Ninth grade students have the opportunity to apply to be managers of one area of the farm.The following are updates from our current managers:
Animals – Rory Grambo, Manager In the animal chore group we take care of the pigs and the chickens.They all seem to be doing well, and we are saving a lot of money on feed by feeding the pigs the food scraps from school. We are studying both the pigs and chickens in Occupations projects, and have various plans for them.We hope to breed the pigs this fall.However, if that doesn't work out, each of the pigs easily weighs 300 pounds and they will provide meat for the community.We have 16 chickens, of which 6 are new hens.However, not all of our hens are laying eggs at this point; we are trying to figure out which ones are laying and which are not.We also got new nesting boxes for the chickens.They started to use them immediately and this makes it much easier for us to collect eggs.
Overall, the animals are doing very well and we hope to add more to our menagerie in the future.
Culinary – Bronte Salgado, Manager This year in culinary, we have cooked loads of food, especially leading up to the Harvest Festival.The food has all been excellent, and we made great profit from our barbecue.We have also continued to make a snack each morning with greater variety than last year.Here are some of the snacks we have made so far: scones, biscuits, pancakes, carrot muffins, blueberry muffins, various cookies, and corn muffins. During overnights we make both dinner and breakfast for the whole Farm School community.We usually eat our pork sausage for breakfast!We hope that our success in the culinary group continues throughout the year.
Bees – Clayton Hatcher, Manager This fall we harvested our first batch of honey.We bottled 41 half pint jars of honey.All of this honey came from only one super!Now we are starting to feed the bees with a sugar and water solution.We will feed them once a week until the average outside temperature drops below 50 degrees F.Half of the Farm School students are studying the bees in their Occupation project. They may add another hive in the spring.In conclusion, we had a great harvest and hope to have an even better one next year.
Garden – Claudia Elias, Manager Since the beginning of our school year, the gardening group has been diligently putting our garden back in order.After the crazy summer months we thought it would be impossible to get rid of the weeds.In early September our main priority was to save our few rows of vegetables from the countless weeds.Many of our crops ripened in the summer but we had a few vegetables in the fall as well.Our main produce in the fall was tomatoes, green beans, and bell peppers.We also enjoyed fruits such as cantaloupe, honeydew melons, and raspberries.We even had enough raspberries to make a few jars of jam. Because of the cool winter months approaching we have been doing much work.Right now we are working on tilling the soil to plant winter rye.This will replenish the nutrients in the soil for planting in the spring.We hope for this coming growing season to be at least as plentiful as this one was.
Grounds – Phillip Grambo, Manager Every morning, we split into four chore groups.One of those groups is grounds.We have the basic duties of mowing, raking, or shoveling snow, depending on the season.We also perform basic maintenance tasks as they come up. We have been very busy raking leaves and mowing.We also re-hung the swing and repaired the handle on the shed door.We also took all of the overgrown weeds out of the big hoop barn.
Cleaning – Samantha Wright, Manager We begin each day with chores and end each day by cleaning the building.As Cleaning Manager, I make sure that all the cleaning gets done.I check the rooms at the end of the day.I also do the laundry and make sure it gets folded and put away.
"The exercises of practical life have a truly educational purpose." - Dr. Maria Montessori
