This article appeared in the May 2014 issue of Organic Hudson Valley.  (A direct link can be found under Links to Articles.)

Sprout Creek Farm has roots in teaching that go back to its inception in 1982, when it was founded on the campus of a school.  Since then, it has changed its location to one with more land and the opportunity for more programs, including a summer camp that is run every year to bring children in direct contact with nature through a learning environment that promotes hands-on interaction.  “We really thought that children needed an alternative environment in which to learn, other than a school,” Margo Morris, one of the founders of the farm, said.  “Of course, the time when we could capture their attention most completely would be in the summer.”

The summer camp allows kids to directly interact with nature.  “We teach the kids how to milk the cows, not a cow, but the cows, the whole herd,” Morris said.  The kids stay at the farm for a week, where they participate in all aspects of farming, from plating to even basic farm maintenance.  “They do all the chores,” Morris said.  “They learn about gardening and they harvest whatever is ready to be harvested.  They learn how to prepare it and how to cook it.  It’s meant to be very holistic so they might bake the bread that is going to be used on that day, or churn the butter that’s going to be eating that day.  They really have a whole experience.  They also have the experience of a whole community that works together.”

Morris equates it to what she termed a “Back to the Future” experience, where young people have an opportunity to learn practical skills, not just conceptual skills.  With the older kids, they work to get them thinking about farming in a wider context.  They are “encouraged to think about all farming as a resource to be shared and to be understood and to be of environmental impact of the value of produced responsibility and of the kind of commitment required of everyone involved in the process of putting food on the table from beginning to end,” Morris said.

They find that as the kids grow older they begin to make the connection between what they have learned on the farm and what makes it possible for people to be able to eat.  “We try to take something that is very basic and try to move out from there, from very, very local, the local community, to the country, to the world and back again, because every day begins and ends with the care and feeding of animals and plants, themselves and each other,” Morris said.

The camp breaks the kids down into age groups to allow them to get the most from each program.  There is Project Harvest, for 13 and 14 year olds, which includes a service element where the kids work with hungry people in the community.  Planet Earth: Dig It is for 15 to 16 year old kids and is currently being reworked.  The updated information will be available on the web site.

The farm also has the Institute for Social and Environmental Awareness, which is a program for older kids in the 16 to 18 year old age range.  “It’s a similar concept [to the other programs] with different levels of activity, but always beginning and ending with the farm,” Morris explained.  “The farm is like the grounding device.”

Spending days on the farm ensures that kids are never bored.  “They always have a lot of fun,” Morris said.  “They’re always outside learning and playing at the same time.  I think it’s just a very, on the sensory level, an extremely dynamic kind of environment and I think that’s what’s exciting for kids.”  She added, “The environment we created, by itself, did a lot of the teaching.  We didn’t have as much work as we thought we were going to in order to help them make connections.  All we needed was to put the kids in the way of nature and organize a few things, and let them take in and absorb what they needed to, not tell them what our objectives are.  They met our objectives and we met theirs.”