Our Farm
Gardening & Farming Curriculum / Preschool – High School
Preschool: Animal visits, carrot digging, seasonal walking and a snack. One hour each week on the Farm.
Kindergartens: Seasonal rhythms, cider pressing, potato gathering, pumpkin harvesting, animal feeding and visits, egg gathering, snacks, building a fire to cook things on, walking in the corn rows.
First Grade: First Grade garden, thistle digging in the pastures, corn shelling, apple pressing and drying, leaf raking.
Second Grade: Garden work, planting seeds, digging and weeding, social skills in the garden, sawing wood, harvesting beets.
Third Grade: Harvesting onions, potatoes, popcorn, field corn, winter squash and pumpkins, sowing a cover crop, birdhouse building, tree dressing, planting corn, onion, winter squash and pumpkins, sheep shearing.
Fourth Grade: Animal care, cleaning the duck pond and rabbit cages, gathering cowpies from the pasture and manure from the barns and chicken house, plus pruning and mulching the roses
Fifth Grade: Broom-making, animal care, and sketching plants for main lesson Botany block.
Sixth Grade: Broom corn harvest, maintaining compost bins, tool identification and maintenance, double-digging in student gardens, caning raspberries, seed planting, and potting.
Seventh Grade: Potato sorting, building toolboxes for a carpentry project.
Eighth Grade: Harvesting, cooking, nutrition Study, basket-weaving; using natural materials gathered on site.
Ninth Grade: Permaculture gardening, Herbal studies; research and practical application of the use of culinary and medicinal herbs.
Tenth Grade: Permaculture gardening, grafting of Fruit Trees.
Eleventh Grade: Plant cultivation and propagation, greenhouse work.
Twelfth Grade: Sustainable agriculture projects; individually chosen projects that serve the community.
Electives (High School Only): Sustainable Agriculture; farming, harvesting, cooking and preserving.