Community Harvest

On Tuesday, September 8th as part of a Community Harvest program, members of the class of 2014 planted late season broccoli and cabbage at Brigham Hill community Farm in Grafton, MA. The farm has exceeded 40,000 pounds of crops this season.

For more information go to communityharvest.shtml

Food and Welfare

This post was created to facilitate campus dialogue regarding where and how our food is grown/raised/produced and the related benefits and costs to workers, animals, environments, indivudal consumers, and local and collective communities be it a school, town, region, nation or the world. The initial impetus came from a student’s acute concern over animal cruelty. Though this thread need not be limited to animals, it may be a good place to start given the power of the video sent out to the community.

Vermiculture Pilot Program

In beds of newspaper scrap and some starter soil (w/ sand for worm’s digestive system and to introduce decomposing microorganisms) food “waste” become worm food, which in turn becomes nutrient rich plant fertilizer. Above are photos of one of two vermiculture bins being used for the pilot program. Worms are fed nearly all food scraps except for animal products and they seem to like melons the most. The starter bin with newspaper will be converted within a few months to rich organic worm compost. The photo on the left depicts a processing tray in its last stages.

WA Composting

This year Worcester Academy began composting its food waste from the dining hall at the neighboring Charlie Buffone Garden, which is run by community members and Oak Hill CDC. Environmental Club members have been managing the composting program as one part of the new “O Waste” program at WA, which when applied to the dining hall challenges people to take only what they will eat, avoid choosing items that can not be composted, and compost napkins and food scraps that can not be eaten.

Winter time means slow going for compost, but after middle school students and members of the 9th grade Environmental Science class helped “winterize” the garden. For more info click on Charlie Buffone Garden. Last year composting took place at the East Campus Garden while this year the focus shifted to expanding the school’s connections local agricultural networks.

8th Graders Participate in Community Harvest

Last spring as seventh graders, members of the class of 2013, planted seed at the Brigham Hill Community Farm in Grafton, MA. On Friday September 12th, they returned to harvest the crops as part of a Community Harvest Project. Harvest produce is donated to the Worcester County Food Bank, which serves 50,000 people throughout Worcester county. For more information click: communityharvest.shtml