Farm to School Article

Bloom! Montessori's Farm to School Program and nutritional education was featured in last Sunday's edition of the Longmont Times Call. To read the article, follow this link: http://www.colo-news.com/submittedContent/enlarge.asp?topic=3&item=3942&Publication=tc

The Summer CSA Season Begins Today!

Reminder to Families who Purchased a CSA Share: Your share will be available for pickup today, on the patio of the school after 3:30 pm. If you will not be able to collect your share in person, feel free to send a friend!

The Summer Session is officially here! Summer Session at Bloom! Montessori means many things: warmer temperatures, summer BBQs, the ability to work out on the patio, camping trips, field trips, and the beginning of our Farm to School Program!

During the summer, we partner with Ollin Farms, a local, organic, family-owned farm, to bring our students fresh, seasonal, local produce. The children have the opportunity to visit the farm to see how food is cultivated and to develop a relationship with a local farmer; additionally, we use their produce for snacks at the school and in practical life lessons (traditional Montessori lessons in which children engage in simple, independent, food preparation activities to facilitate their care of the self).

In addition, parents had the opportunity to purchase community supported agriculture shares from the farm. These shares are available for pick up at the school every Monday after 3:30 beginning today.

Visit from Lluvia

This morning, the children were treated to a special visit from our CSA farmers, Mark and Kena Guttridge of Ollin Farms, and their three week old lamb Lluvia (pronounced "Juvia," which translates to "rain" in Spanish).

Although lambs generally conjure images of bucolic farms with undulating grassy slopes and these cute, gentle creatures wandering freely from one verdant knoll to the next , Lluiva was born in the middle of January's arctic storms. She was bottle fed for several days by the Guttridges, until they were able to return her to her mother, which might account for her calm acceptance of her new found preschool celebrity icon status.

The children were very excited to meet Lluvia! They sat as calmly as their little bodies could muster as we discussed some of the general characteristics of mammals, learned what lambs and sheep eat, and the parts of a lamb. They were particularly interested in the fact that Lluvia had been bottle fed, that she drank milk, that wool comes from sheep, and that she had cloven hooves and a tail that wiggles and wags when she nurses.

At last, the eager children had the opportunity to pet her! For her part, Lluvia was the most gregarious and good natured lamb I have ever seen. She seemed relaxed and happy while the children took turns petting her and then entertained them with her antics as she tried to jump around the rug and bleated softly as the children sang Ba, Ba, Black Sheep to her.

When it was time for them to go, the anxious children inundated our guests with requests to come out and see the farm ("When the snow melts," they patiently replied to countless children). I was glad to see that the children were as excited about our partnership with the farm as we are! We were also really excited about the prospect of incubating some chicken eggs in the classroom this summer and then relocating them to the farm!

For the remainder of the day, the children spent the majority of their outdoor play time in the garden, taking turns pretending to be farmers and lambs!


We wish to sincerely thank Mark, Kena, Amber, and Coral Guttridge for their kindness and generosity. The children were very excited to meet Lluvia and very excited about coming to see them at their farm.

For more information about Ollin Farms, please visit their website at http://www.ollinfarms.com/

Reminder: Purchase Your CSA Shares by Friday, January 28th!

It is hard to believe, given all of the snow on the ground, but we are hard at work making plans for our summer program!

One of the many highlights of the summer program is that we participate in the national Slow Foods USA Farm to School Program. This year, we will be partnering with Ollin Farms to provide the students with the opportunity to visit a sustainably operated farm to learn about the cultivation of food (the field trips to the farm are generally one of the highlights of the summer) and the children will be using the fruit and vegetables that the school receives from the farm (in our weekly CSA share) in practical life and food preparation activities. In addition, the children will also maintain their own organic, heirloom vegetable garden at the school. We believe that this program helps us to raise the next generation with an awareness of the importance of enjoying nutritious, local, seasonal, and sustainably produced food. It also assists them in developing a more refined palate which is more accepting of fresh fruit and vegetable offerings, and provides hands on botany activities in which they gain a better understanding of the life cycle and parts of plants.

In conjunction with this program, we will again be offering our families the opportunity to purchase their own CSA shares from the farm as well, with the convenience of being able to collect your shares from the school when you pick up your child.

Ollin Farms is a beautiful, family owned farm, which provides an enormous variety of nutrient dense foods which they grow using sustainable agricultural practices. Community Supported Agriculture is a socio-economic model of farming in which members of the community pledge support to a local farming operation by purchasing a weekly share of the farm's produce. It provides participants with high-quality, local, sustainably grown produce, while sharing the risks and benefits inherent in farming. Participants will receive a weekly share for 21 weeks during the CSA season (May 30th-October 17th). If you saw pictures from last summer, you will remember the excitement that ensued each week when Farmer Mike came to drop off the shares (I have never seen children so desperate to find a raw turnip to munch on).

We are particularly excited about this partnership because they offer a tremendous variety of fruits and vegetables (over 150 varieties!), they have several options as far as share size, they partner with a chef to offer some great harvest dinners at the farm, and in addition to growing fruits and vegetables, they also raise chickens, sheep, and honeybees! For more information about the farm, their farming practices, or to view a list of the fruits and vegetables they provide, please visit their website at: http://www.ollinfarms.com/

If you would like to purchase a CSA Share for your family through the school, please return your CSA contract (with a check payable to Ollin Farms) to the school prior to Friday, January 28th!

You may also contact Ollin Farms directly to purchase shares after this date, if you decide to participate later, but we do expect that they will sell out well before summer.