Sixteen kids from 1st through 6th grade took advantage of the unusually summer-like weather today to come out and experience the Bounty Farm. These students are part of the Bodega Bay After School Program which is a low-income, after school program for mostly Spanish speaking kids.
I was pleasantly surprised that these kids are already involved in getting their hands dirty at their school garden and eagerly raised their hands high when I asked, “who here likes salads?” After a fun introduction of each student and them sharing what their favorite fruit or vegetable is, volunteer Jeannie Bendik and I split the group in two and gave them a tour of the Bounty Farm.
My tour group enjoyed sampling the edible flowers, smelling the lavender leaves, eating pea shoots (this was the highlight for some of the girls who ran back to snatch a couple more before continuing on the tour), identifying the edible plant parts of vegetables, sticking their hands into our compost piles and smelling the decomposition from the FBIs (fungus, bacteria, invertebrates), and basking in the warm greenhouse.
After our tours were done we had a carrot taste test between a store bought carrot and carrots from the farm, a quiet journaling activity where the students chose a place on the farm to observe something and write or draw what they saw, and then we culminated the field trip with harvesting beets and kale and then packing up bounty boxes for these students to take home to their families.
The students were thrilled to be taking home vegetables and fruits and were begging to eat another carrot. All in all, a splendid field trip at the Bounty Farm.
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