Meet Shanell

Meet Shanell Rosenfeld, Chimacum Schools’ new K-6 Garden Coordinator. Shanell has picked up the Garden Coordinator relay baton from Corey Chin, who had to step back earlier this spring due to a family medical emergency.

Shanell, a certificated Early Elementary and Special Education teacher, has taught using a STEAM framework (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) in Pennsylvania, Washington, and Germany. At her most recent teaching post in Berlin, her students were able to experience both art and earth studies through a garden Shanell built to enhance play space on the roof of their urban school building.  

In her teaching, Shanell likes to start with a theme, for example "Composting," and then scale the lessons—from learning about and experiencing earth worms, to why a well-composed compost pile breaks down, to nutrient cycling from soil to plant to plate, and how those nutrients nourish the bodies and minds of students who eat fresh garden-grown produce.

Picking up where classes left off last fall, this spring the students at Chimacum Creek Primary and Chimacum Elementary will have hands-on instruction in growing plants from seed, as well as nurturing perennial culinary & medicinal herbs, berries, and orchard trees.  Shanell loves to build and create with students, and will also be encouraging garden art from found and recycled materials—for example, the new chain link garden fence could have a woven design to bring visual interest as well as creating a wind break for those lessons held outside of the greenhouse.

Because of Shanell's early elementary and special education teaching certifications, the Community Wellness Project has also contracted with her to design a locally-grounded garden curriculum for east Jefferson County Schools. When finished, this curriculum can serve as a resource for all local schools who wish to use it, helping new garden coordinators come up to speed quickly with their programs, while reassuring school leaders that garden lessons are grounded in grade level-aligned next generation science standards.

Those passionate about art, earth, and helping kids can contact Shanell at CSD49.garden(at)gmail.com

Meet Leta

Were you born a gardener or were you molded into one?

Leta Fetherolf, the new garden coordinator for Salish Coast Elementary first loved gardens when planting alongside her Mom and sister in North Carolina. As a student attending, Berea College in Kentucky, she worked in the Horticultural Department. Setting her sights on the NW, she landed on Orcas Island to farm on a 12-acre site (tractors required), then added intensive farming skills (hands on) for a two-acre plot before taking an internship at the Organic Seed Alliance and also working in the Goosefoot Food Bank garden… soil is in her soul.

For her first two weeks on the job, she’s been weeding out last year's Covid growth getting plots ready for this year’s seeds. She has high hopes her passion for plants takes hold in the students as they experience the full-emersion garden.  After the second garden for production produce is deer fenced, students will also learn how to grow crops for their school lunch.

Leta wants kids to leave the garden feeling empowered -- knowing where food comes from and that gardening is an accessible skill for them to learn. She hopes they are inspired whether it's through one of her classes or from sharing the space with other Salish teachers. She sees local agricultural as foundational for community resilience and also as a way to become independent of big agricultural practices. 

Stop by and welcome Leta. Better yet, pick up a shovel and join her!

April 1 - 30, 2021

We finally have great spring weather. Get out and walk, run, paddle… and raise some cash for the FEED Jeffco project.

Sign up here - the challenge starts April 1 and gives you the month of April to finish. If you want to crush your personal challenge in a day or take three weeks to do it, it’s up to you.

For details - go here.

Get moving!

Food Access Group Provides 1590 Bags of Local Food

Who is behind food security in Jefferson County? There isn’t a city or county department which oversees our local food safety net; yet miraculously things come together and a sector of our young families were recently helped. Let’s dig into this project and find out where funding compassion met needs and implementation. The Food Access Group, which addressed the food security gap between December of 2020 and spring break 2021, have delivered 1590 bags of nourishing, local food to an average of 150 families a week.

About the Food Access Group

It’s an ad hoc collection of individuals, WSU Extension, four non-profits, and nine businesses who found a way feed kids when the school breakfast/lunch program closed down. The “Christmas Box” was so successful that the program continued weekly under the “Spread the Love” moniker. The Spread the Love’s funding stopped short of spring break, but thanks to more funding by Jefferson Community Foundation, the spring break holiday gap will also be covered.

With the cash in hand, The Food Access Group stepped up the mission to not only feed families, but also keep local businesses thriving, through providing high quality food with an artisan PB&J sandwich. Luckily Finnriver Grainery/Pane d’Amore had already field tested their Approachable Loaf to make sure kids would love its squishy texture and not care that they were eating a whole wheat product. SpringRain Farm and Orchard and We be Jammin’ added jams, and CB's Nuts provided their signature peanut butter. Red Dog Farm and Solstice Farms contributed veggies to the Christmas Box. The Food Banks and OlyCAP added veggies and canned goods as well, but a sack wasn’t complete until a frozen, made-from-scratch meal by Grace Love, the owner of Nadine’s Kitchen, was tucked into place.

Who’s Who At-a-Glance

Funding: An anonymous donor to The Community Wellness Project (CWP) (JCCWP.org) and later the Jefferson Community Foundation made it possible to continue the program over school spring break.

Staffing provided by CWP: Kathryn (Kat) Hoerauf coordinated the vendors providing the weekly food as well as bag packing.

Staffing provided by Jefferson County YMCA: Genevieve Barlow, Rowan Matkins with a shout out to volunteers Terri, Susan, Sophie, Karolina, Roseanna, Saasdi, and Emily. The seven volunteers boxed up goods and delivered across six delivery routes covering the four school districts of Port Townsend, Chimacum, Quilcene, and Brinnon.

Food Suppliers: Finnriver Grainery & Pane d’Amore (bread); CB’s Nuts (peanut butter); SpringRain Farm and Orchard and We Be Jammin’ (jam); Nadine’s Kitchen (frozen meal); Red Dog Farm, Solstice Farm (fresh veggies); Food Banks, and OlyCAP (fresh veggies, pasta, staples and canned goods).

Distribution vans: Jefferson Healthcare vans, YMCA buses.

Pick up points: East Jefferson County School Districts and individual homes.

More Details:

This was a huge undertaking which needed fast deployment to fill the holiday gap. With such a short timeline, Kat Hoerauf was hired to organize and insure all the big picture moving parts kept moving. She is also the SNAP coordinator housed at WSU Extension and already knew how to find out which families needed the most help.

Boxes, Bags, and Vans

The YMCA provided major coordination via Genevieve Barlow who curated the lists of families, developed delivery routes, and coordinated packing days with Kat and Emily Henry (CWP Board member). Rowan Matkins focused on the logistics for deliveries, i.e., buses, gas, etc. The schools had some money for extra food purchases. OlyCAP provided pallets of emergency food boxes with some staples already in them. Everything else was a donation.

Spring Break Funding

With initial funding running out, Wendy Bart, CEO of YMCA, Genevieve, and Kathryn put together a proposal and were awarded a grant from the Jefferson Community Foundation to bridge the gap between CWP money the cost of the program over spring break. The YMCA is also taking more donations for this and the Summer Meals program which is starting soon.

Our thanks to all who participated and Spread the Love with your money, efforts, and leadership. Our community is stronger with your timely help.

Full Circle Composting at Quilcene Schools

What is the best way to connect a school cafeteria, administrative office staff, agriculture students and a school garden? Composting, that’s how!

Mesa Soriano, a 4th grade student at Quilcene School, is looking into the compost bin of kitchen scraps and paper shreds.

This spring, both Erin Yeakel, Quilcene School District’s Garden Coordinator and Annetta Carey-Fuson, Quilcene’s Career and Technical Education teacher, will be teaming up with students, cafeteria staff and administrative staff to create soil out of the school’s waste products.

Food scraps have been collected from the Quilcene School District cafeteria for many years by Garden Coordinators and students, and composted directly in the school garden. This year will be different. In addition to food scraps, students will be collecting paper shreds from offices and staff. The paper shreds and food scraps will be composted using a variety of compost systems, one of which will be a student built and student designed worm bin. 

Mrs. Carey-Fuson plans to begin by having students assemble a store bought worm bin kit to introduce and understand the design and mechanisms of the worm composting system. Next, students will begin to design their own, based on their observation and understanding of the kit, what they thought worked well and what didn’t, then execute the building of the kit in Quilcene’s on-campus woodshop. Lastly, after purchasing around 2,000 red worms, composting will begin and students will be able to observe the process first hand.

Ms. Erin will be working with Elementary students to compost food scraps and paper shreds in an alternative way. “In the past, I have just used round wire mesh compost bins that are placed in a garden bed right where the compost will be needed,” Ms. Erin said. She builds the pile over time with food scraps from the cafeteria, hay or straw and biochar from Olympic Biochar, a charcoal by-product of our local paper mill which stores nutrients long term within the soil.

“This works great,” she continued “but I began to see a lot of rodent activity in the garden, which I might say wasn’t terrible, as it seemed their tunneling aerated the soil for us. However, rodents in the garden can be damaging in other ways.”

This year, she purchased two aluminum cans with holes drilled into them in addition to lids for the cans, to see if the compost could be made without attracting critters. Ms. Erin concluded with her shared excitement, “Annetta and I are really looking forward to seeing how all of these systems work and to see if we can find a  composting option that is especially suited for our school garden. We are hoping our excitement will be contagious.”

Questions?

Contact Erin Yeakel (she/her), Garden Coordinator, Quilcene School District

503-686-1402 | eyeakel@qsd48.org

Best "In Class" Greenhouse

A 4-season greenhouse big enough to hold a class of seed-planting students is ready for action at Chimacum schools.  Under the guidance of Garden Coordinator, Corey Chin, the  "class house" will focus on how to propagate and grow plants. Another greenhouse on campus, located in the High School Garden, creates production quantities for the Culinary Arts class, school kitchens, and school-based enterprises—seed production, Chimacum Spice herb blend, and eventually the Food Truck. (More on this exciting project soon!) 

The new greenhouse structure is tricked out to capture rain water so students can learn about water conservation and drip irrigation. It also provides students and plants a comfortable temperature year round, and allows enough light in to continue teaching even in the dark days of winter.  It even has a weather station that supports the automated systems for warming and cooling, and from which students can monitor weather conditions and track long-term climate data without leaving the main building. (We will report later this year on how the classes and projects are taking root—but we know Al Gonzalez’s 6th Grade Science class will be on it as part of their ongoing Ocean Guardian Schools work on climate data.)

Funding & Construction

The greenhouse project, a Robot Coupe food processor, a power wash sink for the school kitchens, and the garden at Chimacum Creek Primary school were all covered under the “Healthy Kids - Healthy Schools” grant from the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, (OSPI) totaling $116,672.  Greenhouse project costs exceeding the grant budget were covered by the district Capital Project Funds. Together these infrastructure upgrades support Chimacum’s goals of building their Farm to School program—an umbrella term that includes expanding the use of locally grown food in school meals, boosting food and nutrition education across the grades, and teaching kids about growing and tasting fresh food in school gardens.

According to Assistant Superintendent Art Clarke, "The greenhouse was purchased from Greenhouse Megastore which included construction plans for submittal to Jefferson County for building permits.  Director of Maintenance, Henry Florschutz, was the project manager and he and his staff were key to completing the project."

The project was started in the summer of 2020 with Henry and his crew removing an old portable classroom from the site. They then extended the water line to provide irrigation to the garden and greenhouse. To add an outside hand-washing station to the garden, they recycled a sink from the old elementary school by tapping into water and septic lines of the newly refurbished elementary school.

With the addition of this beautiful new greenhouse, the Chimacum Elementary Garden can really become the all-season learning laboratory at the heart of the school’s mission to use Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math as a foundation for unique and powerful learning experiences rooted in community. A heartfelt thanks to all who worked to make this project a success! It will be supporting student learning at Chimacum Schools for many years to come.

Other construction partners include:

DD Electric provided wiring and posts for the greenhouse.

Tres West Engineers Inc. supplied the electrical plans.

Precision Contracting Services installed the greenhouse.

The Art of Learning Together While Apart

It’s been a different kind of school year — before Covid most classes began when students looked at the teacher. During Covid, learning had to become more personal. Fortunately that individual approach is especially effective and needed when half the students are in class six feet apart and the other half are maybe miles apart with distance-learning from home.

In Gary Coyan's Chimacum classes, students are taking a more personalized approach. They are encouraged to look around and see what they want to learn and create. He sees himself more of a facilitator/collaborator than instructor, basing his approach on the Foxfire Heritage practices. He officially teaches art class, but also teaches gardening, cooking, and even the business of food in the same way a master artist in a studio would, through hands-on learning.

Like artists, students are in control of the creative/learning process—they can choose which topics inspire them, what “media” they want to work in, what tools that media requires, and then dig in. Sometimes they need to learn a new technique, or be inspired by historical work, but when finished they own the total experience and the result is theirs to enjoy, sell, or share.

At-home Students

At-home students raise the participation bar. To help them focus on a topic (for example gardening), Gary calls each student to find out what "media" they have around them to work with -- the family veggie garden, flowers, grass lawns… sometimes Gary will arrive at their home with a container, some dirt, and seeds for them to start the growing, tending, and picking of plants. Eventually they will get to eat their art.

In-School Students

This week Gary's in-school students are firing up the pizza oven that arrived last year just as Covid hit and schools closed. The spring outdoor classes are perfect for spaced-apart learning. Students will make the perfect personal pizza and all the culinary science that goes with each step. As the gardens start growing, plants that the students had a hand in germinating may end up as toppings.

Outdoor Pizza 101

Full-emersion pizza making begins by knowing your local flour producer. Students learn about the different kinds of flours and which tastes the best to them--Finnriver Spelt flour won. Next they spend a class learning proper dough making techniques, and how the gases created during an overnight rest in the refrigerator provide that distinct pizza crust flavor and stretch. (Thank you Alton Brown for the tips.) The toppings are also a lesson in food handling and culinary knife use. Once in the outdoor kitchen, the dough balls are hand stretched into personal sized pizzas and students can choose which toppings they want on their creation before sending them into the flames. Gary estimates they can cook three mini-pizzas at a time in under 8 minutes.

Whether it's home-grown and cooked or school-grown and baked, it's all learning-by-doing, taking pride in the art of accomplishment, and being able to share the knowledge.