PRIDE Garden (Positive, Respectful, Impressive, Disciplined, Educated)

PRIDE Garden (Positive, Respectful, Impressive, Disciplined, Educated)

Summary

WORK ACTIVITIES 2013
As part of the grant project, the Freeport High School Agriculture Department currently runs an incredibly successful Student CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Vegetable Farm through which students produce and sell vegetables to Freeport community members. The Student Farm sells 20 shares of the Farm prior to the growing season to 20 members or “shareholders”. In return for their payment, these shareholders receive a box of student grown produce once every two weeks for the length of the growing season. Students learn and work on the Student Farm during the school year and also during the summertime. The Student Farm provides career skills training to student workers as well as educates students about the environmental, social, nutritional, and economic impacts of food systems. The Student Farm has also provided justification for adding three new courses to our agriculture department offerings. The courses that were added are titled: Food and the Environment, Urban Vegetable Production, and Food Sales and Marketing.  

OUTREACH
Currently, most of the education and outreach is done through our students in our classroom. In the future, we may publish a newsletter to share with our shareholders and other interested community members.  

WORK PLAN FOR 2014
We are going to continue to run the Student Vegetable Farm CSA business for the 2014 growing season, and we have already pre-sold all of our vegetable shares. We will be planting fruit trees and adding berries to the site this year as well. We hope to encourage our students to start their own mini entrepreneurships using items from the garden to make value added products such as jams, jellies, dried herbs, breads, pickles, etc. Lastly, we are fundraising money to put up a greenhouse near the site as well.

Collaborators: