Lakeside School: Sowing Seeds for the Future with Farm-Based Education

Lakeside School at Black Kettle Farm offers birth – 2nd grade (soon to be 3rd grade) education based on the Waldorf philosophy on a working farm in Essex, NY.

As the children arrive each morning, they eagerly run to the chalkboard to check our schedule to find out if it is our day to do barn chores. Before we head out to do our routine tasks, the children ask whether we have all the tools we’ll need for our work—something to cut the baling twine, a basket for collecting the eggs, the bottles for feeding goat kids.

We have been immersed in the winter routines of farm maintenance, and the elementary children are so familiar with their chores that by now I nary say a word of what comes next. One child leads the group for the cows, one for the chickens, and they delegate tasks to their classmates to make sure that everything gets done and that everyone is able to participate. These are skills that will extend far beyond our little farm.

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Farm-based education gives the children untold numbers of opportunities to practice. They are honing their sense of responsibility, making sure that the animals get what they need. They are using their math as we count and stack hay bales together and count the eggs. They are developing leadership skills as they lead the class with our daily chores. They are also practicing resilience and perseverance as they continue to fill their buckets up with water even on the chilliest of winter mornings.

Soon we will plant seeds, and we will make plans for our garden beds. Farm-based education is not important because we are trying to cultivate a new generation of farmers (although we’ll need some of those too), it is important because it has a great capacity to teach life skills that are difficult to instill without practical use.

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As we flow through the seasons, the children mark the time of year by what they have felt and experienced on the farm. They know that at the beginning of the school year, we will have apples and grapes to harvest, and root vegetables to dig. They know that we’ll need to put the gardens to bed for the winter, and to preserve the harvest . In the winter there are animals to take care of and firewood to be carried inside. And come spring, there are trees to be tapped, seeds to be sown, new life to enjoy.

The children know the year-round work that comes with growing food and being a steward of the land, and their reverence for those processes is important for all of our futures. During a snack time conversation about how delicious maple syrup is, more than one child mentioned how precious a commodity it is and how they savor each drop since they know what hard work it is to make a small quantity of syrup! The others nod in agreement. These little conversations give me hope and affirm for me that our farm-based education is not only fun, but is making long-lasting impacts on our students who may go out into the world and share what they have acquired here.

Written by Kelly McQuade – 1st & 2nd grade teacher