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

In this heatwave, on the glorious first day of school, Mr. McCullough’s kindergarten class came out and foraged for cherry tomatoes. Most tried them and loved them. What a delicious way to start our quest to expose kids to the natural world and all it’s yumminess.

Funny Moment #1- “Anybody want some yummy cherry tomatoes?”, says Mr. Anthony. “Yes,” scream the eager kindergarteners. “OK, I gotta go to the store real quick and get some….WAIT! We have some in the garden! Eat up.” says Mr. Anthony.

Tomato scavenger hunt!

Off to a blazing start with our compost set up in the lunchroom. Last year we composted over 2 tons of food waste (Don’t get me started on the “wasting” of food in America- it’s atrocious). This food would have gone to the landfill to be permanently buried beneath a million plastic bags and old refrigerators. We had kindergarteners composting on the first day- how cool. Marletta and I run this program with the help of Jeff’s 6th grade Math & Science class, which will be making this lunchroom service part of their class responsibilities. Compost on!

We have different bins- worm food (fruits & veggies), cooked food compost that goes to Cedar Grove, plastic and can recycling, milk carton recycling, a share bin, and plain old trash.

the new set-up