Reading, writing and radishes

Gate City Harvest, a Summerfield farm, has dedicated a portion of its property to a new school that intertwines teaching, gardening and environmental stewardship

by CHRIS BURRITT

SUMMERFIELD – Even though the morning was unusually warm for early February, Aubrey Cupit’s farm is still several weeks from springing to life. The fields were brown and the bee hives dormant, a bare setting except for a flash of activity down the gravel driveway.

Children played in the field next to a white geodesic dome. Measuring 21 feet tall and twice as wide, the futuristic sphere of interlocking triangles looks out of place amid low-slung greenhouses and a barn and cabin with roofs of red tin.

Then again, the unusual structure is home to a fledgling, out-of-the-ordinary school at Gate City Harvest, Cupit’s farm on Pleasant Ridge Road in Summerfield.