by Kristina Bostick
A smile flashes over MCA Education Committee Chair Gene Kingbury's face as their hands go up. The students at Poolesville High School have been listening as Gene explained how his family's fifth generation orchard grows (over 6000 trees!) and innovates. "How did you develop your new peach variety and do you patent it?" "Can you grow your fruit without chemicals?" Greg Glenn of Rocklands Farm offers a lesson in best practices in livestock raising by bunching students between desks with little room to move about. Huddled together and getting hot and uncomfortable, they get the picture... quickly
Now in its second year and with collaboration from MC Agricultural Services, MCA has added Damascus and Sherwood High Schools to the program- bringing farmers and agricultural professionals to the classroom and students to the fields and farms.
The Poolesville High School Global Ecology Program students joined us for field trips in the Ag Reserve this Spring. Our trip started at Black Hills Regional Park visitor center with the center's naturalists available to discuss the reservoir and the local environment, a trip through the developing and developed areas of Clarksburg to our ultimate destination, the Creek at West Old Baltimore Road and stream monitor Cathy Wiss. High quality Ten Mile Creek offers an abundance of aquatic life to explore and the area provides an important land use lesson as to how best to steward our natural resources. New this year, former planning chair and Ag Reserve architect Royce Hanson, provided a terrific tutorial via Power Point on the Reserve, and how it came to be and why it matters.
The students will be joining us for field trips and hands on learning at several local farms later in the Spring. MCA's Agriculture Education Pilot aims to bring agriculture and local food topics into the Montgomery County curriculum by bringing students to the Reserve and the Reserve to students.
The Poolesville High School Global Ecology Program students joined us for field trips in the Ag Reserve this Spring. Our trip started at Black Hills Regional Park visitor center with the center's naturalists available to discuss the reservoir and the local environment, a trip through the developing and developed areas of Clarksburg to our ultimate destination, the Creek at West Old Baltimore Road and stream monitor Cathy Wiss. High quality Ten Mile Creek offers an abundance of aquatic life to explore and the area provides an important land use lesson as to how best to steward our natural resources. New this year, former planning chair and Ag Reserve architect Royce Hanson, provided a terrific tutorial via Power Point on the Reserve, and how it came to be and why it matters.
The students will be joining us for field trips and hands on learning at several local farms later in the Spring. MCA's Agriculture Education Pilot aims to bring agriculture and local food topics into the Montgomery County curriculum by bringing students to the Reserve and the Reserve to students.
