Mountain Bounty Farm

Here at Mountain Bounty Farm, the long rows of broccoli and tomatoes are loving the warm weather.  But vegetables aren’t the only thing sprouting up at Mountain Bounty.  This spring, students at Grizzly Hill School will also be doing a lot of growing through a partnership with Grizzly Hill School (GHS).

Over the past few years, Angie Tomey, our Assistant Farm Manager, has been helping the school develop a garden program. With the help of Grizzly Hill School’s parent and school board member, Mondy Kowal, GHS has retrofitted its existing kitchen facility to be able to make healthier lunches for the kids and now is participating in a farm to school program with Mountain Bounty.  “It feels so good and so important to be connecting with a local farm to feed our kids,” said Kowal.  “We really appreciate Mountain Bounty Farm for their generosity in sharing their food and experience.”

This spring, every class between kindergarten and 8^th grade will visit the farm at least once this season, but most will come two or three times.  Some grades are studying the role of nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil through experimental plantings, while others are learning soil science by building a compost pile.  Yet other grades are working to grow starts that they will transplant in their school’s garden.

Shana Maziarz and Angie Tomey, our crew leader and assistant farm manager–both of whom have a long background in education, agree that kids learn so much better when they are actively involved in meaningful projects.  They have been working with Grizzly Hill’s teachers to ensure that the curriculum at the farm extends back into the classroom too.  We really want this to evolve into a long term partnership because you can teach anything on a farm—science, math, writing—you name it, there’s an opportunity to explore it all on the farm.

All that, and it tastes good too.  This spring, Grizzly Hill School (where 73% of the students are on the free lunch program[1]) will get some of their cafeteria’s vegetables from their own garden and from Mountain Bounty Farm.  They’re even planning a fundraiser from the harvest of a pumpkin patch at the farm that will be planted, maintained and harvested by the school’s students and Youth Corp through this spring, summer and fall.

We’re pretty excited about the program, and we think the kids will be too!  Check out the article about it in our local paper, The Union.

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[1] National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/

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Weekly Summer Newsletters by mountainbountyfarm