The Scattergood Farm is a place of wonder and variety: on any given day, students might see chickens clucking and laying, calves playing, peppers reddening and squash curing. Or perhaps they will be actively involved in sowing, transplanting, weeding or watering. All these things help make possible the Farm's three primary objectives: to provide the school with organic fruits and vegetables, as well as residue-free meat and eggs; to offer students and teachers a living laboratory and outside classroom to stimulate growth and learning; and to connect Scattergood with nearby friends and our extended community. In the past year the Farm supplied Scattergood with over 1000 dozen eggs, 3500 pounds of organic produce, and several tons of apples made into sauce and cider. The farm was incorporated into many classes, including Biology, Advanced Biology, General Science, Social Studies, and Drawing. We sold hundreds of pounds of excess produce to New Pioneer Cooperative in Iowa City and the West Branch Natural Market. In 2004 we started a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) which provides people in our local community with fresh produce and eggs twice weekly during the summer months.

Incorporating the Farm into Our Daily Lives

The farm has become a regular part of students' experience at Scattergood. Every day, students might walk over to visit the animals, do an early morning crew, gather eggs, eat and prepare locally grown food, or take part in farm project. The farm is also an important feature in the Scattergood academic curriculum, providing students with real-world examples as a way to understand key concepts. Having a school farm allows us to engage students through the use of an outdoor classroom in which they can learn about the world around them and see the relevance of class subjects to their environment. Getting involved in composting, collecting and classifying specimens, and building frog ponds at the farm, for example, are ways in which students have become enthusiastic about learning as well as gaining a sense of their relationship to the larger world around them. In the next few years, we hope to construct a classroom building at the farm that will allow students to spend even more time learning through the farm environment.

Specific Projects

A wide variety of academic classes utilize the farm, from art projects to science classes. Students in Dana Foster's Poultry Project class each spring care for 100 heritage breed chickens, 70 hybrid meat chickens, and 15 turkeys. Art students have used the chickens as subject models at various stages of development, learning to capture the image of chickens at rest and in movement. Sophomores in Biology class have been making various on-going observations around campus and the farm and occasionally provide a night watch in anticipation of ewes lambing. Several seniors were active during Senior Week in planting a windbreak and berry-arium on the west side of campus. Science classes often use the farm as a lab to learn about various processes and systems. In one recent class, students learned about composting and measured temperatures to understand the chemistry of compost. Other students have conducted labs detecting evidence of intestinal parasites in sheep manure; or generating seedlings, calculating the factors that help contribute to plant fertility.