Editor’s Note:  This series of stories will follow Peekskill Regeneration Farm through the growing season. It is funded by a grant from the Dominican Sisters of Hope Ministry Trust Fund.

On a recent spring afternoon Peekskill Regeneration Farm steward Amanda Armenteros curated an event that allowed women to nourish their bodies as well as their souls.

Women’s Day at the farm began with lettuce, the event’s crop headliner. A half dozen or so women, along with a number of children, got down on their hands and knees to prepare a bed for Romaine lettuce seedlings. The group weeded, topped the bed with compost, planted seedlings, and then added hay to conserve moisture.

 The group then moved to a nearby bed with fully grown buttercrunch lettuce. Armenteros asked the women to choose several heads of lettuce to make a salad.

 Armenteros harvested the chosen lettuce as well as several stalks of asparagus and chives. The women rinsed the lettuce, asparagus, and chives in a big basin filled with cold water. Armenteros gave the lettuce a whirl in the salad spinner. She chopped the lettuce, asparagus, and chives, tossed them with a favorite dressing and freshly ground salt, and served. The delicious salad was the freshest that most of the women had ever eaten.

 Taste buds satisfied, Armenteros—who is also a dancer—gave a line dance lesson. There were as many giggles as there were missteps as Armenteros taught the group the steps to “Boots on the Ground.” Though the group never made it through the entire song, at least one member of the group vowed to go home and practice the dance on her own.

Two of the group members excused themselves from the dance lesson to prepare for the next activity. Peekskill mother and daughter Nicole and Kaela Miller filled the center of a picnic table with an abundance of sticker books, paints, stamps, markers, scissors, glue sticks, magazines, and more. They then placed a number of eight-by-ten inch canvas boards around the table, like plates surrounding a Thanksgiving feast. Then they invited the women to make vision boards.

Before beginning, both mother and daughter explained that the act of making these boards helped them envision what they wanted in their lives. Mom Nicole Miller shared a vision board that reflected her desire to live more in the moment. The mother and daughter then asked, what do you want? Each of the women in attendance was given a small notepad and the opportunity to think about and journal what she might want more of in her life.

Several quiet minutes later, it was time to get crafty. The women began reaching into the middle of the table and oohing and aahing over the materials at hand as they began looking for words and images that captured the visions they wanted to realize.

 The women were so engrossed in this work that the only sounds were the music playing in the background and an occasional, “Does someone have a glue stick?” and “Will you please pass me that sticker book?”

After an hour or so Armenteros asked the women to begin wrapping it up in order to move on to the next and final activity. There was a mad rush to use the Mod Podge, the clear adhesive that sealed everything on the vision boards, before the women put their drying vision boards down and turned their attention to the next event.

It was time for tea. Peekskill resident Sara McGougain gave a presentation about the use of plants, in particular plants that could be used as teas, in women’s health. She explained that teas could be used to help with everything from digestion to childbirth to sleeping. McGougain and Armenteros then led the group to pick some raspberry leaves. These leaves would be steeped in hot water to make the tea that would end the day.

The dozen or so women who attended Women’s Day left with smiling faces, their bodies and souls sated after a day at Regeneration Farm.