LINCOLN SQUARE — Melissa Flynn had that familiar "moment of panic" earlier this year when it came time to figure out her three boys' summer camp schedules.
She was thinking in particular about her oldest son, Peter. Yes, there would be baseball camp, but what else? The 9-year-old had developed quite an appetite for fruits and vegetables, especially the ones they'd planted together in their front yard.
"I wanted something that wasn't graded, that wasn't going to get them into high school," she said. "Something to get their hands dirty and engage in nature in a different way."
And then she thought: Why not start our own camp?
Janet Fuller explains how one woman is starting her own camp that teaches kids about gardening, planting, and a whole lot more:
City Growing Camps kicked off last week at Queen of Angels School, 4520 N. Western Ave., with a unique focus on urban agriculture and the farm-to-table movement. It also might be the shortest, smallest youth camp in the city. There are only nine kids (all boys), and it ran just a week.
On the first day last Monday, the group watched the documentary "Food Patriots" and talked about corn and "how it's used in so much," said Peter's 10-year-old friend Sephi.
The next morning, they walked through the Lincoln Square farmers market to buy food that they would cook for lunch with the help of chef Stephanie Samuels of the now-defunct Angel Food Bakery.
Other items on this week's agenda include visits to Loyola University's Institute of Environmental Sustainability and the Edgewater restaurant Uncommon Ground. On Thursday, they will build planter boxes for the potted basil, chives, mint and sage they bought at the market. They end with an all-day field trip Friday to Angelic Organics farm in Caledonia, where they'll collect eggs, feed goats and make ice cream.
"It should be, for a bunch of city kids, a really eye-opening experience," Flynn said.
Flynn, 41, a consultant to nonprofits and small businesses, has a serious interest in local food. In her previous job as executive director of the Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce, she ran the farmers markets and loved getting to know the farmers and vendors.
Prioritizing food is for her a necessity, too. Her youngest son is allergic to dairy, soy, nuts, eggs and sesame. Her middle son has a nut allergy. As her idea for a food-centric summer camp targeted at fourth- to seventh-graders took shape, Peter became her "sounding board," she said.
"'Local' is a very debatable term. Local could be Angelic Organics farm just outside of Rockford. It could be the rooftop garden at Uncommon Ground. I just want to open their eyes to different food systems," Flynn said.
Not knowing what sort of response she'd get, Flynn kept it small and spread the word mostly by e-mail and Facebook. All but one camper attend Queen of Angels. The half-day camp cost $295 for the week.
Though this was the only time that City Growing Camps will run this summer, the camp went so well she plans to offer it again next year.
"At this point I plan to do it again next year," she said in an email Friday. "It has been a great week!"
Flynn said she is also working to develop an after-school program for the coming school year.
"It sounds very obvious, but there's this ability to translate what these kids are learning into a very practical, hands-on way, to bring science to light without it feeling like science ... without them going, 'Oh, here we are learning,' " she said.
At the Lincoln Square market, the boys split into three groups. Samuels wrote down each group's ingredients and rough menu. They had a few bucks to spend on themselves and $15 as a group to cover their lunch ingredients.
"Everybody complains they can't shop local because it costs too much, so we set a budget," Flynn said.
They bounded from booth to booth, chattering and nabbing samples where they could — sweet raspberries here, cubes of cheese there — and calculating aloud how much they spent. Conferring in twos and threes with their baseball caps on, they looked as if they'd taken a wrong turn en route to their Little League game.
"Nope, I'm not gonna try it. I don't like peas," said 9-year-old Will as the others gathered at the Lange's Farm stand, grabbing snap peas from a sample basket.
The other Will in the group, who is 11, moved about the market like a pro. He bought a chive plant ("for pico de gallo," he said) from one vendor and eggs and a sirloin tip steak from another.
He said for as long as he can remember, he's been growing and eating food — green peppers, arugula, kale, berries, radishes, carrots — from his grandparents' small suburban farm and the family vacation home in Michigan.
"It tastes better," he said.
Loaded with bags, Flynn, Samuels and the boys walked the few blocks back to the small kitchen inside the Queen of Angels gym. Working in groups, they washed lettuce, peeled the strings from the snap peas and sliced tomatoes and berries.
Jack, 11, rubbed oil and salt over potatoes in a foil roasting pan.
"How do you grow potatoes anyway?" he asked Samuels.
She talked him through it: Set a potato on a windowsill until it grows "eyes" and starts to sprout, dig a hole in the ground, drop the potato in with the sprout pointing up and cover it up.
"In about two months, you'll have a potato plant," she said.
"Sweet!" Jack said.
Lunch, served on paper plates, consisted of roasted cauliflower and those potatoes; cheddar, lettuce, tomato and snap pea sandwiches; bacon and fried egg sandwiches, and raspberries and strawberries, unadorned and eaten with fingers.
"So, who do we need to thank today?" Flynn asked the group.
"The chef!" they answered.
Added Emmet, 9, "And the farmers who grew the food."
If urban gardening interests you, check out "Garden in the City" with Patty Wetli:
