Turnip Time!

Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School students grew turnips from seed and are reaping the fruits of their labor this November.

Farm School students have the option to become managers of an area of the farm in their 9th grade year. The 9th grade Garden Manager and one of her current garden crew members came in from the garden with a basket full of freshly dug turnips this week asking "can we please cook them up for people for lunch?!?" We were happy to oblige.

They used a cookbook recently donated by a parent, "From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce" to learn about preparing and cooking turnips.

They then peeled, chopped, sauteed and baked the white and pink roots and shared them with all of the students and faculty members.  We compared the taste of those sauteed vs. baked and salted vs. unsalted.

The initiative and follow-through demonstrated by these 12 and 14 year old girls is characteristic of the Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School. Such amazing young people!

Plastic Goes Up On the Hoophouse!

There may have been snow and ice on the ground in the morning, but by the afternoon it was 80 degrees inside the hoophouse!  Eric Plaksin, co-owner of Waterpenny Farm, volunteered his day to teach us how to put the plastic on the hoophouse.  

The first step - getting the plastic up

Ron Makela, owner of Yellow Brick Road Construction, 

has spent countless hours volunteering his time to build the structure.  

Working together to pull the plastic up and over

Thank you to both Eric and Ron 
for your time, energy, and patience!! 

Securing the plastic with "Wiggle Wire"

The Hoophouse For The Hungry is a joint project between Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School and Plant-A-Row-For-The Hungry (Rappahannock Food Pantry).  Hal Hunter generously donated the hoop structure, and has helped coordinate community volunteers.  

Eric teaching how to add the "wiggle wire" to the bottom 

 We will raise fresh, healthy food year-round to be eaten by students at Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School, and to be donated to the Rappahannock Food Pantry.

Helping out

The idea is simple and makes a meaningful impact: plant an extra row in your garden to give to those in need who might not otherwise have access to fresh vegetables.  

Trimming the plastic

 If you are a gardener and want to "Plant A Row For the Hungry" go here for more information:

Plant A Row: http://www.gardenwriters.org/gwa.php?p=par/index.html 

Plant A Row Rappahannock County, VA:
http://plantarow.rappahannock.com/

Trimming the plastic and getting ready to staple and add the furring strips

Hoophouse for the Hungry - Students Work Together to Make Fresh Food a Reality

Filling the raised beds with topsoil

Students from Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School and Rappahannock Public Schools' Farm-To-Table program worked together last week to move a mountain of topsoil and gravel into the Hoophouse for the Hungry.

Connecting the hoops

The Hoophouse will be used to grow fresh, nutritious, produce for Rappahannock Food Pantry clients during colder months of the year.  It will also be used to grow plant starts in the spring so local residents will be able to start their own gardens.

Raking the topsoil smooth

The Hoophouse for the Hungry is a wonderful intergenerational community project bringing together middle school students; Master Gardeners; professional builders, landscapers, gardeners and chefs; and community volunteers.

First Fruits of Spring

The strawberries are back!  They remained dormant under all that snow this winter and are now finding their way up through the mulch. 

We are taking on the finicky process of putting down landscape cloth - cutting holes for each emerging plant - to keep the weeds down.



Two 9th year students wanted to find out how many of the plants survived the winter.  They took a random sampling of 2 foot square plots, counted the number of strawberries in each plot, then measured the area of the total bed and used a ratio to estimate the number of strawberry plants.  Good news!  The strawberries not only survived, they have multiplied. 

Strawberry jam and sticky red fingers are just around the corner.

Rappahannock Garden Club Donates Cold Frame

THANK YOU to the Rappahannock Garden Club for donating a beautiful cold frame designed and constructed by Louise Bondelid. 

We will use it to extend the growing season earlier in the spring and later in the fall.

It is modular so it is easy to move and reconstruct in place in the garden.

Hoophouse for the Hungry

Montessori Farm School students will be able to grow food for those who need it most during the winter months.

Thanks to a generous donation from a Rappahannock citizen, Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School is working with Plant-A-Row for the Hungry and the Rappahannock Food Bank to move a 70 foot long hoophouse to the Farm School.

The students will grow cold-hardy vegetables during the winter months. These will be donated to the Food Pantry so those in need will have access to fresh produce year-round. They will also be able to start vegetable plants in the spring that will help Food Bank patrons grow their own gardens.

Pictured here, the students take the first step - measuring the dimensions of the greenhouse in order to plan for the space and order new plastic covering.

Saving the Basil from the Frost

We harvested the rest of the basil on Friday and are proccesing it into pesto to be frozen for the winter. It will be wonderful to have something to eat from the garden when there is snow on the ground outside!

The basil crop did very well this year. It germinated better, grew better, and has continued to grow longer into the Fall than we expected. This explains the huge piles here in our final harvest. The de-stemming was a whole community effort.

Plant-A-Row for the Hungry

Throughout the summer, Farm School students have donated their extra produce to the Plant-A-Row for the Hungry program, part of the Rappahannock Food Pantry. It is amazing to walk in to the Food Pantry and see a wall of fresh produce; many of the Pantry's clients would not have access to fresh food if it weren't for the generosity of local gardeners and farmers.

Visit the Plant-A-Row website to see Allie's photos (Allie is a 9th year student at Mountain Laurel) and to learn more about this great organization: http://plantarow.rappahannock.com/gallery?album=8

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.