safety the top priority.  But it is hard as a parent to separate the real risk of injury and the calculated benefit to the emotional growth of your child, from the strong emotional reactions that come from not wanting your child to hurt.

This morning we went to the dog park and Theory was climbing a small tree with my help.  With each step I have to balance the real chance of injury and the likelihood of a scrape.

It both made me think about the aspects of my dad that might qualify as hip.  His British Racing Green 911T, his Hatachi turntable that my brother still owns.  The van with the captain’s chair and the 8-track cassettes of Al Green.  Does that qualify?

It also got me thinking about how my kids would think about me.  When I was two years old my dad was maybe 26 years old and I am 42.  I have calmed down a lot between since I was gallivanting around at 26.  On the other hand, youth has been extended so at 42 I think I am a lot more youthful than my dad was.

But when I think about the hip things I have done, they are all pre-kids.  So I wonder how my children will think of me.  Old and boring.

Sara Palin makes my skin crawl.  So my tendency is to discount anything that comes out of her mouth.  This includes her declaration of Pennsylvania being a “nanny state run amok” when the schools tried to limit sweets at classroom parties.

At the heart of the issue is who gets to choose.  What is the role of the school, and hence government, in the life of the family.  Here my libertarian bent comes out – unless there is an imminent public safety issue at stake (inclusive of my arguments about immunization – so the bar is quite high) schools policy should always err on the side of the discretion of the parent.

To me, there is something fundamentally different about the paternalism one gets from behavioral economics – one that tries to nudge – and policies that just takes choice away.  Yes, position the fruit so that kids eat more.  But take away my right to choose what to feed my child when they attend a public school?

Apparently that is what some schools in Chicago are doing.  Today I read an article entitled “Chicago Public School Bans Home-Packed Lunches”.    Unless armed with a medical necessity, Little Village Academy refuses to allow students to bring into the school food from home.  Now, I understand that among lower socio-economic populations the school lunches may be more nutritious for most of the kids most of the time compared to what they bring from home.  Maybe.  But what about the potentially large percentage of kids who bring healthier lunches then those served?  And even if they were less nutritious, so what.  It should be the parents choice.

Furthermore, food is a deeply cultural notion, as is the concept of what is health. What one person considers food another does not. What about diet restrictions based not upon health but culture or religion?  Or is this a food equivalent to the French burka law?  You will be a good American and eat your chicken nuggets!

And while what is biomedically healthy may seem like it is easy to determine, clearly nutrition is very complex and there is a lot of variance among experts as to what actually constitutes a healthy diet.  Last night I started reading Nourishing Traditions, a book Tara brought home after yet another trip to the doctor to address candida outbreaks.  I read the introductions which challenged much of the orthodoxy about a balanced diet.  It contests the traditional food pyramid as being toxic, particularly the reliance on refined carbs and grains.    It argues that these refined foods cause diabetes and obesity and heart disease.  But the point here is that even among experts, there is a lot of disagreement about what constitutes healthy food.

Even if there was rigorous scientific consensus about healthy diets, as there is about climate change or the theory of evolution, I am far from convinced that a school system cam make unbiased or informed choices about what constitutes healthy food.  Or even food itself?  School administrations time and time again have proven to make very poor choices – from spying at students at home to allowing teachers to teach intelligent design.

Jamie Oliver recently had a TV program where we went into a public school to revel the atrocious diet that the school system declared nutritious.  And he has a site dedicated to improving school “dinners” as they are called in the UK.

The other thing that really disturbs me about the Little Village Academy policy is the role of the private sector.  Chartwells-Thompson is the name of the company that supplies the school lunches.  They serve 2.5 million students on a daily basis.  Yes their lunches adhere to USDA guidelines but does that translate into healthy food?  Especially when profit margins incent the vendor to select foods based largely upon cost?  And how can such a large scale enterprise deliver quality food – when locality is so central to food quality.

Next thing you know Chartwells-Thompson will be lobbying lawmakers to change lunch policy to serve their financial aims, much the same way private prisons in Arizona (Corrections Corporation of America) funneled money to get Bill SB1070 passed.  It just gets really dirty here.

So given the track records of public schools in making decisions that are based upon science or the welfare of their students, I think I want to retain the right to decide what my children eat.

After many months of research and debating, scouring the internet, and just thinking about it – I finally ordered a grill.  I wanted stainless steel burners, good quality machining, some customer service, and no extras.

In the end I ordered a Napoleon on Amazon.  It arrived a week later and I spend several days putting it together – whenever I could find an extra 20 minutes here and there when certain individuals were napping or under the watchful eyes of their mother.

The grill went together fairly easily – mostly just bolting together panels of stainless steel.

So this week, I stepped back and admired my Napoleon grill.  We tried it out and it is incredibly, and hot.  I made hotdogs for Theory.

Over the weekend I had a grilling fenzy!  I finally broke out the grilling gifts that my in-laws bought me over the holidays.    I grilled hamburgurs.  I grilled steaks.  I grilled asparagus, zucchini, onions – anything I could get my hands on.

The other order of business was the garden.  During the week I ordered a number of 4x4s in Douglas fir, untreated, and had them delivered in preparation.  I ordered weed fabric and stainless steel rods.  Everything was set.  So yesterday I rented a Ford F150 and went down to American Soil and Stone to get 2 cubic yards of American Hero topsoil.  I also hired a guy to help me lug everything up the hill, bag by bag.

I sealed the end-grains with BioShield Sealer and paste wax, lined the bed with the weed fabric, and filled the beds in with dirt.  A drip system comes up from underneath.  In the past I have dound that the drip system often misses the small root balls of needlings, so I created a reduntant system – the traditional drip, and a separate micro spray system that can be shut off once the vegitables get well established.

Finally I added a netting to the top of the deer fencing to prevent the oak leaves from falling in, which I think leech tannic acid into the soil.

The old bed is looking a little sad.

Now all we need are some vegetables!