Greetings everyone! We just finished up a wonderful first week of forest school at our new location! Pacifica is a 400+ acre nonprofit nature reserve with multiple ponds, seasonal creeks, forests, meadows, and so much wildlife to explore. This week we met herons, red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, frogs, woodpeckers, lizards, ground squirrels, and many new plant friends on our adventures.
This is the time of year to harvest manzanita berries and make manzanita sugar! Manzanita, meaning "little apple" in Spanish, is a woody perennial that produces little red berries that resemble apples. They are rich in vitamin C and potassium. Many animals rely on them for food at this time of year when other berries are becoming scarce. The berries are filled with a fine powder, which resembles sugar and is often referred to as "manzanita sugar." The children had lots of fun crushing the berries and tasting the sweet powder inside.
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