5th Generation Orchard Owner Gene Kingsbury shows students the fruit inside the blooms on a spring visit

Educating the Next Generation...

of farmers, leaders, voters and eaters. 

MCA's robust education efforts bring farmers to classrooms and students out to the creeks, farms and forests of Montgomery County to understand their place - and importance- in natural systems. ​ Read all our blog posts on education here or scroll down to see our education initiatives. Click each photo to learn more.

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Mobile Ag Science Labs Engage every Prek-5th student in MoCo
Back in 2015 MCA was proud to partner with the Montgomery County Farm Bureau on a passion dear to both organizations - connecting the next generation with education about the importance of farms and farm products.  The plans for this collaboration came out of our Farming at Metro's Edge Conference in 2013.  The education took the form of a big mobile laboratory, provided by Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation (MAEF), stuffed with hands-on exhibits and activities about the role of agriculture in the everyday lives of students, and a trained educator to walk kids through it.  ​The lab will have visited every Elementary school in the county by the end of 2019.

Inside the Mobile Ag Lab a trained Ag Educator delivers an on-campus, hands-on field trip to some elementary school students.

In-Class and On Farm
​Veteran educator in the Poolesville Global Ecology Program, Joyce Bailey chairs our education committee and coordinates the classroom-visits and on-farm field trips for local high school students for MCA. So far 500 students have participated with more trips planned for the spring. The themes have ranged from commodity crop production, female farmers, sustainable practices and land preservation. The questions raised by students are very insightful and show Agriculture's ability to teach lessons about business, science, math and civics all in one. 

Lee Langstaff of Shepherd's Hey Farm greets students from Poolesville HIgh School

High school students investigate the creek's small but important residents in a creek-side lab setup.

Eyes on (and hands in) the Creek
Field trips have also visited fragile Ten Mile Creek - part of the back up water supply for 4.3 Million in the DC region. The creek's buffers were threatened with development as part of the buildout in Clarksburg. MCA, with many other local organizations founded the Save Ten Mile Creek coalition and MCA then launched a new Friends of Ten Mile Creek organization to protect the creek in perpetuity. Frequent water  and biotic sampling made the case for this creek's protection and we have involved students in this long term science project with very real world implications. 

Re-Leaf the Reserve: Our part of 1 Trillion new trees
The UN has found that while drastically cutting emissions must happen to prevent the most dire warming projections - tree planting on a large scale is a very effective and cost efficient way to draw down carbon in the atmosphere - one that requires no change in political will. They have identified a goal of 1 Trillion new trees.  We are doing our part with Re-Leaf the Reserve, a program designed to match privately held Ag Reserve land along stream buffers with new forests, planted with funding from the "fee-in-lieu" program developers pay into when they cut trees down in the county. We have a portfolio of 100 acres to plant with more land being added all the time. We rely on volunteers to help with planting and aftercare. To host a forest or help us plant- learn more here. 

Our planting contractor Garth Seely of Gardens by Garth helps a member of our 3rd grade mulching crew tuck a new tree in for winter

It is not just enough to protect the farms, streams and open space that make up Montgomery County's Ag Reserve, we need to grow the leaders that will continue the legacy of thriving farms on the edge of thriving cities. MCA is the lean, tenacious and award winning organization proactively bringing students to lessons that are best taught by the creek, in the field and forests. We would be honored by your tax deductible gift to fuel this work.