Summer Approaches

This Monday, May 22, 2016, Mr. Stewart's 6th period Sustainable Agriculture class was busy at work preparing for the summer months. During the class period we weeded the class beds and did maintenance work like irrigation around the farm. The whole class needed to be focused and engaged if we were going to finish preparing the beds for summer. We have completed most of the work but have a ways to go before we can consider our work to be done.

The next day, our class was allowed to work on our final projects. I worked on a sign showing how to make compost tea. Compost tea requires 1 part compost, 1 part forest dirt and 1 part local dirt in order to make a suitable habitat for bacteria. After acquiring the dirt, place it in a five gallon bucket and fill it up with water. The bucket only really needs one cup of each dirt to do its job. After adding water, I needed to stir periodically for four days.

On Wednesday, May 25, we met in the classroom. We were met in the classroom by a guest speaker. The guest speaker's focus was on making people "rethink plastics". The most memorable part of the speech was her comparison to plastics as a "toxic love story". She highlighted that people love plastics because they make everything convenient, but it is toxic to us, our world and animals

There were three surprising things that I learned Wednesday and would like to put out there. First, when you recycle, the material is predominantly shipped over seas. This just shifts our problem to a different place. Usually, these places are underdeveloped and the people there are working with toxic materials everyday: secondly, 60-80% of the world's plastic ends up in the ocean. This results in massive die offs of birds, mammals and aquatic life. Lastly, there is diminishing land space in the world to store trash.

So what can we do about it? Well, what I took from the guest speakers speech was I can change little things during my day which lead to a cleaner planet. The first thing a person can do to limit waste is replacing plastics while grocery shopping. Using a mesh or cloth bag will suffice. Secondly, replace all plastic wear with glass or reusable material.

Lastly, although recycling is not a closed loop, recycling old bottles and making sure to use an item more than once can make a huge difference.






David Hall

Blog: Start your own garden this summer

Blog for students who want to apply what they've learned in Sustag

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ibf9vXAL-A8IROULryXU2vytqBHC2Va9mJ68X5PnhPU/edit?usp=sharing

Farm Mural

This week we have been continuing the final project process. To benefit the sustainable community in some way, our sustainable agriculture class has been building, presenting, painting, planting, and more.

Parker Bartlett and I have been painting a mural on the farm for example. Although in the picture below, it is not quite finished, we have been working to provide the farm with a piece of art that not only fixes the issue of a broken door, but also shows a "future version" of our farm with sustainable ideals in mind. In it one can see companions, a whole system, close plant spacing, deep soil preparation and more. Soon to be on the mural will also be the table filled with market day objects. This will signify the public relations part of our sustainable farm.

We hope that this mural can inspire students for years to come. 

Jenny

Year's End Projects

Greetings,

 This week has been busy in SustAg. The end of the year is upon us and currently we are working on a final project and our One bed presentations.

 Our final project was to build something or intern for the farm. I have seen a lot of great things around the farm being made that are sure to be helpful next year. Blaise, Ali, Enzo and Hugo have been painting some beautiful signs for around the farm. I also noticed a nice bench being built. Riley and I have been in the progress of making Dibble boards, boards used for planting with the correct spacing. We made two and think they will be very helpful for next years students. These dibble boards have been a lot of fun to make. The first thing that had to be done was measure out the correct spacing on the wooden boards i purchased from home depot. After making the measurements, it was a matter of cutting, drilling, and gluing in dowels. The boards definitely turned out well and it was satisfying to see hard work turn into a nice looking product that is sure to benefit the farm in the future.

 In other sustag related news this week was sustainability week so it was very cool to see the whole school working together to try and be sustainable. I participated in an after school work day and there were a lot of students there contributing to the farm.

 Today is the last farmers market of the year so i expect a lot of harvesting today in class and hopefully a lot of customers!

 Alex B.

Cooked

This week we watched a cooking episode on the origins of cooking. The episode we watched was called Fire. It talked about how fire is important to cultures and helped us evolve to be the humans we are today.

It also talked about how fire allowed people to hunt by bringing out the pray via fire. This shows that we have been connected to fire since we learned how to make fire or even before.  We learned about how people rely on fire to survive which is true. Without fire we would not be able to have the energy to think about anything  but our next meal. This is because we started making better weapons for hunting. The better weapons means you have more food and more food means you can think about other things such as civilization. Fire helps us form bonds and reminds us of when we are family was cooking for us. Fire keeps us warm  and scares away predators.  However while fire can protect and bring together it can also destroy.

This is the way it is and this is the way it will always be no matter how we try to control fire it is something that can never be controlled.  

--Catherine Foy

Iron Chef - Finale

On Wednesday May the 4th, the last Iron Chef contest took place at the teacher's lounge.

After harvesting fresh fruits and vegetables such from the farm such as lettuce, bell beans, potatoes, carrots and raspberries, each group of students was asked to cook a dish by using those ingredients and seasoning.   Each dish wash judged on it's taste, presentation and balance.  The winning students were parker, garret, zach, stevie and jd.  Their dish was a composed salad with french fries on the side.  What john and mr. stewart liked the most about it was the taste and presentation.
-Robin

Projects and Market

This week in all Sustainable Agriculture classes, we got into the grind of working on our final projects as well as prepare for a market day.
Before we had time to work on our final projects on Wednesday, we had to get a little business out of the way. On Monday and Tuesday, we were in the classroom working on either collaborating with our final project partners or reading our books. On Monday, we wrote a short summary about what our individual books have been about so far in our readings. We also added questions that we think would spark conversation about our books next Tuesday.
Finally as Wednesday rolled around, we had the opportunity to work on our final projects. In my case, Alex and I spent the entire class working out the spacing for our dibble boards, while others worked on projects such as creating wooden signs for around the farm and videotaping lessons for future students.
On Friday, we gathered as a group to prepare for the market day. We harvested plants such as strawberries, cilantro, artichokes, lavender, mint, and many others.
This week was not only productive for individual work groups, it was productive for Sustainable Agriculture as a whole.
-Riley