Calling all early birds: Register now for Arcadia Farm Camp

Warmer months may seem far away, but we're already excited about a summer full of food, farming and fun: Registration for the 2013 season of Arcadia Farm Camp opens today! This year, we're even offering an Early Bird discount to campers who complete registration on or before March 15, so sign up now!

We're already busy planning a jam-packed schedule full of hands-on activities. There's tried and true activities, like building bug houses and making squish squash pasta, plus new ideas to try, like a food miles relay race and solar oven cooking. (101 Gardening Projects for Kids is one of our favorite resources for fun kids stuff.) We'll be working with our new Farm Director Stephen to find the right projects for young farmers and we're definitely recruiting chefs for some tasty seasonal cooking demos - email liz@arcadiafood.org if you know a chef who wants to stop by!

Plus, we're already accepting donations to the Arcadia Farm Camp Scholarship Fund. If you think it's important for all kids to have the opportunity to discover where their food comes from, head over to our scholarship fund page to learn more.

Wrapping up our fall field trip season

After a bustling, exciting fall season, Arcadia Farm is quiet this week after our final field trip of 2012 last Thursday.

We started the program last fall with the belief that experiential learning can play a key role in helping kids form healthy and sustainable eating habits. In other words, we think that when kids have the opportunity to learn about where good food comes from, they're more likely to eat it and they're more likely to become healthy adults. We also think the farm is a great place to explore and reinforce the concepts kids learn in their classrooms, like plant life cycles, decomposition, and pollination. Plus, the farm is FUN, for kids and adults alike.

We welcomed about 350 kids to the farm this fall and just under 1000 kids in 2012. Here are some highlights from this fall's trips:

• We got lucky: we had NO cancellations due to weather this season! In fact, we hosted most of the trips to the farm under sunny fall skies.
  
• Inspired by our trip to the Washington Youth Garden, we added farm-fresh honey tasting to our Pests and Pollination station. Not surprisingly, it was a huge hit.
  
• Education Coordinator Brandi strengthened our Taste Sensation station by incorporating healthy recipes like a honey mustard dressing and a beet salad. (Check out the kid on the right: he can't get enough of that beet salad!) She also made some awesome additions to the salad bar, including roasted eggplant and hard boiled eggs from the farm. Yum!
  
• Awesome intern Lacey filmed one of our trips, and is in the process of creating some videos of our lessons that we can share with future farm educators (and you!).
  

What really stood out this season is our fantastic field trip crew: Kasey, Eli, Adriana, Brandi, Teiji, Marta, Lammot, Morgan, Lacey, Amanda and Mallory. It was a joy to watch this awesome group of farm educators grow and learn over the course of the season and it's because of their skills and passion that we have a successful field trip program. Kudos to the field trip team!

See you in the spring! (Email liz@arcadiafood.org for more information about spring field trips).

Help out with our fall field trip program!

Have you been looking for a way to get involved with Arcadia? Have a flexible schedule? Like working with kids? Then read on...

We're looking for Volunteer Farm Field Trip Assistants to help make field trips to Arcadia Farm safe, educational and fun. Field Trip Assistants will,provide instruction and supervision, help monitor the space, and assist with general garden maintenance.

Here's what some former Volunteer Farm Field Trip Assistants had to say about their experiences:

"I enjoyed learning and teaching about sustainable farming just as much as the children did. It was so nice to meet and work with the team of women on the farm and the children were delightful. Tasting the honey straight from the hive was a thrill as was picking up the chicken and her fresh eggs." - Volunteer Field Trip Assistant, Spring 2012

"Watching kids see a carrot pulled from the ground for the first time is something special. Their eyes light up and and you can almost witness the synapses in their brain fire. Before your very eyes, their schema for a carrot has changed. That's pretty awesome." - Field Trip Assistant, Spring 2012

We’re looking for volunteers who can commit to one Wednesday or Thursday from 9:30am to 2:30 per week for the duration of the Arcadia Farm field trip program, which runs from September 5 to October 31. For more information, read the full description here.

To apply, email Liz (liz@arcadiafood.org) with your resume and a note describing your interest.

Farms + Food + Fun = Arcadia Farm Camp

We're halfway through the very first week of Arcadia Farm Camp - and what a week it's been! From water games to chef demos, we've been busy beating the heat, exploring the farm, and having fun.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Chefs Ed, Christina and Shannon from DC Central Kitchen stopped by to show us how to make huge delicious meal with seasonal fruits and veggies: okra and tomatoes, chicken florentine, coleslaw, and crepes.
  
• We had a visit from Farmer Ben and Arcadia's own Mobile Market on Tuesday, which included a tour of the bus (so many fridges!). He also enlisted our help in harvesting herbs and Swiss chard.
  
• Elizabeth from Chipotle did an awesome fresh salsa demonstration today - and brought us free burritos! (Extra special thanks go out to Chipotle for donating eight scholarships to farm camp for kids from low-income families).
  

More shout-outs go to staff members Rachel, Carling, Matt, Natalie, Sophie and Kat for keeping everyone safe, happy, and healthy. Check out the photos below and stay tuned to our blog for more updates! Created with flickr slideshow.

Thanks to our Arcadia Farm Camp partners!

We couldn't be more excited about the first-ever sessions of Arcadia Farm Camp, starting next week! We're getting ready for digging, planting, watering, weeding, and trying to stay cool.

We think that it's going to be a pretty special time, and from the beginning, we wanted to include as many young farmers as possible. Now, thanks to the support of our awesome partners, we've been able to provide nine scholarships to some growing gardeners from low-income households.

So many thanks to the following partners:

• With the help of our friends at Chipotle, we were able to offer eight camp scholarships to kids from low-income families. We're so glad that these young farmers will be joining us next week!
  
• The amazingly generous staff at Cowgirl Creamery in Penn Quarter saved their tips from the summer so far and donated them to Arcadia Farm Camp. Their kindness will give yet another young person from a low-income family the opportunity to attend camp.
  
• Our friends over at SCAN-VA (Stop Child Abuse Now of Northern Virginia) helped connect us with interested families through their support group for Spanish-speaking parents. The group helps parents become effective leaders in their home and in their community and SCAN is dedicated to helping promote the well-being of children in the Northern Virginia region. We're so glad to be able to work with them!
  

Extra special thanks also go out to our Tufts Summer Fellow Tom Chalmers, who helped out with some last-minute translation of our materials for Spanish-speaking parents.

Save the Date for Arcadia Farm Camp!

We're glad to announce the dates of Arcadia Farm Camp's pilot sessions! Over the past few weeks, we've been moving forward with planning a truly awesome summer camp program. We had help from some fantastic parents at our focus groups in January, and we'll use their feedback as we develop camp policies and procedures.

We're hosting two one-week sessions: July 16-20, 2012 and July 23-27, 2012. We're planning to open registration in late February or early March. For more details, head over to our website. If you still have questions, don't hesitate to email liz@arcadiafood.org for more information. You can also sign up for future summer camp updates here.

We're excited to welcome your child to Arcadia Farm Camp this summer.

Sign up for your field trip to Arcadia Farm now!

The D.C. Farm to School Network is excited to announce that registration for our spring field trips to Arcadia Farm is NOW OPEN! We'll take 3rd & 4th grade groups of up to 50 students each for interactive visits to our sustainable farm located at Woodlawn, a National Trust Historic Site in Alexandria, VA.

Arcadia Farm field trips will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30am to 1:30pm from April 10th though June 14, 2012. We're especially pleased to offer transportation scholarships to help cover the cost of buses to and from Arcadia Farm for qualifying D.C. schools.

The field trips are aligned with age-appropriate curriculum standards, and teach students

• 1) how to grow food sustainably with the natural cycles of the earth;
  
• 2) which fruits and vegetables are available in our region during different times of the year;
  
• 3) how farm-fresh food is different from processed or fast food; and
  
• 4) that fruits and vegetables can be healthy and delicious!
  

Visit the Arcadia Farm field trip website at www.dcfarmtoschool.org/field-trips for more information. For questions, or to register your school for a field trip, please contact Katherine at katherine@dcfarmtoschool.org.
We hope to see you out at the farm soon!

Top 5 Awesomest Things in the Groundhog Garden

Things at Arcadia Farm's Groundhog Garden were pretty awesome this fall, but here are some of the awesomest things of all:

1) Farmer for a day! All of the kids who go on a field trip to Arcadia Farm get to try their hands at farming, and in doing so, learn what it takes to grow food sustainably. From planting seeds to tending to bees, they get hands-on experience in the day-to-day life of a farmer. And they get to wear great hats!

2) Salad Bar: Our friends at Whole Foods donated a salad bar to the farm, which was both a great teaching tool and a fun way to eat healthy food straight from the ground.

If nothing else, we hope that field trips to the farm will make students more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they see them on their cafeteria trays. Since more and more DC schools have salad bars, they are one way we connect the farm to the cafeteria.

3) Chef demonstrations: Chefs from all over DC and Virginia came to the farm to teach our students simple, healthy recipes using fresh food. Special thanks go out to the chefs themselves: Alison Reed, Robert Weidmaier, Michael Bonk, Tianna Feaster, Chef Indigo (at right), Chef Jamie and our very own Benjamin Bartley.

4) New shed: With the help of builder Jesse Cooper and some generous volunteers, we designed and built a new shed especially for our Farm to School programming. It will serve not only as an education station and storage space, but also a place for kids to explore and play. Plus, it's pretty darn cute.

5) Arcadia staff in vegetable costumes: It's no surprise: (DC Farm to School Network Director) Andrea makes a great carrot. The awesomest moment of the whole season might have been when a kindergartener grabbed her and yelled: "I'm gonna eat you!"

Ready to sign your class up for a spring field trip? Email katherine@dcfarmtoschool.org and ask her to add you to our list!

What makes a great farm summer camp?

The first farm I ever worked on was part of a summer camp in the northern Adirondacks. I have fond memories of waking early to harvest kale with bleary-eyed 7-year-olds, who brought the fruits of our labor into the cafeteris for their lunch.

So when I heard that Arcadia was thinking about starting a summer day camp at our farm, I was on board right away. Teaching young people where their food comes from is clearly one of my favorite things, so combining farm education with fun and adventure sounded pretty darn perfect for me.

After doing some reading, I started to get a sense of what I had gotten myself into. So many camps to choose from! So many details to consider!

So I decided to ask you, blog readers, for help. What makes a great farm camp? What are your best summer camp memories? (Personally, I love this episode of This American Life). Parents, what are you looking for in summer camps for your kids this year?

Leave a comment or shoot me an email at liz@arcadiafood.org.

Groundhog Garden Shed

Groundhog Garden has a new exciting development-- we've (almost) finished our shed! The whole Farm to School and Arcadia Farm team are thrilled about out new projects!

The kids shed will serve as an outdoor educational classroom as well as provide a safe and dry space to store all of our equipment and supplies for farm field trips. With the amazing design provided by Jesse, a group of volunteers dedicated their Sunday to its construction. A huge thanks to Emily Roberts, Jim Villars, Katie from Beet Street, Jeff Wilkes, and Luis from jWest Solutions (and of course, Adam and Ben) for your building expertise!

We've also sheet mulched more space in Groundhog Garden to make room for spring's new gardens-- more herbs, natural dye beds and fruit trees are on the way! We're already excited to use and explore our expanded Groundhog Garden with school groups in the spring!

Groundhog Garden: Ready for a kid invasion!

We've spent the whole season fighting a losing battle against the groundhogs at Arcadia Farm. From sweet potato greens to the first leaves of our cucumbers, they've eaten just about everything. As we try to control their seemingly ever-growing population, we were also trying to think of a name for our kids space, but nothing seemed to fit. Growing Together Farm? Meh. Youth Farm? Too plain. Funky Fresh Farm? Too corny.

So what did we come up with? In honor of our enemies, we decided to call the kids farm Groundhog Garden. Recently, they haven't been visiting their namesake - keep your fingers crossed!

Now, the Groundhog Garden is ready for kids. Next week is not only DC Farm to School Week, it'll also be the first week of field trips to Arcadia Farm.

Check out what's been growing on:

• Sunflowers are blooming! Beans are growing like gangbusters!
  
• Beets, radishes, lettuce, swiss chard, mustard greens have recently sprouted and they're growing strong.
  
• We lost our pumpkins to squash bugs, but have replaced them with a bed full of cover crops and "rowdy roots."
  
• We had to pull most of our tomatoes, but our cover crop - field peas - is germinating as we speak.
  
• Eggplants, sweet potatoes, herbs and carrots are still going from the summer season.
  
• Super volunteer Cat finished some amazing signs that will make the space even more beautiful and interactive.
  

For more, check out the photos below. Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.