Successful Lettuce Delivery and Upcoming Market News

On Friday, December 7th, 2019, Sustainable Agriculture students got to participate in a very successful lettuce delivery! Conclusively, we delivered about 40 lettuce heads to staff and faculty members on Redwood campus. We harvested these lettuce heads, grown with lots of care and love, from our very own beds at the RHS farm using sickles. Luckily, there is more to look forward to from the Sustainable agriculture family... In fact, there is a market scheduled for this Friday, the 13th, where many more fresh harvested items can be purchased. Check out other blog entrees to see what you can make at home with a variety of the items found at our market that we have already tried out for you! Regardless, you can never go wrong with the delicious crops that we grow at the farm. You can find out for yourself at the market during 7th period or after school hours by the flagpole in the front lot. Hope to see you there! :)

-Olivia Winterhalter

Scents of a sustainable Thanksgiving roam the hallways of Redwood High School on November 20!

Mason L

On Wednesday, November 20, several classes got the opportunity to partake in a Gordon Ramsay level cooking competition. Blood, sweat, and tears were put into the effort with the hope of taking home the gold, extra credit points. Individual class periods consisting of individual groups worked tirelessly to prepare a dish that was of a Thanksgiving theme, but consisted of zero meat. This brought for many creative ideas and new tastes that were introduced to the students during the tasting at the end. According to Mr. Stewart some of the dishes were better than anything he had ever tried before. One meal in particular that took home 1st place for its class period was "Giving thanks to Nick Brier." This was one example of the many Michelin 3-Star dishes that were created!

Iron Chef 2

This Week in SustAg all classes participated in an iron chef cook off, where everybody in the class paired up into individual groups, all groups making an organic meal that would be judged by mr. Stewart and two other qualified judges, the teachers assistants. This week the theme for our cook off was thanksgiving. Groups were allowed to bring organic materials from outside of the classroom as well as harvesting materials from the farm beds to add into the meal. One new item added to the iron chef menu for cooking were chicken eggs, the chickens have recently begun laying them and the first laid egg was used in the iron chef cook off this week. An example of the typical meals made in the cook offs is the one My group prepared a vegetarian stuffing using an egg, jerusalem artichoke, celery, vegan sausage, and spices. Everyone enjoyed getting to cook as well as eat the meals they made, a unique opportunity you wouldn't get to try in other classes -- Dylan

Update

bodhi

> Out on the Redwood Farm, 4th period has had exceedingly fast growth
> rates in our One Beds. We have been harvesting the outside leaves of
> the lettuce, and we still have an abundance growing in our bed. Our
> class beds have all been weeded, aerated and amended with compost.
> Most groups have planted seeds and some have sprouted. We have also
> started a new compost pile for the month of November. The chickens
> have become habituated with us will now eat out of our hands and one
> will even walk up to us to get attention.

Giving a tour of the farm

This week, 6th period Sustag had the opportunity to show a group of kids from Del Mar middle school around the farm. The kids were from all grades and were in a class that focused on the environment. The kids were split up into groups of 3-4 and then they were paired with a one bed group. Each group showed the kids around the farm. Talking about their farm jobs, what they had grown, and about having the chickens. My group was the compost crew and we showed two 8th graders and one seventh grader how to create the compost piles by the hoop house. My group members also showed the kids the tool shed and told them about what tools are important for certain things. The reason that this class from Del Mar came to Redwood was because they have hopes of building a farm at their school. Hopefully they were able to gain some understanding on how to maintain a sustainable farm. 

-Jay Mcconnell

 IMG_0100 (1).HEIC

Bed Upkeep and Farm Maintenance

This week on the farm did not involve the introduction of any new beds, trips, or market prep. This week's classes focused rather on maintaining our current projects. After getting assigned their class beds and planting in them about two weeks ago, students are continuing to water and pay close attention to how their seedlings are doing. In my group's class bed, A5 South, we planted around 24 purple kale seedlings. These kales were transferred from flats, where we began growing them weeks ago. We were initially concerned for our kale as our group has seen little to no growth in the crops since planting them. However, Mr. Stewart assured us that the slow growth is normal because of our late Fall planting. We will continue to water and care for our plants throughout the season and will hopefully see more growth when the weather gets warmer again. If the kale shows no progress in the next few weeks, we will have to pull it from our bed and plant something else. Though unfortunate, this is not uncommon and shows us the reality of growing these kinds of crops during winter. 

Also this week, we worked in our groups on our somewhat new management jobs. My group is Companions so we spent a portion of the block day looking around the farm, where we found Earthworms, Rollie Pollies, and Cucumber Beetles. We also found a Green Cricket on one of the trees near our bed and what we believe was an Ear Wig larva in our group bed's soil.

-Tessa

 

Companions Scavenger Hunt!

This week we had a late start to week due to unexpected power outages but we got right back to tending to our one beds and class beds on Thursday. My bed group has the class bed D1, the flower bed, to prepare this bed we pulled the bermuda grass and other weeds from it so that we could broadcast flower seeds across the bed. Besides our class bed we have been researching inside and outside of the classroom different companions that are a vital part of our farm and the ecosystem. We have learned some are pests and some are helpful as well as how to identify them while we work on the farm. As we learned about different weeds like bermuda grass, spotted cat's ear, fennel, purslane and many more we drew them so that we could identify them. We also drew animal companions such as cucumber beetles, aphids, worms and more. We put our new knowledge to the test on friday by completing a scavenger hunt. The goal was to collect 10 different companions on the farm and present them to Mr. Stewart. Our group collected, spotted cat's ear, bermuda grass, purslane, pantain, willow weed, beetle, worm, roly poly, crab grass, and nutsedge. - Giselle Z