The fascinating world of the Orca K-8 school garden!

Our incredible middle school students organized and ran an amazing food drive. We delivered the food to the food bank via wagons last Friday. It was a beautiful, sunny morning as we strolled to the Rainier Valley Food Bank. It was a student powered community service project!

What a powerful project that inspires students to do something positive for the community. Orca really is a school that encourages students and staff to make a difference in the world. This past summer and fall, we donated about 500 pounds of fresh Orca produce to the food bank. So this was a good project to keep students giving food in the winter.

Congratulations to Marletta’s class for bringing in over 200 food donations!

We have harvested enough fingerling and purple potatoes from the garden to make french fries with 4 classes. This is a great chance to talk about local foods in a greasy and delicious way! In Jeff’s 6th grade math/science class, this was the culminating lesson that summed up our unit on local foods and conventional vs. local food production. In 4th/5th grade, we got a chance to taste Orca french fries and compare them to certain fast food companies’ fries that shall remain nameless (golden arches anyone?).

This also gave us a great opportunity to discuss media ad campaigns and how maybe these fast food companies are selling us something that isn’t exactly good for us. All 4 classes created logos and slogans for Orca French Fries. Organic! Fresh! No additives! Local! These were at the heart of many of their ads. The students creativity and media savvy knowledge helped them create the ultimate un-campaign!

The middle school’s Student Council & The Environmental Science/Garden Elective have teamed up for an amazing community service project. The Rainier Valley Food Bank was recently robbed of thousands of pounds of food. Middle school students stepped up with a holiday food drive to help this great food bank. Dante’s class took a field trip there a month ago to donate Orca garden produce, so we feel a special connection with them. Donation boxes were delivered to classrooms today. 1000 cans of food?! We can do it.

In the spirit of garden winterization- leaves were collected for the final mulching of the garden. Success!

We got to mulching with our incredible kindergarten and first graders today. It was the most beautiful sunny December 1st ever! We collected leaves from around the school grounds and then spread them into our garden beds.

Our Orca wormbins processed 77 pounds of food scraps. Our Cedar Grove collection was 296 pounds!!!

The focus, determination, and enthusiasm was in full force today as first graders chopped plants for the compost bin. After a brief discussion of the cycles of the garden, we got to chopping and tearing away like wild Tasmanian devils. We even dug up some more potatoes.

This amazing grant will allow us to purchase extra seeds and compost to grow organic starter plants to donate. Orca students can have a hand in the growing of hundreds (or thousands) of pounds of produce that will be donated to foodbanks. Watch the video announcing our win at:

opcoop.coop/

This grant was sponsored by Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union. Out of over 100 submissions, only 4 organizations received cash awards. Go green team!

The middle school garden & science enrichment class hosted their first monthly green team meeting. All classrooms in the school sent a student representative to the meeting to discuss the changes in the culture of recycling here at Orca. Our goal is to not only improve our recycling skills, but to really move towards being a zero waste school. Middle schoolers are leading this charge with great leadership and positivity. They will be going into every classroom on Thursdays to check if the recycling bin is being used properly. Will classes get a green check or a red check, hmmmm, only time will tell. Classrooms will also have friendly monthly competitions to see which class has the most success. November’s challenge is to separate garbage and recycling! We will keep you updated on the progress of this really cool intiative!

Two 4/5 classes came out to the garden and had an absolute blast tearing out dead plants and chopping everything down. As we prepare for what we think is probably going to be a freezing Winter, we are getting the garden ready. These classes got to be part of an activity that showcases the natural evolution of seasons. To some it seemed violent to be tearing, breaking, cracking, and basically destroying the garden. But this experience was a great first hand encounter with how Northwest gardens do basically hibernate and go to sleep in the Winter. We are using our 3 stage compost bins so we can turn all this garden waste into yummy compost! Sustainability! No students complained of being bored, all were engaged, and it couldn’t have happened on a more beautiful sunny November day.