“We should call that one The Great Pigdini!” “And that one can be named JEFF!” No matter what age of students you bring down to the farm, as soon as you allow them some free time to explore, they inevitably all end up surrounding the pigs. Meeting pigs isn’t the only highlight of the day. Students are able to learn and get dirty on a real working organic farm during the “Farming 101” and “Plants and Pollinators” classes.
In the morning students work on different projects around the farm that might include harvesting and processing vegetables or moving pigs. “I love teaching kids about the effort that goes into producing their food and helping them try new vegetables,” our field manager Tori stated. One way we entice them to eat new vegetables is to have everyone create their own pizza at lunch time covered exclusively in vegetables that they harvest themselves, plus maybe a little (or a lot) of cheese. It’s an amazing sight to see kids who just the day before wouldn’t even think about touching a vegetable, now chopping vegetables and somehow trying to fit all of them onto their small pizza crust.
After the pizza lunch, class shifts away from work projects and dives into the science behind making a farm function like soil chemistry, pollinator diversity and photosynthesis. All of which helps shift their perspective and give them a broader understanding of the US food system.
If you want to take the excitement of the farm back into your house or classroom the kids have a few ideas to share with you: