The pallet garden at JH Moore School in Lashburn is coming together.  Despite the weather, we carried on in our endeavour June 6, 9, & 10.

First, we laid out the pallets on the front lawn and organized them according to colour, shape, and wood type.  Then, after watching a demonstration on how to turn the pallet into a planter the students broke off into groups of four or five and began to emulate the demonstration they just witnessed.  The lessons learned in this simple demonstration and reenactment were many–simple things like how to lift, how to hammer, how to measure, how to cooperate, and so on.

I’m guessing the students would say the highlight of this phase of the garden was hammering.  They were thrilled to learn and ‘be allowed to’ use this hand tool.  So enthralled were they with this aspect of the project that the slight hail storm went virtually unnoticed.

In terms of intangible culture, I underestimated the significance of things like hammering.  A few of the students had held a hammer before, had struck a nail.  Most, however, had never done such things.  In terms of heritage, where would we be without ‘hammering’?  Many, if not all, of the heritage buildings on our prairies (old barns and farm houses) were constructed by hand.  And the early fences that shape and define this province, they too were constructed with hammer in hand.

Bearing this in mind, it gave me a strange feeling of nostalgia to watch these youth eagerly learn to hammer.  To try and try again without frustration, to strike that tiny spoke of metal.