Somerville Farm to School Project

It's been a weather roller coaster this year! We've had hot days then cold days, rainy then dry--all proving a challenge for our plantings. Even so, over the past couple of weeks many of the schools were able to harvest and eat fresh veggies right from their gardens!  Groundwork Somerville hosted "Salad Days" at Argenziano and East, while parent volunteers at Brown hosted an end of the year Harvest Party with a variety of leafy greens! Meanwhile, the Farm to School Project worked with elementary schoolers at Brown, Winter Hill, and Kennedy School to start their gardens. 5th Graders at Kennedy learned how to use basic permaculture principals to plan a garden, and explored ways we can improve and replenish soil. 2nd graders became experts in cherry tomato varieties thanks to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds  who generously donated over 75 different seeds!! 1st graders continued their study of "Sylvia's Spinach" by learning how to plant spinach seeds, ...

On the heels of Food Literacy Month, comes National Farm to School Month , Mass Harvest for Students Week , and Food Day (October 24). So many food holidays! Check out these posts about Food Literacy Month and how we celebrated . For more on our  National Farm to School Month , Mass Harvest for Students Week , and Food Day  celebrations keep reading! CORN SHUCKING On Thursday, October 2 we will be hosting a Corn Shucking Event at every Somerville Public School. Parents and students are invited to shuck a few ears of corn during morning drop off.  The corn will be served, later that same day, to all students who receive the school lunch. Volunteers from Groundwork Somerville , UMass Extension , Shape Up Somerville , and Somerville Public Schools will be generously donating their time to help with the success of this event. A TALE OF TWO APPLES For seven consecutive Mondays, beginning on October 20, we will be hosting a lunch time apple taste test...

A few weeks ago in this post  we told you about a new holiday: FOOD LITERACY MONTH! We even gave a few suggestions for how to celebrate.  Well, we followed our own advice and did some of these local food activities. What we said: Read a book about food .   What we did: Not only did we read a book about food but we piloted an entire 5 week food and garden based science curriculum in the first grade classrooms at the Argenziano School! On the first day of the unit, students created a garden alphabet book, just like The Farmer's Alphabet and Eating the Alphabet . Content literacy, in action!   Students were assigned a letter of the alphabet and during a visit to the garden they drew pictures and wrote sentences using that letter as inspiration! The creativity was truly astounding. These "e"ggplant and "r"ed tomato pictures are just two of the amazing images these students created. We can't wait to show you "u"nderground r...

Some of our partners were recently featured in the news for all of their amazing Urban Agriculture work! Groundwork Somerville was featured on  Somerville Neighborhood News  in a piece on city kids becoming community farms. The City of Somerville was featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine . Click the link or the images to read the full article. The Somerville Farm to School Project is proud to be working with both of these amazing groups.