On Friday, we kicked off the 12 Days of Give-mas, our attempt to put some of the fun back into fundraising. On day four we want to shine a spotlight on our oldest and biggest program Good Food Day.

Pulling up field peas and learning about roots!

Guessing which seeds grow into which plants.

In the fall and spring, our farm is alive with Pre-K to 12th grade students exploring urban farm basics during Good Food Day field trips. Students plant seeds in the greenhouse or garden, harvest vegetables, hold a chicken and taste honey from Urban Hives’ on site bee hives. Children hunt snails, pull up pea plants to look a root nodules (homes for nitrogen-fixing bacteria), and catch rolly pollies (while sometimes learning the rolly pollies are arthropods more closely related to crabs and crawfish than bugs).

For older students, we spray paint a map of the world in our field (Farmer Amanda can paint a mean world map), and teach about food miles and country of origin labeling. So much of what we eat, we could grow here, and we hope we inspire a few future farmers.

These field trips become annual delights for many teachers, and we love to see students lights up when they taste fresh vegetables for the first time. We want everyone to leave with some knowledge of how to start their own garden or backyard farm.

Good Food Day Volunteers & Master Gardeners

Schools often need to send an entire grade level to us at once meaning a field trip of 80 to 100 students. This program would not be possible without some amazing, energetic and dedicated volunteers who spend their mornings with us. We can’t thank these volunteers enough! If you think you might want to share your love of the outdoors, plants or gardening with children get in touch with Farmer Amanda.

Finally, it’s fundraising season, and Good Food Day needs your support. We do charge a fee for field trips, but that only covers about a third of the cost of the program. We are grateful for any gift, but if you’d like an idea of how we’d spend your money:

$10 keeps us in cups that keep kids hydrated.
$25 would buy a good-quality kid-sized garden tool that can handle 2000 kids a year.
$100 covers the cost of our Good Food Day volunteer trainings.
$200 sends Farmer Amanda to the Alabama Environmental Educators’ Conference so we can continue learning and improving our programs.
$1000 would pay for an entire second grade to visit the farm.

You can donate through PayPal here. You can also support the program by booking your own Good Food Day Field Trip (we modify the program to meet Scout requirements or for adult groups). If you have questions or want to have your own Good Food Day, get in touch with Farmer Amanda.

We have the best field trip!!!