Week 3 Update - Young Farmers

We were so grateful for the cooler weather this week! We started off the morning with a few warm-up games, including one of my favorites monarch and viceroys. We took advantage of our proximity to the cows and hiked up to gather up a tractor bucketful of their “gifts”. Though some of the students were a bit hesitant at first, they all agreed that it really wasn’t that bad - and it’s truly the best ingredient to add to our growing “compost cake.”

After snack, we started a month-long experiment to see what will happen to a covered 5-gallon bucket containing a small amount of finished compost, bread slices, various types of vegetable scraps, a piece of plastic, and some nails. The students made some predictions (it’s gonna be really smelly!) and we’ll be observing the changes weekly. 

We then ambled over to the raised bed area, where they worked hard to rehabilitate the beds by removing spent plants, turning the soil, adding finished compost, and watering. Since we won’t be planting until next week, we topped it all off with a thick layer of straw mulch to keep the moisture in and the weeds out.

Meanwhile, Malia and Kyla went on a rescue mission in the hoop house by replanting several flats of seedlings that had fallen in a fairly dramatic collapse of a nursery table on Thursday  yesterday. Thanks, girls!

After lunch, we finished with our seed saving project by making origami packets and storing away our tomato, pepper, melon, holy basil, and zinnia seeds for next spring!

We finished off the day with a satisfying game of S-P-U-D. 

Looks like we have rain in the near future. Be sure they dress appropriately next week, which translates to be prepared for anything! It is Texas after all. 

See y’all next week,
Ms Bridget

P.S. The answer to last weeks riddle is: the man was a lighthouse keeper. He turned off all the lights by accident, so a ship with seven passengers couldn’t negotiate the rocky shores.