Students Prepare A Farm-to-Table Feast

For the past 11 weeks, Hawthorne Valley Farm Learning Center hosted Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School 7th and 8th  graders for a once-a-week “Farm to Table” class. Since the beginning of the school year, students have experienced firsthand the processes, completely from scratch, that go into creating many of the foods we enjoy.

According to Indigo Ocean, Farm & Arts Coordinator at the Hawthorne Valley Farm Learning Center, “With the large amount of convenience foods in our culture today, young people are much more removed from where their food comes from. Being engaged in the entire process from field to table not only establishes connection to where food comes from but also an appreciation for high quality food and the work that goes into turning it into a delicious and nutritious meal.”

This 11-week class culminated on Monday with a Final Feast. The students assembled their banquet with all of the ingredients they have been working on to date: soup made from harvested vegetables that have been dried or stored in the root cellar; fresh kale salad; lasagna fashioned from handmade ricotta cheese, home-canned tomato sauce, and noodles created from dough of hand-ground Hawthorne Valley Farm wheat and fresh eggs; and homemade apple pie; all of which will be washed down with hand-pressed apple cider.

“Over the last 10 weeks I have been learning about how the food I am eating is made, produced, and grown… I think overall this block was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about food and where it comes from,” shared Raphael Elmasri, Grade 7.

The students invited special guests who helped them in this venture. In addition to all of their efforts in the kitchen, during the last three months the pupils experienced a variety of adventures at Hawthorne Valley Farm, including working alongside the farmers in the fields, caring for the animals, touring the sauerkraut cellar, learning about the work of the Farmscape Ecology Program, and gaining firsthand experience of the fine points of cheesemaking.

Tobias Harbult, Grade 8, recently arrived with his family from Rome, writes, “It is important to learn how to cook because that way you can eat well and healthily… Making cheese last week was interesting and it was also fun. First we talked about whey and then about cheese and the tale of how cheese was discovered. Then we heated the milk and put lemon and vinegar into it which are acids that make it curdle. It became ricotta cheese which we put on some bread and ate.”

During the candlelit Final Feast, in addition to sharing the fruits of their labors, the participants shared their thoughts, writings, and other creations reflective of their experiences in the class, with each other, their teachers, and their dinner guests.

Hawthorne Valley Farm Learning Center and Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School are members of Hawthorne Valley Association, a diverse educational not-for-profit in central Columbia County. Dedicated to social and cultural renewal through the integration of education, agriculture, and the arts, Hawthorne Valley Association’s 400-acre campus includes a Waldorf school; working Biodynamic farm; on-farm education programs; a full-line natural foods store; social, ecological, and cultural research groups; teacher training programs; and more. For more information, please call 518-672-5808, visit www.hawthornevalleyassociation.org, or stop by 327 County Route 21C, Ghent, NY 12075.

Photo 1

Cecilia Bellows and Raphael Elmasri and their 7th and 8th grade classmates enjoy the fruits of their labor beginning with a soup course made entirely from Hawthorne Valley Farm vegetables.

Photo 2

Honored guests Martina Muller (Hawthorne Valley Alkion Center), Katy Lince (Hawthorne Valley Farm Field Vegetable Manager), Anna Duhon (Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program), and Peter Kindel (Hawthorne Valley Farm Cheesemaker) helped the students through their Farm to Table block and joined the Final Feast, enjoying the results of the students’ foray into farming, cheesemaking, cooking, and baking.

Photos courtesy of Alexandra Flora Taylor.