Monday, October 17, 2011

Post Independent Article - Agriculture Education

Hadley Hentschel,
RFHS Science Teacher
John Stroud wrote an article in the Saturday, Oct. 15 Glenwood Post Independent, "Agriculture Education Sees Growth", prominently featuring our Ag-Ed Center at the Roaring Fork High School, with our enthusiastic students well quoted!

Photo Credit: Kelley Cox, Post Independent:
Roaring Fork High School science teacher Hadley Hentschel is right at home in the school's greenhouse dome in Carbondale. His emphasis in the school's agricultural biology class is on growing foods that can be served in the school cafeteria.

Friday, October 14, 2011

RFHS Garden - First Summer 2011

RFHS Grain Trials, Summer 2011
Summer 2011 saw the beginning of the 1/2 acre garden outside of the Growing Dome. Students learned while helping Mary to compost, layer materials and build planting rows in the garden, build temporary row covers for early Spring starts, and plant the first grain trials around the dome.
Some of the produce harvested from the dome and garden this Summer was sold to the Carbondale Food Coop, our first earned income!
Most of the vegetables and grains raised in the garden this Summer were harvested and integrated into the cafeteria kitchen, or processed and frozen for later use. Two Aspen High School graduates, volunteering at the Permaculture Institute before attending Prescott College for agricultural sciences, harvested the rye and the hard red winter wheat grains, threshing the grains from the chaff using a push mower on a mesh picnic table, with a sheet of plywood underneath to collect the grains. They netted nearly 50 lbs of rye and wheat.
Mary Cervantes did a great job with the plants in the Growing Dome and Garden last school year and this Summer, and she left everything is good condition for her successor.
Hadley Hentschel and his students have been putting the outside beds into hibernation mode for Winter, after mulching lots of decaying plant material over the soil, to enrich them for next year. The annual beds in the dome have been harvested, mulched and replanted with Winter greens and vegetables.

Spring 2011 - Beginning the outside garden
Salad greens, Summer 2011
Wheat and Rye


Annuals and Grain north of the Grow Dome

Annuals garden south of the Grow Dome


Sunflowers and salad greens
Edible flowers and herbs in the Grow Dome


Jerome Osentowski inspects plant health in the Grow Dome

Fava beans from the Grow Dome, Spring 2011

Planting beds in the Grow Dome