Speciality Highlight March 2025: Farm
Dear Grade School Families,
The farm welcomes warmer temperatures as we enter into our spring season. On the first day of spring, we celebrated by opening up the back pasture, where we seeded grass in the late fall. The donkeys were so happy that they seemed to skip and dance while entering for their special treat; it was a joy to watch them! During the colder weather, students had some extra work to keep the animals warm as we spread straw for bedding in the barn and chicken coop for better insulation. This gave us more to scoop and clean each morning, and the warm weather has brought us some relief from this tough, heavy chore. We zoomed in close to observe how straw is hollow while hay is flat grass and learned why straw makes a better insulator. The hollow straw stalks trap warm air from the animals' body heat, keeping them cozy.
Students have been direct sowing radishes, carrots, and spinach seeds in succession every couple of weeks for animal treats, as well as a small bed of wheat. Seed trays have been started with our warm weather crops. We cleaned out a garden bed to plant our pollinator flowers and will soon be planting a different area with dye flowers that will be used for handwork projects next fall. We are also tending potted hardwood cuttings that we propagated, including mulberry, elderberry, lavender, and rosemary. Next year, our new mulberry trees will support the Third Grade silkworm project, providing them with their natural diet from trees on our campus. Soon, we will harvest the green tops from our walking onions to chop and dehydrate for long term storage.
It has been so nice to sit in the welcoming, warm sun after chores are completed. Students have enjoyed painting signs to make colorful decor for our farm. We made signs to label the garden areas and nameplates for the animals. Students enjoyed trying to mix the perfect paint colors to match our animals’ fur and feathers with different browns and grays, adding black or white to change the value of the colors.
We are so happy to see our chickens laying eggs again! It feels like a treasure hunt each morning. If your Third Grade student brings home eggs, you'll notice they aren't perfectly clean. Some people don't wash their eggs; it's a matter of opinion, but I recommend running warm to hot water and spritzing them with a 50/50 mixture of white vinegar and water while rubbing them clean, then rinsing and air drying. After washing eggs, they lose their protective bloom coating and will need to be kept refrigerated.
Happy spring,
Ki Heidi
