Growing Smiles while Getting Dirty ~

This past year has brought tonnes of accomplishments with our Community Garden. We had 240 students participate in planting items, weeding, harvesting, and consuming their own produce. Each week all ten classes would take time to walk over to the Community Garden and complete maintenance and receive a lesson. We have invited in Community partners to help educate the students on gardening, students have worked together to weed and water, and also to prepare a meal with their produce.

Summer time and watering and weeding caused us some anxiety, but as usual in our wonderful Community people stepped up in July and August to help maintain our Garden Plots. For the Summer of 2016 we will be having students sign up for a one week ‘Weed and Water’ schedule as they are more than willing to help maintain our produce.

Every project requires a Champion ~ someone who will take charge and be the leader and motivator to the project. Ms. Val Williams is our Champion! Val took the lead on getting the whole school involved in planting, weeding, harvesting, and preparing our Community Garden produce.

We are so grateful to have Farms to School providing us with the opportunity to learn and grow. We are now able to provide our students with gardening skills and the ability to enjoy home grown produce. This Spring we have applied for support from the Farms to Cafeteria program which allows us to invite community partners to work alongside the students. In a small  community partnerships are vital to the maintenance, stability, and growth of our project.

This Fall we will be partnering with AG Foods and a few other local businesses to allow us to expand our program. We our loving our journey, learning lots of the way, and Growing Smiles while Getting Dirty!