Our eggs join the best in the world!

If you are fortunate enough to dine at the world renowned Inn at Little Washington in the near future, you'll likely be eating food containing Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School eggs.  The Inn has many awards and accolades, including "the best inn restaurant in the world."  Now our eggs will be part of those delicious meals!

Our chickens have been cared for with tender loving care all summer by campers, counselors, and guides at the Mountain Laurel Montessori School elementary camp - thanks everyone! (see mountainlaurelmontessori.org for more information on camps).

Our chickens get to do what chickens love to do: scratch for insects in the pastures, take dust baths, and eat surplus vegetables from our gardens. We rotate the chickens throughout the farm, providing them with fresh pasture, and providing the pastures with nutrient-rich manure.  You should see the color of those yokes! - the way eggs should be.

Toddlers visit the Farm

Farm School student introduces a chicken

The Toddler Program students visited the Farm School for their end-of-year picnic. 

Animals, songs, and watermelon - a great combination!

Farm School students invite toddlers to fill pig water buckets

The pigs provided lots of entertainment

A Farm School student and a toddler look for eggs in the chicken tractor

Toddlers dance to rock and roll

Meet our rooster

Abundance of Eggs in Winter!

While we are bundling up against the cold, our chickens don't seem to know it is winter. They haven't slowed egg production one bit.

We are enjoying the wide range of egg sizes and colors, as you'll see here in these photos. Many of our brown eggs are so large we can't close the cartons!

Students hold a silkie (our smallest breed) and a Jersey Giant (our largest breed)

Students sell the eggs at local Farmer's Markets as part of the Microconomy curriculum. They learn to track revenue and expenses, and make decisions about running the farm based on these numbers.

The students learn about economics through hands-on, experiential learning every day at the Farm School.

Buy Fresh Buy Local Market in Warrenton

The Farm School participated in the First Friday Buy Fresh Buy Local event in Warrenton on a Friday night in August. The bus and chicken were big attractions for children of all ages (and a few adults as well!). Here's a photo of Mona Nixon, Mountain Laurel Montessori's Head of School, getting to know the barred rock hen.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.thewarrensentinel.com/editions/view/EC.mont.school.html/2009-07-30