More Farm Learning at Farm School

The Orcas have been enjoying their days at Farm School with the Educulture Project and Farm Teachers Leslee and Val. We have learned about strawberries, who have a mother plant, and then runners lead out to daughter plants. Here we are talking about why these strawberries are surrounded by black plastic. Can you guess the reason why?

What are these white tubes in the fields?

They are blankets, keeping the new baby plants warm.

We visited Farmer Brian's greenhouses. Look how tall these tomato plants are! The thermometer tells us what we already know- it's pretty warm inside the greenhouses!

This farm intern has a big job to do! look at all of those plants waiting for him to put them into the soil in the greenhouse.

We looked at flats of seedlings hardening off so they can be put in the field.

These are pea plants with their little pea hands (tendrils to hold onto things so they can climb). We are trying to see if the pea hands will grab our noses.

The chicks that were at the farm last time are fryers, and are now out in a shelter on the farm, waiting to become someone's yummy dinner. There are new chicks in the greenhouse, but these will be layers. We guessed how large they would be the net time we saw them.

Farm Teacher Leslee taught us how to plant potatoes.

We needed to be spaced on the row, because if we plant them too close together, they won;t be happy and grow big.

We made soft beds for them in the soil, and then mixed in some food.

After the food was carefully mixed in, we planted a potato with shoots growing out of the eyes of the tuber. We covered them up carefully. Later we will mound the soil up around the growing plant so that the baby potatoes have lots of room to grow in the soil.

We wrote some markers to mark the rows.

Then we went in the bean tunnel from last year. It is full of weeds and not ready to be planted, so we worked hard to pull the weeds.

It is hard work to pull out the whole weed, but we like to get those robbers out of the tunnel.

At school we explored the difference between a garden that feeds a family, and a farm that feeds a community. We did a little eercise where we "planted" our garden, and when we harvested, there was just enough to feed the people in our family.

Then we planted a larger farm-sized plot. When we harvested, we were able to feed our families, as well as share with the food bank, the farmer's market, and the grocery store. We look forward to the harvest time next fall when we can share the harvest with our families, our school, and the food bank.