Housatonic Valley Waldorf School's summer camp celebrated its last day with a large feast on Friday, August 12.

The seven-week program, which started June 27, featured a variety of activities for the campers, including archery, circus art, music, and games. The last week's theme was about harvesting and cooking.

The older children, ages 8 to 14, participated by making the decorations, handwritten menus, and edible food art for the celebration. The younger campers, ages 3 to 7, were responsible for helping prepare the food.

Camp Director Carrie Reilly assured, "They all washed their hands many times before."

Prior to the feast, she gathered all the campers and their parents together for a group prayer.

It was during that time that the campers gave Ms Reilly a potholder they had knitted as a thank you to her for being their camp director.

The lunch consisted of all dairy-, egg-, and gluten-free foods. Many ingredients, like the tomatoes for the cornmeal fried green tomatoes and the mint for the fresh mint tea, were picked from the school's garden.

"We worked with what we had," said Ms Reilly.

The camp also received an assortment of greens from Riverbank Farm in Roxbury for their Green Salad. Other healthy items they had on the menu for the summer feast included homemade bread, roasted eggplant, watermelon, and stone soup with vegetable stock.

"We made stone soup after they heard the story this week," Ms Reilly explained. "Basically, a young man walks through a town after traveling all day, he's really hungry, and asks if someone can provide him with a meal, but everyone says 'No' they don't have anything. He asks if someone has a pot and a smooth, round stone. An old woman says, 'Well, what can you do with that?' and he says 'I can make soup from the stone.'"

The fable goes on to describe how the woman began to give the traveler more ingredients until it becomes a real, edible soup. Inspired by the story, the campers picked smooth rocks, scrubbed them clean, and used them when making the soup.

For dessert, they served buckwheat waffles with berries, vegan chocolate sauce, and cupcakes with natural vegetable dye frosting in rainbow colors.

Surrounded by friends and family, the feast proved to be a fulfilling way of ending the Waldorf Summer Camp.