North Clarion Continues Cultivating Community With Garden Planting Event

| May 31, 2018

FRILLS CORNERS, Pa. (EYT) – North Clarion Elementary School held their spring garden planting event on Tuesday, May 29.

Last year, North Clarion Elementary School planted a brand new garden in conjunction with the National Farm to School Network. This year, they are expanding their garden and watching the whole program grow.

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Elementary School Principal Mr. Keith Hastings told exploreClarion.com, “We’ve got a lot of support from the community. We plant every spring at the end of the school year.”

“We harvest every fall at the end of September. We try to make it a big, giant community event when we harvest, we have all of the parents come out and we fry up french fries from the potatoes we grow here, all from Long Acres.”

The project began last year, with a partnership with Long Acres Potato Farms of Tionesta; Tractor Supply of Clarion; the Wildflower Garden Club of Sligo; Keystone SMILES AmeriCorps; and many others being involved.

The school was also one of 30 schools in Pennsylvania to receive a state Farm to School $1,000.00 grant.

Tim Preston, the store manager for Clarion’s Tractor Supply store, who has a son in the fifth-grade at North Clarion, helped in acquiring a $500.00 grant for the project and also donated seed and seed starter kits for the garden.

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“The partnerships have really made it successful; just to do it on our own would be pretty tough. And the parents and kids are very excited about it. It’s really taken off. We’ve gotten a lot of compliments from the parents that are just excited to come out and help,” Hastings explained.

According to Hastings, this year’s garden is double the size of last year’s garden, and while it still includes the potatoes and corn grown last year, they’ve also incorporated butternut squash, as well as some cabbage and tomato plants.

“We’re trying to make it bigger and better every year. We got some recognition from the state, so we have some folks coming out this year, including two people from the Farm to School Grant Organization, so we’re getting a little recognition at that level, but really, it’s all about the kids. We want to teach them how to grow a healthy garden, teach them about what they can do. We’re trying to incorporate some of the businesses around, too, so it could be a career option, as well.”

Elaine McDonnell, Assistant Research Professor and Director of Project PA at Penn State University, and Audrey Hess, Public Health Nutrition Consultant and Farm to School Lead for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, attended Tuesday’s event to see first-hand how the Farm to School Grant was being utilized.

“It’s also nice that the school board wants to support this. Not everyone would want us to just dig up the backyard. They’re really supportive about it and think that it’s great. It’s nice we can have it right beside the school,” Hastings said.

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Students are also learning about crop rotation as a cover crop of wildflowers will soon be planted in a large part of the area used for corn and potatoes last year. There will also be sunflowers from seeds some of the students started early in their classrooms.

Long Acres Farms, owned and operated by Bryan Beck and his dad, Clair Beck, tilled and prepared the site for the planting of the potatoes and other crops. On Tuesday, students in grades Pre-K through sixth grade, along with Bryan Beck and retired North Clarion History teacher Terry Moore, took turns planting potatoes.

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“The big thing is: food is community. At the end of the day, your life only sustained by simple food. I think it showcases that. If you can get everybody to understand, it’s just so simple, we need food on this planet, and we need to produce it, and there’s going to be how many billions of people on this planet within twenty years. It’s the one thing our society doesn’t talk about because we have ample food today, but things could change rapidly. With the children understanding where food comes from and how to produce food, even on a simple level, I think that’s just really good moving forward,” Beck said.

“Fortunately, we’re in a very ag minded area here, which helps. It’s nice to see the whole community coming together to do this. We’d love to have a greenhouse and we’d love any community support to put into making it better. We could make it better if we had some more resources.”

The students also got to check out farm equipment and do other special activities with the AmeriCorps members.

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Joyce Fosdick, Executive Director of the Keystone SMILES AmeriCorps program, explained that “Beanie Babies” are a seed germination activity, where children put a seed, special water-soluble beads, and a bit of water in a small plastic baggie on a string, and then get to watch the seed sprout before planting it.

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Another AmeriCorps activity included making beaded bracelets that included special thermo-sensitive beads that change color as they heat up.

During the activity, the AmeriCorps members talk to the children about the importance of things like sunscreen and hats for protection from sunburn and explain the color changing beads can serve as a reminder to take a break in the shade and put on sunscreen.

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“It’s nice to have partners like AmeriCorps, that they want to come out and help set up and do all these crafts. They had their own Ag Day last week, so they kind of brought in some of that, just to help us out,” Hastings said.

Hastings also noted that when they created a signup for people to volunteer to help with the garden over the summer, the response was almost overwhelming.

“That sheet filled up really fast,” Hastings said.

Like last year, a Harvest Day event will be planned for sometime in late September. The children will help harvest the potatoes and other crops, and students and teachers will get a taste of the fruit of their labor in the form of sweet corn and air fried french fries. The final product of the butternut squash is still to be determined, though.

“We talked about making pies. I don’t think we’re going to do that on the same day that we have our cookout in the afternoon. But, we’re going to turn them into pies, or, another thought with the squash is making a soup. Either way, we want to serve them in the schools so all of the kids can taste something that came out of the garden,” Hastings said.

Though the program has certainly grown since it’s inception last year, Hastings continues to plan for more expansion in the future, as well.

“This is sort of an elementary project at this point, but there’s a point where we want to get the high school involved, too: start doing soil samples and testing and things like that,” he said.

“With all of our community support, we’ve been able to make it really a successful thing that we want to grow in the future.”

“The sky’s the limit.”

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