Getting Ready for the Fair: What a Week!

Jon and Tyler left the school today at 12:30 P.M. to bring 90 vegetable entries to the Common Ground Fair to get ready for tomorrow’s judging in the Exhibition Hall. I really enjoy taking students to the Fair to learn about others crop successes throughout the year, what new growing ideas/ techniques are being tried, how others are making a living through farming and which foods have the best flavors.

The highlight is always the walk through the Hall at noon to see our vegetables on display with those of so many great Maine growers, hoping that we may be awarded a few ribbons to take back to our school.

Some other highlights this week:

Students sort through hundreds of our garden vegetables to pick the very best for the fair

Shirley and the kitchen crew come out to visit the garden and bring back 42 tomatoes, 36 cucumbers, heads of garlic and brocolli.

Anna K. gives so much of her time and expertise to train the flower team

Our after school Farm Stand is having a great week and more people are finding us for the very freshest in produce.

Darcie comes in to cook green=fried tomatoes with the students

Tanya visits from Village Soup to get pictures of our National Gardening Award and the harvesting of the big pumpkin

Mrs. Winslow and Mrs. Fancy led the kids in salsa and sauce making for the upcoming cold months

Mr. Thurston’s pickles are resting safely in gallon jars

Mrs. Feeley gets her students back into cooking by making a fantastic garden soup

Linda H. has gotten us all on board to hold a Harvest Lunch at all of the schools to celebrate our local food producers

Students fill out vegetable judging forms as the taste test our best producee

Downeast Books makes a two year commitment to photograph the THMS Garden Project

Green Team is Crunching the Numbers

Green Team math students have been using shovels, rakes, and MATH in the garden. The first week of bootcamp was helpful in preparing our students for the challenges and opportunities in the upcoming school year.

Those skills have been put to the test at the our farm-stand as students weigh vegetables, figure costs, keep the books, calculate prices, and make change (all without calculators).

Just yesterday, with only a tape measure, Green Team members estimated our largest pumpkin’s weight at 107 pounds. How did they do it? They measured the circumference, distance over the top, and distance across the widest portion of the pumpkin. After, they found the sum of the measures, they accessed the approximate weight on a chart published on the web.

Green team students were also responsible for adding the correct dispersion rate of limestone to add to the soil in the raised beds in the greenhouse, making a more balanced, rich soil for our greens throughout the winter. The students are responsible for all of the ratio and convertion rates as the plant needs require. Stay tuned for more garden math news.