Sooooo this week I ran a three day farm school. Here’s what they learned :
How to bake homemade bread. They made it every morning and by the last day they made it completely on their own without any help from me or Paige, my lovely assistant.
how to give basic care for chickens, horses, sheep, rabbits.
fun facts about each animal (which I know they remembered because I got messages from parents saying how each night the children entertained them with what they had learned❤️);
how to make garlic fingers from scratch, how to plant garlic, and that bacon bits don’t just fall out of the sky;
how to make blueberry jam and preservation methods;
Wool and it’s many uses;
Vegetable gardening , getting our hands in the dirt, starting seeds and how to shorten your supply chain and why it’s important for our health;
The many benefits of bone broth and how eating nose to tail honors an animal;
How chickens can be real jerks to each other and animals can’t reason like humans are able to think about the effects of their behavior on others. But humans can think about the impact of their actions and that’s what separates us from animals;
The benefits of micronutrients in the soil for our gut health;
how much it costs to keep animals and how they all need to haul their weight on a farm;
the beautiful life cycle of a farm of having an animal: using manure for compost to grow vegetables, feeding the excess to the chicken who give us eggs, and clean up bugs for us and turn the soil, and then poop out more manure.
Here’s what I learned this week :
The world is going to be just fine in the hands of these young people. They are kind, thoughtful, eager to jump in and learn, brave, and smart as whips. They want to do the right things for their health and for the earth. We just have to get excited with them and give them room to do it❤️
(Thank you to Paige Nickerson for all her help this week. From a young 4her to my co op student to now helping with farm school, it’s been lovely watching you grow up on the farm ❤️)