This year the school has the advantage of having a fully functioning organic farm right next door! New Entry is a sustainable farming project located on the far side of the Moraine Farm property. It is “an initiative of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, works locally, regionally, and across the country to strengthen local food systems by supporting new farmers.” We are excited that they have welcomed a partnership with us that supports the Science in Nature curriculum.
A central focus of New Entry’s programming is CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) production. A CSA can function in many different ways and one way is producing food for low-income families. New Entry calls this a food-access program, and it entails growing, harvesting, and distributing crops to nearby cities to families in need of assistance. This fall our second and third-grade students helped New Entry harvest for the food-access program, learning not only about farming but also about bringing nutritional foods to low-income families.
Our school is currently working on creating a composting system for our food scraps, which we will bring over to the compost piles at New Entry. Composting is an essential step in farming as well as an amazing learning opportunity for our students. This composting partnership has the potential to possibly extend to the parent body as well!
