Tamworth Piglets Arrive!

Eagerly welcoming the new piglets

Cute but with a very loud squeal

Three Tamworth weanlings have joined us at the Farm School this winter.

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

Adolescents Mentor Younger Children

Farm School students mentor younger children during community work. 

The pigs helped out too.

Proud of our Heritage

Here at Mountain Laurel Montessori we are proud to be raising heritage pigs.


Our pigs are Tamworths, one of the oldest known breeds. They are listed as threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Heritage breeds are important because they help preserve the genetic diversity of our livestock. They tend to be hearty, withstand disease, and are often better suited to being raised on pasture.

Our Tamworths are happily soaking in all of the belly-rubs offered by the students and eating vegetable scraps from both of our campuses and a local restaurant.

This Little Piggie Went to the Farm School...

We have new pigs!!

We have recently been joined by 3 young Tamworth pigs. Tamworth is a heritage breed that originated in the United Kingdom (notice the Irish red hair) and is now listed as "Threatened" in the United States.

It is fun to watch them interact and to check out their freshly painted home. They are playful and inquisitive.

We will raise the male for meat, and breed the two females in the Spring.

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.