Farm to School BC Pilot Program

Posted on Thursday, 7 April 2022 under Stories

We are joining forces with Farm to School BC to bring seed stewardship and education to students from K-12 in schools across BC. The project aims to teach students basic seed saving biology and skills while imparting a sense of seed stewardship through physical engagement in their school gardens.

Six schools were selected to take part in this year’s pilot project. Four workshops will be done throughout the year at each of the schools. This March, our Seed Team began the workshop series. The workshop series starts with learning about seeds, the importance of seed stewardship, and designing and planning seed crops to grow. The remaining workshops will include pollination, seed harvesting and selecting, seed cleaning and finally, how to connect with local seed libraries that will support the storage and future dissemination of seeds. In many cases, the last workshop will be about how to support the creation of a seed library within the school.

At Norquay Elementary School, Siri and David led Grade 1 students in an activity about the distance pollen travels when plants are self, wind or insect pollinated.

So far our Seed Team has taught workshops to classes in Vancouver, Surrey, Langford, Colwood, Enderby and Sooke, engaging with students from Grade 1 to high school. It has been rewarding to work with the students and develop our materials and education programs to work across different age groups.

This program was funded with the generous support of a Patagonia Environmental Grant.