Iron Chef III

Today in class, we had our third 'iron chef' competition of the year. The theme of this cooking competition was low miles, meaning the number of miles the food traveled to get on the plate was to be as low as possible to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the ingredients would use to travel to the classroom. Students were encouraged to bring ingredients found in their gardens, as well as harvest organic food grown on the farm to limit the number of miles going into their meal. The competition was an incredible learning experience because it allowed us to recognize the costs of cooking a meal requires lots of transportation of ingredients that cannot be found locally. It was interesting to see how students were able to improvise to create meals that were environmentally friendly. After the judging, everyone in my class period enjoyed sharing the leftover food from the challenge and were happy that we were able to create delicious meals without unnecessary harm to the environment.

-Sam Schiller, 6th period

Stay informed about SustAg!

This semester I have worked on reaching out to the community via social media on our @rhssustag instagram. Posts include images and videos of harvests, activities, companions, markets, and action shots of work days. I use it as a platform to post about Sustainable Agriculture and reach beyond our school community. It also allows for us to broaden our clientele. It also allows for me to show sustainable practices for example soil aeration. Our following ranges from current students, faculty, alumni, parents, members of the community, school clubs, and beyond allowing for our instagram to be an effective platform to spread the word about our program and practices. Make sure to give us a follow on instagram @rhssustag !! 

—Tatum

December Rain

Ellie A

5 period

As it is getting into the rainy season we have had to prepare our garden as well as suffer from the affects of the new conditions. The rainy conditions made our class unable to work in the garden during class so the following week was a huge surprise. My bed A9 suffered greatly from the first few days of rain. Our most important plant in the bed, beans, were covered in voles and died due to the great deal of distress. The reason this plant was so important is because it worked as a cover crop for our beets which before the rain were thriving. The voles swarmed the beets and beans so we are now in the process of cutting out all of the bean plants and removing the beets for the health of our garden. Our comp will increase greatly by the end of this week. Going into the second semester all of the classes beds are planning for the colder months. Growing plants that can survive and work well in the colder months are essential at the moment. The nice part about the winter crops is that many of them can survive without a lot of attention and added work that the fall/summer crops need. Over the next few weeks we will begin to plant our winter crops and seeds after our return from winter break. 

It’s Finally Raining Again

Connor Moon

After a terrible fire season this year with over 250 thousand acres of burned land spread across the state, the rain has finally returned ridding us of the possibility for more fires and for its annual constant downpour until late spring. After the long drought that plagued the state not 5 years ago, we in Sustainable Agriculture are very grateful for its return. This is because of its effect on surrounding wildlife companions like birds and coyotes, who get rid of unwanted pests. The rainy season keeps keeps the coyotes numbers up, maintaining a healthy population control over deer, which are increasingly common and eat plants in the garden (Like our poor orchard. Rest in peace). Birds, rely on the rain to predict when mating season comes and use the opportunity to eat small pests that freshy after rain, sit on top of leaves exposed. Rain is pivotal to a sustainable garden and surrounding wildlife.

Rainy days and the end of an amazing Fall season

For the past 2 weeks Sustainable Agriculture students have been working hard in the classroom while rain delays them from enjoying the farm. It's officially winter season and students have many more rainy days to expect. Instead of waiting for the rain to end students have planted beans as a cover crop and concentrated on creating a project to instruct classmates on. This project is known as the One bed project. During this time we explain to our fellow classmates about how much we expected our yield to become and how much our actual yield was. Fortunately almost all beds had stable growth and expect to hit their goal as the school year comes to an end. At the same time students shared how they were able to obtain these yields through the intensive work they completed on the bed. Through their labor students were able to create fertile soil ready for planting. Finally the projects ended with what they were going to plant through the winter. Most of the crops were ones underground so rain would not affect its growth. Overall the farm has had great progress and continues to head towards the goals put out for them.--Matt B

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Looking back...

At the beginning of the year, when we first received our group one beds, there was nothing but leftovers from last years groups left to show for on our beds. My group had a dying tomato plant, a basil plant and a little bit of celery. Our group planted potato, lettuce, garlic, beans and a sunflower to top it off at the end of our bed. Everything has grown well except for the beans, we haven't seen any signs of growth yet but hope to see some soon. This picture is of our bed the first day after we started weeding and putting in new soil.

Owen Miller

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One Beds and Pests

    This week in Sustainable Agriculture, we have started working on our final one bed presentations. It has been a great opportunity to reflect on our year so far as we think about how much all of our one beds have changed! Now that we have entered the rainy season, our farm days may be limited or cut short, however, we are grateful for the nutrients the rain brings and the water we could save! This Tuesday, we were able to go out to the farm to check up on everything after a long week off, and we were met with a sad surprise. It seems as if over break, something ate most of our class beets. The lucky unaffected ones were harvested for this week's market, to make sure our surprise companion does not make their return and finish them all off. We are trying to stay positive! If the weather allows for harvesting, we will be holding our semester's last market day this coming friday.  We hope that it will be a successful market, since you can make many fun dishes with our yummy food, as we all got to try during our last farm to fork, completed over break. See you next week! 

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