Collecting Spinach Seeds. The Plant Cycle

Today we are going to show you some pictures of the Spinach seeds that we collected. Our spinach plant bolted (started growing very fast to reproduce before the summer arrives). After it bolted it produced seeds. The seeds were collected and we will plant them in August for our fall spinach crop. Take a look at the process below!

Keila and Ruben (right) collect spinach seeds.

A close up shot of the spinach seeds on the bolted spinach plant (below).

 

 Ruben is collecting the seeds and placing them in a pot to dry. The seeds have to be kept dry so that they do not rot, develop mold, or germinate (right).

 A fun time collecting seeds!

Planting our Strawberry Garden by Chris and Isabelle

At the Garden of Eve we picked up 12 Strawberry plants to start our new Strawberry Garden. Take a look below at our planting techniques!

The first picture (above) is of Eugene and Myself (Chris) getting ready to plant the plants that are on the wooden greenhouse. They are going to grow nice and tall in this little frame-house so that by next month they will be fully grown. 

The next picture is of Eugene and Myself actually starting to plant but in the last photo we were only starting to look at the right place to plant these amazing strawberry plants. The reason that we started to plant these strawberries is because we would like them to grow so that we might be able to have them for Graduation on June 20th! (right)

3. The next picture is of the June stawberry"s that we will have at graduation. This is a picture of the strawberries planted in the ground of this wooden greenhouse .

Even more exciting is the first flower of the summer! This flower means that soon there will be a delicious strawberry to eat right where that flower is! We all can’t wait until there are tons and tons of yummy strawberries to snack on! Come back later to get an update on the garden! 

A day in the life of an Organic Farmer! A Village School Field Trip by Isabelle and Toby

"In August of 2011 I (Toby) applied for a field trip grant for the Village School to spend a day on an Organic Farm on the East end of Long Island. To my surprise, we were awarded the grant by Target and we just completed our trip titled "A day as an organic farmer" at the Garden of Eve in Riverhead, New York.  I set out to do this because  Most of my students think of Long Island as suburban sprawl, strips of shops and developments as far as the eye can see. As they head East they will arrive at an agricultural paradise, and they will be see how food is made. 

 By the end of the day I hope that the students are tired and appreciative of the food that they have access to. I hope they grasp the efforts involved in the production and harvest of their foods. I also hope that they learn and understand the environmental benefits of organic farming."

Below are some photos and comments from one of the farming students Isabelle! 

Are you ready for another exciting update on our school this week?! Last week our whole school took a trip to a farm out on Long Island. This farm grows fresh produce, has healthy farm raised animals! Here you can see some Village School children petting one of the farm dogs! (right)

This is something you don’t really see, real free-range chickens. At the farm they raise free-range chickens, this was exciting for all of the students to see first hand how free range chickens really are raised on a farm. (below)

All of the students were amazed at all of the information they were getting from this one trip! Here you can see Eve one of the farm owners, educating the students on natural pest control. She doesn’t use any pesticides at all, that’s probably why her produce tastes so good! (left)

Towards the end of the day the whole school got to pick fresh strawberries to take home with them! Here you can see Chris and Jeremy scavenging for some yummy treats in the strawberry patches. 

After a long day of strawberry picking and learning all there is to know about owning and maintaining a farm, the students took a little lunch break where they enjoyed there food they brought from home and some of the yummy strawberries they picked earlier in the day! This was a very interesting and exciting trip for everyone to go on and we all had an amazing day!

A busy week in the garden! Planting rows of corn and such!! by Isabelle and Eugene

Hello again fellow farmers! This week we have gotten a lot accomplished, this is all very exciting and the garden is rapidly evolving into a magnificent landscape. Here you see Ruben, Eugene and Adam making rows to plant corn. Even thought we already had corn planted, unfortunately we jumped the gun and planted them too early so the weather was too cold for them to live. ): We hope that these corn plants grow to be beautiful and yummy for us to nibble on! :D 

We also made many improvements to our garden. Here you see Isabelle and Eugene making trellises so that we could train our pea plants to climb up the string. Our pea plants are getting so tall, but no peas have blossomed for us to snack on yet.

1    And we don’t allow anything to go to waste. Any plants that may have passed their harvesting period or have not survived the weather are collected together and put into our school made village compost pile. Adam is working hard to keep stacking up our compost higher and higher so that we can reuse it for fertile soil and better soil for our plants. (right)

We also started planting new seeds so we can expand our garden even more! We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, onions and lots of other seeds that are going to ensure that whenever you want a healthy snack whatever vegetable it is, our garden will have it for you!  (below)

This week has been one of our most productive in Microfarming, working on creating the last vegetable rows in the garden, planting even more vegetables in our flower pots, and creating pizza with the materials we grew and making it healthy and delicious for the whole class to enjoy.

Planting our Second Apple Tree by Kimberly

In this post Kimberly is going to explain how we planted our second tree in the new Village School Orchard!

Chris, Susie, Toby, and I took turns digging a hole for the second tree of our orchard.  (right)

Umm, I have no idea what I was doing – but Chris and Toby were topping the soil around the tree with mulch.  You do this after you backfill the soil into the hole around the tree because mulch attracts sunlight, since it’s dark in color, to keep the tree warm during cold weather. (left)

Here I am, as happy as a clam, watering the tree.

This is our finished, mulched tree.  Thanks to my awesome watering skills, the tree will have plenty of water over the weekend, as well as plenty of mulch to keep it warm over the cold weekend, thanks to Toby and Chris. (below)

Planting cool crop seedlings! by Suzanne

This is me. I’m holding the plants (Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, and Lettuce) to plant out in the garden (above). We grew them in our classroom under lights first and grew them our selves from seeds. There’s cauliflower and various other plants that we were transporting outside to plant in our garden. As you can see in the picture to the right the plants are looking healthy and strong!

In this picture (right and below) Toby and Chris are planting plants Brussle Sproout seedlings that we started inside Since they are cool weather crops they should be successful during April. They dig a hole then put the plant in the ground so it can grow. They are obviously working hard. They have a watering can to make the dirt wet so the plant develops deep roots.

An Apple Tree Arrives At Village! by Toby

The Village School Farm has been given Apple Trees! Not just any apple tree but a Dwarf Red Delicious and  Dwarf mixed variety tree! We were lucky enough to receive the donation from a parent who wanted to see our farm to fork program grow! We will now be able to include apples as one of our products to bring back into the classroom as we teach about the benefits of eating fresh fruits and vegetables in our daily lives!

Here is a picture of our new tree (above)!

In this picture (below) Eugene, Chris, And Ruben are digging a hole. This hole is for the apple tree that Kim’s mom has bought for the school. The hole had to be as deep as the pot the tree came in.

Below is a picture of the planted tree!

A week of sowing peas and harvesting leaves-by Isabelle

This week, it was time to take our pea plants outside and bring in some Spinach leaves to make a healthy lunch. Enjoy the reflection on the week by Isabelle:

Look at these baby pea plants we just planted (left)! Were hoping they grow big and strong so we can have some yummy sugar snap peas to eat. Toby instructed us how to carefully place the plants in the ground and bury them so that they will grow to be big and strong!

My very first trellis was a success (right)! The idea of a trellis is to have a guide for the pea plants to grow, so we train the plant to grow up the string so it can get lots of warm sunlight! Unfortunately our babies are too small to train right now but we will continue to watch them eagerly! P.S. Look at how big and juicy that cabbage plant looks!





We also planted broccoli (below)! As you can see Toby was a little enthusiastic about his planting duties and got caught on the plastic fencing that surrounds our garden. We successfully planted 4 broccoli plants even with the difficulties Toby ran into that day! I can’t wait to taste the fresh broccoli when it’s ready!

Look at this amazing salad our class made (below)! We have such an abundance of greens in our garden that we have been making scrumptious salads for the past two weeks! Although veggies aren’t exactly the first thing on every kids favorite food list, everyone loved the salad! We plan on making pizza soon, so sit tight and wait for the updates on the garden and our cooking next week!-Isabelle

A week of digging, growing, and eating at the Village Farm! A reflection on week 1 by Eugene

1.    

(left to right) Chris, Suzie, Me, Kimberly, and Isabelle all triumphantly standing by our Garden.

There’s our team, look at how excited we all are! The enthusiasm we have for this farming is irradiating from our faces and rightfully so, as we delve down deeper into our operation to continue to provide healthy and nutritious vegetables for our entire school.

2.    

This is me (right), training some peas up a string so that they can grow tall and strong as they seek out the sun. Just look at all the amazing work we do here to keep a freshly sustainable garden!

3.    

But of course, there’s a lot of hard work that must be done first in order to make that creation! Chris and I spent almost the ENTIRE week just creating the rows for the flower beds, and we’re still not done!

Our efforts have finally paid off, that salad looks amazing! All our hard work and dedication into creating the components of this salad (right) is what brings full flavor to this delicious meal, which I’m sure we’ll be having many more times as the class goes on. As we have seen from week 1 the class spirit and motivation payoff as we farm here at Village School.

-Eugene

The Spring Farming Season Begins Early!

Welcome, back to the Village School Farm! We have broken ground on Monday March 19th! This early start was due in large part to the mild winter and early spring!
The Farming Course this spring is called "Microfarming"

The Microfarming Course is a ½ year Science/Practical Arts Elective Course at the Village School. The course will examine microfarming through authentic microfarming experiences (challenges) including, window farms, greenhouses, hoophouses, raised beds, container farming, and through traditional back-yard farming. To do this we will examine the basics of botany, organic agriculture, composting, the locavore movement, and the food habits of the United States consumer.

During the semester students will be working to build and maintain a sustainable Village School microfarm, both inside, outside and in-between! During these microfarming experiences we will record useful data and perform a variety of experiments. At the end of the semester students will present the results from their most scientifically significant experiment.  By the end of the course students will have learned how to maintain an efficient microfarm for aesthetics or as a supplementary fresh food source.

The large-scale goal is to produce enough produce for the graduation party in June, to donate to local foodbanks, and to sell at a Village School Farmers Market!

Stay tuned for student Blog entries about their gardening adventures!

-Toby