Thursday, February 27, 2014

Another Day at the Farm

The first thing we did when we got to the farm was practice a poem for the Eggstravaganza.  There were three groups.  I was in a group with myself, Carina, Heather, Sam and EJ.  Antoehr group was Connie, Kenton, Lania, Svea and Nathan, and the last group was Andre, Violet, Addie, Braden and Markel.  Then we had to do chicken care.  I was in bedding/eggs.  We had to rake up hay and straw out of the run.  I had to get into the nesting boxes and scrape out all the poop into a wheel barrow with a hand held excavator and a trowel.  Luckily I had a bandana tied around my mouth and nose so I wouldn't breath in the germs.

~Alexander Luker, Upper Elementary

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Preparing the Beds



  














What I did at farm was that we got the beds ready for planting.  I took compost out of the compost bin and put it in a wheelbarrow, took it to the beds and spread the compost out through the beds.

  
































But before that, other groups loosened up the dirt in the beds.  There were three groups.  The first group pulled out the weeds, the second group loosened the beds, and the third group put composted soil in it.

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  
  


All we have to do now is wait to plant the seeds at our next farm lesson.

  



  
































I like the farm because it gives me the opportunity to have freedom, take care of animals (chickens) and take care of plants.

~Braden Stewart, Upper Elementary


Thursday, February 6, 2014

Food Shipments and Their Global Repercussions

This farm class we had a discussion about the distance our food travels and it’s repercussions globally. We had four fruits: avocados, kiwis, apples, and mangos. We recorded for each fruit where it came from, how far it traveled, and if it grew here in Alabama. We measured the distance the fruits traveled with a map with the scale of 750 miles to the centimeter and used that to calculate the distance each fruit had traveled to reach us. We also had sections on our paper  where we recorded if our ability to import food from long distance has a positive or negative effect on the environment, price, nutrition, variety/choice and labor around the world. We then checked our answers for the section of our questions. After that we had  discussion about the positive and negative affects of our ability to to import food from around the world and shared our answers from the second set of questions. we decided that it had a negative effect on the environment because of the added pollution from the extra transportation needed to get all that food  to us. It makes food cheaper so it has a positive effect on price. It has a negative effect on nutrition because the food loses nutrients as it travels and is less healthy than local food. It has a positive effect on variety/choice there really isn’t much up for debate there. It has a positive effect on labor because it creates thousands of jobs around the world but if you buy local you would be supporting local jobs. If you buy food from far away the company you buy from might mistreat or underpay their workers. That is what we did in farm.

~Trevor Otis, Upper Elementary