n is "the best Inn restaurant in the world." Yes, the entire world! Imagine, the cherry tomatoes that we lovingly grew from seed are now being served as part of some amazing cuisine. Congratulations to the Farm School students and Thank You to the Inn! The Inn doesn't just talk about supporting local agriculture, they source as much food locally as they can from growers large or small. Thank you to the parents, faculty, and community volunteers who have all helped to nurture the garden, and in so doing have nurtured the development of these fantastic adolescents as well.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Students Sell Produce to the Inn at Little Washington!
Four of our brave students knocked on the kitchen door of the Inn at Little Washington today and were rewarded by the chefs buying their cherry tomatoes, purple beans, and anaheim and jalapeno peppers. The Inn at Little Washington is "the best Inn restaurant in the world." Yes, the entire world! Imagine, the cherry tomatoes that we lovingly grew from seed are now being served as part of some amazing cuisine. Congratulations to the Farm School students and Thank You to the Inn! The Inn doesn't just talk about supporting local agriculture, they source as much food locally as they can from growers large or small. Thank you to the parents, faculty, and community volunteers who have all helped to nurture the garden, and in so doing have nurtured the development of these fantastic adolescents as well.
n is "the best Inn restaurant in the world." Yes, the entire world! Imagine, the cherry tomatoes that we lovingly grew from seed are now being served as part of some amazing cuisine. Congratulations to the Farm School students and Thank You to the Inn! The Inn doesn't just talk about supporting local agriculture, they source as much food locally as they can from growers large or small. Thank you to the parents, faculty, and community volunteers who have all helped to nurture the garden, and in so doing have nurtured the development of these fantastic adolescents as well.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Rappahannock County Farm Tour
Come visit the Farm School during the 1st annual Rappahannock County Farm Tour Weekend: September 26th-27th. 
Students will be giving tours, you can join us in planting garlic in the garden, or learn to spin wool into yarn or felt it. We'll be serving up pork BBQ from our own school-grown pigs and many yummy side dishes, all cooked by the students and teachers. And, you can pet the sheep, hold a chicken, gather eggs, and generally spend a nice day on the farm.
For more info: http://farmtour.visitrappahannockva.com/index.html
Students will be giving tours, you can join us in planting garlic in the garden, or learn to spin wool into yarn or felt it. We'll be serving up pork BBQ from our own school-grown pigs and many yummy side dishes, all cooked by the students and teachers. And, you can pet the sheep, hold a chicken, gather eggs, and generally spend a nice day on the farm.
For more info: http://farmtour.visitrappahannockva.com/index.html
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
On Sports
Amanda: "I was in the best shape of my life at the Farm School…I appreciated gaining confidence in myself playing speedball, or canoeing, or hiking Old Rag – doing things I didn't think I could do." 
Jimi: "At the Farm School we had more activity – not sitting at a desk for an hour and half at a time."
Clayton: "I thought about going to public high school in 9th grade because I am a sports fan and wanted to play sports. But then I realized that at the Farm School we get to play speedball, or soccer, or softball for about an hour every day all year, in the rain, snow, whatever. We play hard in these games. They are intense. In public school I would have to sit most of the day, then if I did play a sport it would only be for a few months, for a little bit of time after school."
Jimi: "At the Farm School we had more activity – not sitting at a desk for an hour and half at a time."
Alex: "Now [at a traditional high school], by the end of the day you have to hold my legs down because I am so fidgety."
Clayton: "I thought about going to public high school in 9th grade because I am a sports fan and wanted to play sports. But then I realized that at the Farm School we get to play speedball, or soccer, or softball for about an hour every day all year, in the rain, snow, whatever. We play hard in these games. They are intense. In public school I would have to sit most of the day, then if I did play a sport it would only be for a few months, for a little bit of time after school."
(Quotes from Farm School Graduates)
Sunday, August 16, 2009
On Academics and Work Ethic
Alex: "This school taught me to have a work ethic."
Alex: "I want to learn more than what is on the SOL (Standard of Learning) test…You learn more than what is required here [at the Farm School]."
Bronte: "I shadowed recently at a private school in Hagerstown, Maryland. I went to Geometry, Spanish, and Biology. The things they were learning I pretty much already knew."
Alex: "I learned the true meaning of education...This school taught me the value of an education…Even when things are hard, you just have to get over it. Things aren't going to be handed to you – you need to work hard…This school taught me to appreciate what educators do for us…This school brought out the joys of childhood and learning. You actually like to go to school…It is everything that is good for you and what you like all mixed into one."
Comments made by Farm School Alumni
Saturday, August 15, 2009
On the Farm School as Family
Amanda: "It is fair to say that my years at the Farm School were the best years of my life."
Amanda: "The Farm School is more like a family than like a school."
Clayton: "We are more of a family atmosphere – The other day Susan, Phillip and I drove to a farm to help someone out and on the way home I asked, 'Are we going straight home? I mean…are we going straight back to school?' I always slip and call it home because that is the way it feels."
(Comments from Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School graduates)
Work Made Noble Through Integrity and Passion
Ninth grade students have the opportunity to apply to be managers of one area of the farm. Here is a manager report from Rory Grambo, Animals Manager, Fall 2008
In the animal chore group we take care of the pigs and the chickens. They all seem to be doing well, and we are saving a lot of money on feed by feeding the pigs the food scraps from school. We are studying both the pigs and chickens in Occupations projects, and have various plans for them. We hope to breed the pigs this fall. However, if that doesn't work out, each of the pigs easily weighs 300 pounds and they will provide meat for the community. We have 16 chickens, of which 6 are new hens. However, not all of our hens are laying eggs at this point; we are trying to figure out which ones are laying and which are not. We also got new nesting boxes for the chickens. They started to use them immediately and this makes it much easier for us to collect eggs. Overall, the animals are doing very well and we hope to add more to our menagerie in the future.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Like Gardens, students grow throughout summer
By Roger Piantadosi Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Source: Rappahannock News
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13 2009
Source: Rappahannock News
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13 2009
At the Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School in Flint Hill, you probably wouldn't want to automatically associate the words “summer” and “vacation.”
Summer is a break from daily classes for the 15 seventh- through ninth-graders who attend the five-year-old Farm School – and thus tend its 23 acres of pastures, woods and a pond plus the main schoolhouse, a large hoop barn and assorted outbuildings, a few pigs, a dozen chickens and some sheep.
But throughout the growing season, Mountain Laurel students return at least one day a week to pick tomatoes, peppers, beans and greens from the garden they planted in the spring, and to help farm manager Sarah Cooper transport and sell them at the Front Royal Farmers' Market, among such other chores as mowing, trimming, weeding and cleaning.
The other day, the farm's three Border Leicester sheep needed to be moved from a front pasture to a clover-laden enclosure with a new sheep house built from 2x4s, heavy-gauge fence and waterproof tarps by student Phillip Grambo, 15, who actually graduated from the farm school in June. Helping out were Phillip's not-very-identical twin brother, Rory, also bound for Fauquier High School next month, and current students Joshua Owens, 13, and Allie Mingo and Erika Hughey, both 14.
Students come by in summer, as they do throughout the school year, for “community work,” says school director Susan Holmes, meaning the school community – this being a Montessori school – but the greater community as well.
“In fact we're hoping this fall to be doing some work with the Plant-a-Row people,” she says, speaking of the county's new food bank. “I want to get the students down there to see the fruits of their efforts, to help out, and meet some of the people who are picking up produce. And it's so wonderful to see just all of what people produce and donate all in one place like that.”
The sheep go quietly, sort of, to their new pasture. Rory turns on the new solar-powered electric fence; Holmes fills the water buckets that Erika and Joshua have carried over.
The students chat quietly with each other when they aren't helping to lift and turn the sheep house, fetch corn, bring the water hose. Except for the occasional random vault over a low fence or playful leap up to swat a low-hanging oak branch, they seem more like young adults than teenagers.
Someone asks Holmes: So, are you teaching these young people to be farmers?She smiles, glancing at the students around her. “We are just teaching them to be well-rounded people,” she says. The farm, it turns out, is a way of taking what they learn inside about chemistry, physics, history and math and giving it a grounding in . . . well, yes.
The ground.
Local 9th grade student sells her photography at the Front Royal Farmer’s Market
Source: Warren County Sentinel
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Allie Mingo, 14 year old and rising 9th grade student at Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School, smiles as she sells her hand made photo cards at the Front Royal Farmer’s Market on Thursday, July 23rd. Sales from the card and from the meat and vegetables, go back into the Farm School’s microeconomy to pay for plants for the garden and food for the animals.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Allie Mingo, 14 year old and rising 9th grade student at Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School, smiles as she sells her hand made photo cards at the Front Royal Farmer’s Market on Thursday, July 23rd. Sales from the card and from the meat and vegetables, go back into the Farm School’s microeconomy to pay for plants for the garden and food for the animals. At the Farm School, students run both the farm and school alongside their teachers.
The Farm School is one of the vendors at the new Farmer’s Market, held each Thursday 4 to 8 and Saturday 9 to 1 behind the gazebo in downtown Front Royal. At Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School, students in grades 7-9 run the farm alongside their teachers.
The curriculum is project-based and hands-on, based on the needs of the farm. The students study biology, for example, by learning about the sheep as they also learn about how to care for them. Studying topics such as cell structure and the nitrogen cycle take on new excitement when they are applied to a real life situation.
The students at the Montessori Farm School raise pigs, sheep, chickens, and bees and have a large market garden. They sell their pork, eggs, and produce at the market, and put the proceeds back into the Farm School’s microeconomy to pay for feed, hay, and tools. The students manage the microeconomy and cooperatively make decisions about how to spend the money. And, there is room for invention.
Allie has an interest in photography. She decided this year to make her photos of the farm: pigs, chickens, landscapes, into photo cards to be sold as part of the microeconomy. First she sold them at school functions. Then, Herb Melrath, owner of Front Royal’s Daily Grind, offered to sell them at his store. The cards have been so popular that Allie now sells the cards at 3 local businesses: The Daily Grind, Hands to Create, and Delilah’s. All of the proceeds from the cards still go back into the Farm School’s microconomy.
By acting on her idea, this local youth is gaining experience in running a small business: from inspiration and design, to production, marketing, and accounting. You can also see Allie’s cards, along with the produce from the Farm School garden, pork sausage from their pigs, and eggs from their chickens every Thursday at the Front Royal Farmer’s Market.
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