It takes a community

How Farm Life And Education Go Hand In Hoof At North Country School And Camp Treetop S

BY SHAUN KITTLE

ANYONE DRIVING ONTO NORTH Country School and Camp Treetops’ 220-acre campus is greeted by an idyllic scene. Cascade and Pitchoff mountains dominate the horizon, rising tall over the meadows, pastures, and barn that comprise the school’s working farm and gardens. After winter finally subsides, animals can be seen free-ranging it up in any one of the campus’s pas- tures. Eventually horses, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, and turkeys will all share this space, which is buttressed by forests and meadows. Songbirds and other forest creatures are regular visitors. They serve as a reminder that just beyond the mowed grass there’s a vast wilderness waiting to challenge, invigorate, and educate students and campers from around the globe.

That wilderness, the six-million-acre Adirondack Park, offers challenges as well as beautiful scenery. It takes a community to nurture plants and animals here, and that is exactly what happens. In the two greenhouses, Garden Manager Tess Faller weaves disciplines like biology and math into what would otherwise be garden chores, while over in the barnyard, Barn Manager Erica Burns takes a similar approach to tending the animals. The students and campers who live here get down in the dirt, but it isn’t busywork. They’re making important associations that draw upon the Ed- ible Schoolyard philosophy, linking the cycle of life to the food they eat and the lessons they learn, all while participating in their community.

The North Country School and Camp Treetops campus is home to five acres of growing space that includes two greenhouses, Dexter Field, and several smaller gardens. Next to the Teaching and Learning Kitchen is the Children’s Garden, where things like shrubs, herbs, and plants that are used for various dyes are grown. In the Forest Garden there are plum, apple, and peach trees, native plants, and more experimental plants like artichokes and herbs that are new to the campus.

Keeping the gardens and greenhouses producing food is a lot of work, especially considering the mountainous region. Thanks to the long, cold winters, seeds are started early in the greenhouses and many perennial herbs have to be planted yearly.

“We have a really short growing season—last year we had two months without frost—so we need to make sure everything we’re growing will get used, and that it’s grown in the quantity that’s needed,” Tess said. That’s where the students and campers come in. One of the challenges Tess faces as an educator is keeping kids interested in tasks like planting, weeding, and harvesting. But she believes there’s something genuinely intriguing in experiencing firsthand the seed-to-plant-to-kitchen-to-compost process. To help draw her students’ attention to learning about that natural life cycle, Tess tries to grow things the kids will find interesting, like towering sunflowers, wildly patterned tomatoes, and green bean varieties with names like “dragon tongue.”

“It’s really about streamlining the production to see how much we can produce for our community to eat, and then to find all of the avenues that are interesting and can hook a kid,” Tess said. “Anything that’s engaging, exciting, fun, and different.”

With all of that in mind, every crop becomes an eclectic potpourri of utilitarian and fun. Large, plump beefsteak tomatoes are grown for their versatility, while cherry tomatoes—which campers love to snack on—are thrown into the mix. Everyday items like salad greens and cucumbers, which grow pretty fast, are planted and harvested regularly, while thousands of pounds of potatoes and squash are grown en masse because they can be stored through winter. It all makes its way to the kitchen, where Head of Kitchen Paulette Peduzzi transforms the harvests into a variety of meals for students, faculty, and staff. Students also use the fresh produce for cooking lessons in the Teaching and Learning Kitchen.

Tess explained that gardening can elicit a real wow-factor in many kids. Since planting occurs in the spring, the students who help with that aren’t on campus during summer, when most of the growing takes place. That’s where the camp community comes in—campers maintain the fields and harvest what’s needed in July and August. When students return in fall, they get to see the fruits of their labor—beautiful rows of kale, glossy peppers, and stunning flower beds have appeared where tiny sprouts once stood. It’s one thing to pick a fat, juicy piece of fruit off of a tree, but it’s something else entirely to dig into the ground and pull out a dense, heavy potato. It’s like opening a treasure chest and being able to feed your community with the contents.

“What we do here is older than old-fashioned,” Tess said. “We’re not just growing to be self-sustaining, but the fact that our growing and harvesting and food preparation are so community oriented, it feels very timely. This is something we rely on, being able to come together and produce this food and enjoy it.”

As the snow and ice yield to warmer days, the campus’s rolling fields become populated with grazing horses, pecking chickens, grunting pigs, and a sheep flock that moves as one unit like a wooly, many-legged cloud. The camp and school barnyard is a special place, accented by ancient glacial erratics and stately metal sculptures created by the community. Visitors usually pause to admire the view but the animals don’t seem to notice any of it—their interests lie in foraging and frolicking.

The horses, chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, and turkeys that live here provide food, materials, and education to the campus community. Students and campers take an active role in caring for the animals by doing daily barn chores—collecting eggs, watching lambs being born, cleaning the stalls, grooming horses, and feeding and watering the animals.

Every creature on campus is important, but many children gravitate toward the horses. Erica explained that each has its own personality, and for that reason different people tend to bond better with particular horses.

“Where the sheep are raised as a flock, the horses are cared for as individuals,” Erica said. “They get individual meal plans, certain horses only get ridden in certain programs, and some horses have specific health needs.”

Erica begins the riding season gently, working with the horses to reinforce cues and making sure they are ready for summer. Before camp begins, she also rents five or six horses to meet the demands of the regular riding lessons, bringing the barnyard’s total up to about 15. Horses are large, and vetting them before a student or camper gets into the saddle is essential. They’re allowed to have their own personality, but each needs to be kind, gentle, and tolerant of beginner riders.

Campers ride four periods a day, six days a week, which keeps the horses working hard. Days off are more of a mental break than a physical break—the campers are learning to ride, which can become confusing to the animals.

“If a kid is riding them and using the wrong cues, the horse can get to the point where it begins to second guess itself,” Erica said. “That can lead to bad habits, and we want the horses to listen to commands. Giving them a half day where they’re ridden by an adult reinforces those cues so the horse always knows what it’s supposed to do.”

Every student learns how to tell when a horse has had enough, so no horse is never pushed beyond its limitations. Since every horse is different, getting to know each one’s personality becomes especially important. For example, Tucker is a steady horse in his 20s, and he tolerates everything.

“If I could clone him 100 times over, I would,” Erica said. “You could compare him to the person who you can ask for a favor and they always say yes.” toward the horses. Erica explained

Beau is a 1,200-pound tank, a confident and strong animal that doesn’t spook easily. Beau teaches confidence in the rider—he will do whatever he wants until he’s sure the rider is completely in charge, but then he’s steady and reliable.

Twinkie is also a confidence builder. Even though she’s stubborn, she’s solid in the stall and will stand like a statue for grooming. Good stall manners aside, Twinkie is also opinionated and will sometimes disagree with the rider.

“Matching the right horse to the right kid is important, since some horses aren’t suited for inexperienced kids or kids who are skittish around horses,” Erica said. “Some of the relationship building takes time. Banker can be tough to get to know, but by the end of the 2019 schoolyear, a couple of students were writing him love notes.”

Erica added that animals can teach students and campers a lot about themselves and about how to treat others. Learning to care for and communicate with horses can build confidence and instill patience, persistence, compassion, and understanding.

“They all have something to teach you, but you have to be willing to listen and learn,” Erica said.

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