Food Production Class

I'm getting excited about teaching this class again in the 2013-2014 school year.  I'm hatching plans for several field trips to experts in the area who grow fruit trees and grapes.  The vineyard keeper who agreed to having us visit his vineyard on the east side of Hutchinson is trained in horticulture and works as a foreman in a nursery. He sells grapevines at the farmer's market this time of year, and is very helpful in sharing his experience and information.   The orchardist is also an experienced grafter, and I hope to have him show my students how to graft fruit trees.  Another thing I like about his approach is that he is extraordinarily tuned in to natural methods of pest and disease control, and early on in his fruit tree growing venture, he transplanted many plants from the wild if he knew they were natural hosts to insects that helped control damaging insects.  Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is the only one I remember.

I also hope to give the students hands-on experience in pruning bramble fruits and fruit trees--in the process helping nearby families with some of their spring food production chores.

*************************

We plan to use an extension service booklet as the "textbook" for growing vegetables.  It's an excellent guide written specifically for Kansas gardeners, and is available at a reasonable price.  I'd like something similar for growing fruits, herbs, and for raising food-producing animals--from honeybees to beef.  Everything should be applicable to family-sized, small-farm production models, and should be low-cost.  If you know of such a resource, please tell me.

*************************

I hope students take this class with their parents' full support.  A few students know they want to take the class, but I'm sure there's a lot of "I'm afraid it'll be too much work" sentiment out there, and students are clever enough to convince their parents that this is a valid argument.   I do have plans to make some of the details easier to manage than when I first taught the class.  That's part of the reason for seeking out textbook "booklets" instead of relying entirely on gathered materials as we did earlier.  I also expect to streamline the studying/quizzing process.   What I will not do is "dumb down" the class so much that students find it a breeze, but run the risk of emerging without having learned much at all beyond what their parents could have taught them in a few sessions at the end of a hoe.  I'd like for everyone in the class to learn the sum of all that any of the parents know, and perhaps a few things beyond that.  

I wish students could look ahead far enough to see what might be very much harder than taking a class on food production:  having a family to feed on a tight budget (and in families with stay-at-home-moms, this will usually be the case), especially if good nutrition is a matter of concern--and NOT having the skills to produce low-cost, nutritious food at home.   After one year of not growing my own transplants, I'm dismayed at how much it costs to have someone else do it for me.  While setup costs for growing your own transplants may not pay off in one year, it won't take long for that to happen.  For me, this year, I would certainly have not paid more in setup costs than I paid for plants.  Besides this, if you do this with your children's help, they will feel the delight of being involved with living things, and they will know how to do this when they have a family to provide for.

Another thing I'd be happy to have students understand now is that if they learn to produce food in Kansas, they can probably do so anywhere.  The same strategies that produce food here will produce more food almost everywhere else.

If students are fortunate enough to acquire a love for gardening, they will welcome every new growing season with joy.  What's not to like about that?