Chicken tractor takes care of an abundance of grasshoppers while fertilizing the field

Imagine a world where young people feel empowered.
Imagine a world where young people live sustainably.
Imagine a world where young people produce their most basic
of commodities: food, cooperatively and locally.
This is the vision that guides the students, staff and board
of directors at the Camino de Paz School and Farm.

Camino de Paz is a non-profit Montessori middle school located on ten acres of irrigated farmland in Santa Cruz, in SF County. Its campus houses a herd of goats, a flock of sheep, innumerable chickens and twenty-five enthusiastic middle school students, all coming from within a 35 mile radius of the school. The farm enables the students to extend and apply their academic skills on a regular basis and become entrepreneurs. From their animals’ products they create and sell items weekly at the SF Farmers’ Market: soap from the goats’ milk; eggs from their chickens; felted, woven and knitted items from the sheep’s wool; and of course, produce from the fields and greenhouses. This means that on a daily basis the students keep records of feed and feed costs, milk, egg and soap production, seed plantings and germination rates, harvest totals and the condition of the plants and animals. This data is recorded, graphed and reported to the whole group weekly.

“The classroom lessons are imbued with challenges and projects that arise from an ethic of stewardship and living more lightly on the land.”

One might wonder exactly how this works on a school schedule. The gong of a cast iron bell calls all students and staff to the morning circle at 8:30. After a brief check-in, the students and adults disperse in teams of two or three to begin the daily cycle of plant and animal care. Some care for pastured poultry, some feed and/or milk sheep and goats, some focus their attention on the plants and greenhouses. In less than an hour they return to the school building and begin their daily classes: math, language arts, science, history, art, music, etc. At noon everyone breaks for a community lunch prepared by two or three students supervised by a staff member. After lunch it’s back to lessons, and the day closes with another quick round of checking up on all living things for food and water.

The classroom lessons are imbued with challenges and projects that arise from an ethic of stewardship and living more lightly on the land: using water catchment and solar energy, growing one’s own food organically, constructing pens or feeders, maintaining tools and equipment, preserving food, turning fleeces into felted wool or spun yarn, participating fully in the cycle of life. The students see how animal manure and waste hay from the pens can be composted along with kitchen scraps to fertilize the plant beds. Chickens move throughout the pastures to improve the quality of the plants on which the four-leggeds graze. Vegetables from the field and meat from the animals provide the basis of the school’s lunch and nutrition program.

We knew that this work was important for these developing adolescents, but we had no idea how far-reaching the results would be! Perhaps the most significant outcome of the farm-based school community is the network of relationships it engenders. Running farm-based businesses requires and develops an extraordinary level of teamwork and communication skills. Students who have gone on to other schools report that, years after leaving Camino de Paz, their best friendships are still those whose bonds were forged in the heat of challenging, thought-provoking and mutually empowering work. In addition, the students cultivate relationships
in the wider community through their presence in the Farmers’ Market booth and through speaking at public events such as the local Bioneers conference, the Food and Seed Sovereignty Conference at Tesuque Pueblo, and the Southwest Agricultural Marketing Conference.