Well, the farm is put to bed and plans are in the works for next year.  Every year has brought different challenges and rewards.  This year was no exception.  We scaled down, but had a better quality in many of our veggies especially the lettuce.

Thanks to our summer school kids and their awesome teacher, Jeff Boyd, we had a bumper crop of lettuce and carrots, were able to fallow an acre of the field and keep the weeds at bay with the tractor and each student was able to become competent with the tiller.  The summer school ag education program was given chickens and the students were really great at keeping them healthy and happy.

If you didn't see the wonderful tall raised bed and wheelchair sidewalk that was built by local concrete companies, then you missed out.  Thanks to Central PreMix, Spokane Rock Products, Cook Forms, and Wm. Winkler Co. for their wonderful donation of their expertise and products.  The bed was a lovely home for the veggies and flowers for the Special Ed. students from EVHS.  Those kids did such a great job and their teachers went above and beyond to create a memorable teaching experience for them.

Our wheat harvest for this year was not what we hoped, but the great guys from Crop Production Services have already planted winter wheat and it is already coming up!  Fred Flemming from Shepherd's Grain has been really great at helping our wheat program grow.

This was a great year for the hot peppers that the kids from our Construction/Ag Program grew.  The students are so good at coming all through the summer and watering.  I have yet to even smell one of the peppers let alone put one to my lips; too hot for me!  Our Teen Parent Program came and picked carrots, broccoli and beans.  They cooked the veggies and made baby food.  Lucky babies!

At the Trent Harvest Fair, attendees got to try brownies made from wheat and beets grown at the farm.  Only one person could tell there were beets in the chocolate brownies.  The carrot cake made with carrots and wheat from the farm was also a real hit.  Two pumpkins grown at the farm were given away to the people who guessed the correct weight of the pumpkins. There were some really good guesses.

At the close of the season the farm produced 1145 pounds for Second Harvest and 275 pounds for the school district.  Next year will be better!   We had 80 volunteers this year, but need even more for next year.  If you want to volunteer next year, please contact me.  The farm welcomes all volunteers; individuals, families, company employees...anyone willing to help out.

Everyone have a great winter and we will see you in the spring!

See you at The Farm!

Lynette

momromney@earthlink.net

Hi All!

This week was a complete mixed bag of emotion and activity at the Farm.  Many of you are aware of the vandalism that the Farm received, but trust me when I say, the vandalism has been overshadowed by an outpouring of concern, compassion and generosity.

In the very early hours of Wednesday morning, at least three young people were caught at Plantes Ferry Park after vandalizing East Valley’s farm sheds and Plantes Ferry Park outbuildings.  Spokane Valley Police did a great job in apprehending the youth responsible.  According to the investigating officer, none of the vandals were enrolled in East Valley Schools.

The damage to the sheds could have been much worse.  In addition to the very thorough graffiti, the man doors on the sheds were kicked in rendering them useless.  None of the equipment or tools were stolen or damaged, the greatest damage being done to the exterior of the sheds and the doors.

The worst part about this crime was seeing the look on the faces of the Construction Program students when they arrived at the Farm.  To see all of their hard work and countless hours defaced and disregarded in such a senseless way was overwhelming for them.  Several Construction students were eager to get the sheds secured for the night and so with the help of my husband, were able to ease that worry and got the sheds secured.

After taking a day to process, organize and secure the sheds, Wednesday saw a tremendous outpouring of compassion.  By late morning, neighbors had stopped by to offer assistance.  One gentleman stopped by to lend his experience as a heavy-duty mechanic to inspect the tractor.  Another gentleman stopped by to order one of the custom made sheds from the Construction Program.  Home Depot donated a portion of the paint and supplies to paint the two unfinished sheds, Lowe’s sent two experts out to survey the damage and make a list of everything we would need to clean or paint over the graffiti on the finished shed, and LNS Building Cleaning Supplies dropped off a case of cleaners.

Construction students got to work and by day’s end, all the graffiti was cleaned off or covered up.   By day’s end, I mean 7pm.  Three young men from the construction class didn’t like the looks of the decking on the porch of the “show shed” and so came back later Thursday afternoon with their own high pressure washer.  After running out of the most effective solvent they spent their own money to buy more.  The porch looks like nothing ever happened to it!

There is still more work to be done: door jams need replacing, and the remainder of the sheds need to be painted. With the help of a great community and the determination of the Construction Program students and teachers, we are on our way to making the sheds beautiful once more.

The lessons learned varied from person to person, but I can almost guarantee that no student involved in building the sheds will ever be a participant in vandalism.  I am also fairly certain that many kids were able to feel some measure of compassion for the vandals.  Some students voiced how proud they felt about their work and how ashamed they felt that another teenager could show such disregard for another’s efforts.

Judging from the reactions of not only students, but community members as well, there are a great deal of people that care about the Farm and it’s participants.  What a blessing.

See you at the Farm,

Lynette

Here is an update just so you are all aware of what we are up to at the farm. All the raised beds have been tilled (thanks to the middle school CTE kids) and the field has been plowed and disced. I still need to harrow the field and then we will spray the field with roundup to start getting a handle on the quack grass situation. Once that is done, we will lay out the family plot area in the field and ya'll can start planting. I am aiming for all of this work to be completed by May 12th. I know you are chomping at the bit to get in the dirt, but there are several people involved in doing this work, so between all of our schedules and the weather, I think May 12th is going to have to be good enough for the field work. If you have a raised bed, you are free to garden at will, but keep in mind that the wive's tale is to wait til there is no snow on Mica Peak. Thanks for your patience; it is going to be a great year at the farm!

Lynette

In preparation for Saturday's plowing, students from EV High School and EV Middle School picked rocks, wood and trash out of the field all day Friday. They were all such good sports as fresh cow manure had been spread the day before!  What a great day we had Saturday plowing the field.  The Inland Empire Gas and Steam Buffs were so generous with their time and tractors to plow our field!  With five tractors and plows the field was plowed in no time at all and the weather couldn't have been better.  The farm could not exist without the wonderful service from the men in the tractor club.  Thank you, Thank you!  I even got in on some of the tractor fun by discing up our wheat field with the Massey Ferguson 135 that was bought last year with funds donated by Spokane Valley Kiwanis.  Thanks to Eldon Jons for the tractor -driving lesson, I didn't run into anything important and the tractor is still functioning!  Look for a story about Saturday in the Inlander.

All bed assignments have been made and there are still more plots available in the raised beds.  Contact me to make a reservation.  The beds will be tilled this week and planting can start as soon as you dare.  The field plots will be ready by the beginning of May; I'll let you know when they are staked out and ready to be claimed.  Again, if you desire to grow corn, you must get your corn seed from Reta at the High School's front desk.

Last but certainly not least a new raised bed for our Special Ed. kids is almost complete.  Thanks to Debbie Strehlou, our district maintenance crew, Central Premix, Spokane Rock Product and Cook Forms the bed has been made out of concrete and is awaiting the wheelchair ramp that will be laid by Wm. Winkler Company.  What a great community we have.  You should have seen the kids putting their handprints and names in the wet concrete.  What a special day for a really sweet group of kids.

If you have any questions about your bed or plot assignments, give me a call or shoot me an email! And please visit our facebook page for photos of all the recent happenings.  I can't wait to see you all at the farm!

See you soon!

Lynette

509-230-9436

momromney@earthlink.net

I hope you are all well and happy and warm!  Preparations are in the making for this year's Farm and Community Garden.  We have great possibilities on the horizon and there are so many trying to make those possibilities a reality.  In the fall, I definitely felt an end to the farming year.

I consider this the farm's fourth year.  There was a year of planning, our first growing season in 2010, last year's season and now here we are on our fourth year.  Each year we have made improvements not in just what we grow, but how we grow it.  The weather has played a major role in our successes and failures; welcome to farming!  I just wish I could have complete control over the weather so that we would have nothing but success!  Actually, that really isn't true.  In failure there is opportunity for tremendous growth and learning.  I have learned so much!  I also know the students who have participated have also learned a thing or two about farming, work, and building character and buildings!  I think our community gardeners continue to learn and they add so much to the farm's beauty and wonderful atmosphere.

Now I am feeling a definite beginning to this new farming year.  Beginnings can be great in that they are new, fresh and full of possibilities.   Sometimes beginnings are scary because there is an element of the unknown, sometimes they are exciting because of what you do know and sometimes, because of previous experience, you are filled with confidence.  I find this year's beginning at the farm is all of the above.  There are things that I know, many more things that I don't know, and experience has shown me that being scared is usually due to a lack of preparation.

I am grateful for beginnings.  In my life I have had many beginnings; some wildly successful and some not so much. With the "not so much" variety of beginning success, there is a great truth:  you can usually begin again.  I am aware that success is not merely in beginning, but beginning with the intent of working as hard as you can no matter what.  Add to that hard work a serious amount of preparation and now you have a recipe for success.  I think we will have a successful 2012 and I look forward to sharing every bit of that success with you!

I'll keep you posted as we solidify preparations and make changes.  Until the next update then!

Lynette

I am happy to announce everything that we could harvest is out of the Farm and in the hands of either the district kitchens or Second Harvest.  Our final plowing is being planned for sometime in the first ten days of November.  Thanks to Jon Larson's classes from EVMS and Chad Mathison's class from A New Journey Middle School for all their hard work in getting the farm harvested.  Those kids have been out at the Farm about twice a week harvesting.  EVHS Construction class gave a hand in carrying all the irrigation pipe out of the field and stacked it beautifully.  What a great and willing work force we have in this district!

To date we have harvested one thousand twenty seven pounds of produce.  This year was an even more difficult year to be a farmer than last year. The late spring and sudden warmth was good and bad.  The wet spring was great for the wheat, not so much for the corn seeds that rotted and another section of something that didn't show that had to be tilled under.  Then the sudden HOT weather put the wheat in shock, but one watering helped it recover.  The final poundage for the wheat harvest was about 800 pounds.  Archer Daniels Milling (ADM) Cheney cleaned our wheat for us.  They don't usually just clean wheat at that mill and so had a really hard time getting the dockage numbers down.  Dockage is the weed seed and bugs and other junk that gets harvested along with the wheat.  Because ADM couldn't get our wheat clean enough for our use, they took our wheat and added it to their wheat to run through the complete milling process and then gave us 800 pounds of their wheat.  So all is well!

On Thursday, Oct. 27th from 6:30 to 8pm at he High School's harvest carnival, we will be displaying wheat treshing and trying to thresh, grind and make the flour into a pancake all in under 6 minutes.  Young women from Harmoney High and A New Journey Middle School have been invited to help us out.

Have you seen the new shed?  It looks great thanks to the efforts of last year's wood shop classes and this year's construction class.  Two more sheds are being built behind the current shed.  Our construction students will have had some great practice by the time they finish the sheds!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me: momromeny@earthlink.net.

See you soon!

Lynette

What a FABULOUS day at the farm!  About two hundred students came out today to witness the wheat harvest.  One class got to pick carrots out of the ground, wash them and eat them in the span of about 5 minutes.  You just can't get any fresher than that!

Today we harvested the wheat in two different ways.  The first way was like the Romans did thousands of years ago with a scythe.  Dan Conley, storyteller extraordinaire, wheat expert, and all around great guy, came and taught about 200 students over the course of the day how wheat was harvested and showed them the kind of scythes used as far back as 50,000 years ago.  His small scythe/knife made out of a sharp edged rock and a deer antler was so interesting!  After watching me harvest the wheat by hand with the scythe and cradle, I told the kids they should never complain about mowing the lawn again with their mowers!

The other method of harvesting was shown to the kids by three generations of Rockford farmers, Gary Fricke, his son Blaine and his son Tyler.  They brought their 1950 John Deer tractor and combine to the field and explained how the combine worked complete with diagrams and pictures.  Then they cut a swath around the wheat field and showed the kids the cut wheat in the grain bin.  They even gave a real life example of fixing your equipment in the field as their rear wheel had a bit of a problem.  It wasn't a problem for long because the Fricke's can fix anything!

Eldon Jons also brought a tractor and mower and started to get the harvested parts of the farm ready for tilling under in November.  With the construction class busy finishing the shed, it was a very productive and busy day at the farm!  A HUGE thank you to the Fricke's, and Eldon and our construction class for all they do to make our farm great!  I don't think our students will eat a bowl of cereal or a sandwich without thinking that they now know where the wheat flour came to make what they eat.

Tuesday, I will take the wheat to ADM out in Cheney  where they will clean the wheat and give it back to us ready to be ground by our students for use in various baking projects by various classes.

The harvesting of the produce continues.  Believe it or not we are still harvesting broccoli and beans!  The cucumber and some zucchini plants have succomed to frost, but the rest of the farm looks pretty good.  Look for another update announcing a community harvest day some time in the next few weeks.  Also check out the photos on our Facebook page East Valley Farm to School Program.

See you at the farm!

Lynette