Week 3 Update - Mr. Austen’s Saturday Class

Week Three on the farm highlighted the many living things that make up our biodynamic environment and the ways in which they all interact as a closed, diversified ecosystem.

For this week's opening circle, we shared our favorite fruit and/or vegetable and discussed what differentiates a fruit from a vegetable (ask your kiddo - the main difference is, if it comes from a flower, it's a fruit! If it's a leaf, stem or root - that's a veggie). Stone fruits seem to be a class favorite with peaches, plums and cherries as popular answers

After a few energetic rounds of "The Floor is Lava," we took to the field to harvest some lettuce, kale and spinach. These cold season vegetables will soon be unavailable, so we made a delicious garden salad and added some apples, oranges and bananas for a lovely snack.

Next up was the highlight of the day, as the students were introduced to our new flock of baby chicks. As a farm that practices regenerative agriculture, livestock are a crucial piece of our operation. We use their manure in our compost for supplemental nitrogen, and when these chicks are big enough to leave their brooder we'll send them out to pasture where they'll forage for insects and in doing so, gently turn the soil to make way for next season's crops. We learned that the chicks don't have feathers quite yet, only down and therefore require an external heat source. It will be so fun to observe how these chicks grow throughout this session - by the final session they'll be nearly full grown!

We then proceeded to the greenhouse to gather trowels for our Farm Chore - transplanting tomatoes! A few students had the realization that tomatoes are actually fruits and not vegetables based on our earlier discussion, and we got our hands in the soil while placing our final Roma tomato seedlings in their new homes.

During lunch we completed a fun craft - bead worms. While the students perfected their artistic creations we expanded on our hands-on learning from earlier with a reading of "Yucky Worms," a heartwarming lesson about the important role our squirmy friends play in soil development. Worms are a vital part of our farm - digging tunnels that loosen up the soil for little seedling roots to poke through and leaving their nutrient rich castings behind to feed the growing plants. We learned how worms breathe (through their skin), and how many hearts they have (5!) Ask your kiddo if they remember either of these fun facts about our wriggly companions.

We spent the last part of the day free playing - using our imaginations to engage with the living world around us. It was a fun-filled, action-packed day and I can't wait til next week when we encounter our "Insect Friends and Foes!"

Mr. Austen