Community Outreach Events Summary Spring 2012

This semester we’ve been busy! Now it’s time for students to focus on Finals and the last couple weeks of the semester.

We’ve had a lot of great events this semester including events for Lafayette students, but also local school kids as well! Here’s a brief summary of some of our events this Spring…

1) Lafayette College Student Farm Weed N Feed Events
This semester we had a total of three “Weed N Feed” events for Lafayette students to get involved in helping out at the student farm. On March 23, April 1, and April 13, students came to the garden and helped weed, water, and plant crops. Afterwards, we headed to Sicilly II, a local pizza place in Forks Township for dinner or lunch. The number of students involved in these events increased at each event. We had 20+ at the final event. Thanks to all the enthusiastic students who helped out!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) Bike to the Garden
On April 29 (postponed from April 22) we had our first annual Bike to the Garden Event where students rode their bikes to the garden, had a picnic, worked at the garden, and then rode back to campus. It was a great event with yummy food and a free PASA water bottle for students!

3)Moravian Academy Middle School
On April 18th, 16 students from Moravian Academy Middle School came out the farm for a Day of Service. They were 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and were a wonderful help!!!!!!! First, they got a quick lesson from Professor Art Kney and Emily Crossette ’15 about watersheds, landscapes, and pollution and then worked at the farm building fence and planting potatoes and peas. Thanks to all the wonderful students for your help!!!

4) Kids in the Community (KIC), A Landis Program
On both April 30 and May 1, two large groups of elementary students from Easton along with many Lafayette Landis student volunteers visited the farm to take a quick tour and learn about sustainability and local food. After seeing the sites, they planted some organic green bean plants to take home with them.

3 Comments

  1. I think it’s awesome that you’re able to teach these kids how to produce food on their own. Too many people nowadays are dependent on the grocery store as their “garden” and they have no clue what pesticides and insecticides and other hormones they’re ingesting. If they would just take the time to grow a few tomatoes and cucumbers in their backyards, we all might be a little healthier. 🙂

    • Many weed killers are chlorophyll inhibitors, meaning they actually prevent the plant from creating chlorophyll, which inevitably will kill any plant because they won’t be able to absorb sunlight. Also, since chlorophyll is what makes plants green, these weed killers will often destroy that green hue of a plant.

      The easiest thing to do would be to rip up the brown (that is, dead) grass that’s on your lawn and replanting it with more seed. If it were me, I wouldn’t grow a grass on a lawn, grass takes way more maintenance (that is, mowing) than a lawn should. I would get a lawn replacement crop, or better yet, grow food plants or flowers in my lawn. As for the weed killer, you shouldn’t spray it anywhere there’s plants that you want (ideally you wouldn’t spray it anywhere because it’s destructive to your ecosystem.) Home weed killers are generally for getting the sides of and cracks in a driveway, sidewalk, or other area that isn’t supposed to have any plants in it. I would just pull these plants though, as well as unwanted weeds on your lawn. This takes some time, but not really so much time when you consider the time, resources, and labor that goes into creating weed killer, compared to the 0 cost effort of going and pulling weeds.
      Hope that helps!

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