Farm School

CONTACT:

Moore Hill Road
Athol, MA 01331
(978) 249-9944
www.farmschool.org

Ben Holmes, Founder/Director

DESCRIPTION:

Less than 2% of today’s American children experience the values of growing up on a family farm. The Farm School is a brilliant educational response to that loss -- a 130-acre hilltop dairy farm that has been adapted to provide intensive 3-day learn-by-working experiences for 1,200 middle-school students from 35 schools annually, 36 at a time living in bunkhouses, just like the old days. Students learn what it was to rise at dawn to do the daily chores: milking cows and goats, slopping pigs, feeding chickens, ducks, and Mac, the work-horse. They help with the seasonal and long-term work of the farm, as well–gardening, mowing fields, mending fences, trail building, even tending forests for lumber used to expand farm facilities (e.g., the bunkhouses). Students’ time includes both work and quiet reflection. Is it any wonder that all of the schools that have tried this program have registered to do it again?

In 2002, The Farm School launched two programs: the Chicken Coop School, where 7th and 8th graders spend their mornings learning traditional academic subjects, then apply them through work on the farm in the afternoon; and the Practical Farm Training Program, which is a year-long training program through which apprentices learn all of the skills necessary to operate their own small, diversified farm. As family farms disappear, and farmers retire in great numbers, there is a severe shortage of young farmers ready to take their places. Twenty-two apprentices have joined the farm in the first three years of this program.

(2000: CULTURE: Education: Informal: General)