Late in September, students, teachers and staff members from Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES’ Westview in the Department for Exceptional Children volunteered their time and efforts to Foodlink’s Community Farm, one of the largest urban agriculture sites in the City of Rochester. The community garden provides space for 65 families to grow approximately 6,000 pounds of food for their households each year. In addition, the farming operations grow, on average, 2,000 pounds of produce for Foodlink programs.
During their volunteer work at the farm, students tried several different jobs and learned a lot about the farming operation at Foodlink. Several of them jumped right in and worked on the farm’s compost piles. They learned how to turn over the pile to aid in decomposition and soil building and then they cut down more dead plants and other organic matter to add to a new compost pile. Other students volunteered to pick up trash around the parking lot, sidewalk and the garden park to keep the site clean and attractive. Everyone helped break apart garlic bulbs so that individual cloves could be replanted to grow more garlic next season.
Our students can always be counted on to enthusiastically give back to their community!