Friends Academy

n/a

Address: 1088 Tucker Rd.
Dartmouth, MA 02747
US

Telephone: (508)999-1356
Fax: (508)997-0117
Email: radleyandfinch@earthlink.net
Website: http://www.friendsacademy1810.org

The garden at Friends Academy was initiated in 2007 by faculty member Katherine Gaudet as a tribute to her parents, Jim and Emmie Roberts, who were both avid gardeners. The school garden has its roots in their memory.

From the start the garden was conceived as a setting where children could experience the joys and challenges of gardening in a hands-on way and also understand the nutritional and environmental consequences of food production. Students read soil tests, prepare compost, sow cover crops, set up protective row covers, harvest crops, take Brix readings and seed and/or transplant at least two different crops per bed during the outdoor growing season, which begins in March and ends sometime before our Winter Break.

During the 2008-2009 school year the garden doubled its original size and now consists of ten growing beds, each a meter wide and fifty feet long. The garden measures 3630 sq. feet, or approximately one-twelfth of an acre. Thanks to a generous grant from the Baldwin Foundation, the garden gained a storage shed and an irrigation system plus an array of tools and other gardening necessities.

Special thanks also go out to our neighbor on Tucker Road, Derek Christianson, who is the owner of Brix Bounty Farm and coordinator of Roots Down - New Bedford and Know Your Vegetables (http://brixbounty.blogspot.com). Derek has been an invaluable source of advice, equipment and materials. Every school garden should be so lucky to have such a generous and knowledgeable mentor.

The school garden follows the bio-intensive method of gardening, which advocates for the use of organic fertilizers -- primarily compost -- and which employs a strategy of close planting in defined beds. The leaves of mature plants touch their neighbors, producing a living mulch that blocks sunlight and minimizes weed growth. Close planting also maximizes garden space, and because plants are situated only in established beds, applications of compost and fertilizer are more efficiently targeted.

In addition to educating children about gardening, the garden has been a key piece of the Friends Academy service-learning program. Every Friday beginning in early April and continuing throughout the summer and fall, volunteers drive garden produce three miles to the Food Pantry at Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford. The Food Pantry serves more than 200 households, a number that has been on the increase since the beginning of the long economic downturn. Each year approximately sixty students are scheduled to work in the garden, either as members of a sixth grade health class or as participants in the fall and spring versions of our service learning classes, which consist of a double period on Friday mornings. In addition, various children are active in the garden during after-school and summer programs.

Students completed the final harvest of the 2009 season on December 11th. Sixth-eight pounds of produce, mostly hardy greens like Swiss chard, kale and lettuce were sent to the Food pantry, lifting the yearly total to 2624 pounds.

The Food Pantry currently serves 243 households consisting of 657 individuals. A ton and a quarter of produce might seem like a lot, but given the increasing number of families asking for assistance, there's a need for much more. That need plus our enchantment with the miracles wrought by soil and seeds continue to motivate us to improve the quantity and quality of our vegetables.

The 2010 gardening season began in mid-February, when as part of our Winterim program several students spent a day seeding 4500 onions plus 500 turnips and a couple hundred spinach in plastic trays. The first harvest of those onion seeds will begin some five and half months later at the end of July.

As of the third week of July 2010, the garden has sent 1648 pounds of fresh produce to the Grace Church Food Pantry, which is about 1000 pounds more than we delivered at the same date in 2009. At 379 pounds, lettuce has been our biggest producer, followed by cabbage and Portuguese kale at 306 and 224 pounds respectively. Cucumbers have weighed in at 157 pounds, and our first succession of cukes is still heavy with fruits. A second succession of cukes was transplanted in early July and should pick up the slack in early August when the older plants inevitably die back.

We've also had strong production from the carrot, potato and summer squash beds. Because of space limitations we did not seed tomatoes until May 16th, so we do not expect a harvest from them until mid-August at the earliest. In all we have twenty-plus crops in production, and as one crop reaches the end of its cycle we have seeds and seedlings ready to fill the vacated bed with season-specific plants.

We've had dozens of students volunteering throughout the summer months and their help is a timely and significant continuation of the productive effort they contributed during the school year.

We welcome all vistors and volunteers. Please use the contact e-mail address to ensure someone will be in the garden to greet you and show you around.

Steve Walach