Garden At Hutton Settlement A Rewarding Row To Hoe For Kids

Summer for most kids means pickup soccer games and swimming contests.

At the Valley’s Hutton Settlement, summer gardening is teaching children about history and hard work.

Once a week the children living at the residential home off Upriver Drive swing hoes and pull up weeds much like their predecessors from the 1920s.

On Monday, the boys from Hutton’s fourth cottage were relieved when their morning chore only took an hour.

“As soon as we’re done we can play soccer,” said 12-year-old Shawn Gillam, a freckled blond who’s called the residence home for six years. “Before, people here lived off the garden and the animals they raised in the garden. They were pretty much on their own.”

“That wasn’t when you were first here, was it?” asked his friend, Michael Hedt, 11, a new resident who moved in this year.

“No way, that was a long time ago,” Gillam answered.

In fact, when Levi Hutton started the settlement home for orphaned children in 1919, his dream was to create a self-supporting, loving community.

A good bit of the 319 acres he purchased for the project was awash in apple trees. On the rest, he and the children planted grain and vegetables or grazed livestock.

Back then, a typical year’s harvest included 150 tons of alfalfa, 1,200 boxes of apples, 45 tons of silage, and crates full of watermelons, cantaloupes and vegetables.

Today, the settlement leases 80 acres of wheat fields to a local farmer. On their small, tilled plot, the Spokane Garden Club helps the children plant carrots, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, corn and cucumbers early in June.

“It’s good for the kids to experience getting their hands in the dirt,” said Hutton’s director, Mary Jo Lyonnais. “They see what it takes for something to grow.”

Their harvest varies - last year a pesky deer gobbled up just about everything.

“We only had about 10 tomatoes,” said Rick Carlson, the house parent who heads up the gardening.

But Gillam can remember better years. “We would come out here when we were playing and pick some carrots,” he said. “We’d go over to the water fountain, wash them off and eat them. They were delicious.”

The garden has other benefits, too. Weeding is teaching 12-year-old Daniel Ruddy a bit about the way hard work sweetens leisure.

“After we get all hot, we go inside and eat lunch and then we get to go to the pool,” he said. “It feels really good.”

For Joey Berge, 16, the lesson is about a pleasure deferred. He knows that carefully tending the garden means more of Carlson’s secret recipe salsa at the end of the summer.

“I just think about the end of it,” he said. “Rick makes beautiful salsa.”

And then there’s the hope of entering giant pumpkins in the Spokane Interstate Fair. Millwood’s prize pumpkin grower, Bob Critchfield, donated his hearty seeds for the garden.

“I hope the kids get at least one over 100 pounds,” said Carlson. “But who knows, maybe they’ll give some of the big growers a run for their money.”

If the progress of the kids’ corn is any indication, pumpkin growers beware.

“The corn we grew from seeds is really tall,” said Gillam. But despite the faint hint of pride in his voice, Gillam is glad he doesn’t have to live off food from the garden like the Hutton kids of old.

“That’s what supermarkets are for,” he said.