(Farmer Training)

Each year, 2 apprentice vegetable growers will be hired for a one-year period to help achieve the school’s [food production goals. LINK TO TAB 3] In the process, they will receive an immersive experience in all aspects of our vegetable market garden as well as opportunities to learn in other areas of the farm. Apprentices will also be fully engaged in assisting the Program for Visiting Schools and Chicken Coop School staffs deliver a farm experience to children, and will therefore also take with them The Farm School’s unique brand of farm-based education.

The creation of these two new additional staff positions is intended to help share the overall workload at the farm and school in a way that enables more intentional and structured farm and teaching skill-sharing/professional development opportunities for all of the staff, apprentices and full-time farmer/teachers alike. In this context, the school looks forward to pulling forward elements of the Learn to Farm Program that worked particularly well, as well as discovering new farm and teaching skills to explore together.

Teacher Training

By creating and providing a robust teacher training/professional development program, The Farm School can exponentially extend its ideas and lessons to the participating teachers and, through them, to their students. Long-term, a program is envisioned that consists of multiple weekends at the farm in the fall and spring and culminates with a 5-10 day stay during the summer, supplemented by readings, videos and remote lessons throughout the year. Using connections with local principals and PVS partner schools as a starting point, the teacher-training/professional development program would provide opportunities for 10-15 teachers, sustainability coordinators, chefs, and other school personnel to experience first hand the challenges and opportunities of life on a farm. Teachers would learn farm skills such as those relating to soil health, composting, fencing, planting, transplanting, integrated pest management, weeding, staking, pruning, tending, harvesting, seed saving and crop storage all in the context of The Farm School’s particular community and pedagogy.

To start, the school will work to make it possible for current staff to launch discrete aspects of this larger vision with short pilot programs for teachers in the coming year.

The Farm School’s year-long Learn to Farm Program for adults trained 150 wonderful new farmers over a 16 year period in the myriad of skills we identified to operate a small farm and impact a large community. The depth and breadth of the curriculum and experience, archived here [linked], set a new standard for farmer training. At the end of the 2018-2019 year the program took a pause to carefully consider its direction going forward.

Staff, Administration and our Board gathered in March 2019 to establish goals for refreshed and renewed programming. In our October 2019 Newsletter, sent out at the very start of the process, these initial ideas were shared with our extended community:

TO CARRY FORWARD INTO A RENEWED PROGRAM

Enrich the Program for Visiting Schools and the Chicken Coop School

Offer participants the experience of farming

Hold a space for people of all races, identities and backgrounds

Provide a source of future staff for the Program for Visiting Schools

Embody Program for Visiting School values

Promote confidence and leadership

Have a staff that both teaches and farms

Provide a program worthy of faith

Innovate

TO BRING TO A RENEWED PROGRAM

Prioritize racial equity and liberation work as a community, in the program and in our work on the land

Consider serving a whole community together—bring communities into the farm experience that can integrate that experience back into their communities (just as happens with school groups at the Program for Visiting Schools)

Consider partnering with other organizations and/or individuals

Provide an opportunity for staff to follow their own farming interests in order to innovate for the community and the world

Create more flexible program formats and multiple ways of accessing programming

Consider making the farm a hub of land connection and food for our local, underserved community

Create resilience, both economically and through agroecological land use

Build in time for staff and program renewal

Re-center the program on and around the Program for Visiting Schools, which is The Farm School’s shining gift to the world

Over the following year, while continuing to milk cows, grow veggies and provide programming for children (until interrupted by the pandemic!), The Farm School staff created, modeled and then circulated to the larger Farm School community a survey to gather our community’s beliefs, hopes, memories and concerns about the program that was, and what could be. This input informed a successful RFP (Request for Proposals) for new program ideas. Several months of work shaped the synthesis and essence of these submissions into our new suite of programs, which were unanimously approved for adoption by The Farm School Board of Directors in February, 2021.