WFCF Director of Education, Jessica Herwick

Our education programs have had a productive and successful year in 2022!  WFCF Perennial Programs: Little Sprouts, Rabbit Ambassadors, Teen Corps and After School & School Age Programs were held ALL FOUR SEASONS!  We began this year, still battling the pandemic, in January with winter time programming on the farm, and plans were made to return to schools for farm-to-school visits March through June.  Outdoor field trips continued to thrive, as we have cherished the outdoor learning spaces WFCF maintains for safe community gatherings in the fresh farm air.  Summer programs found their new normal, and welcomed over 125 youth for 10 weeks of summer fun on the farm, along with our Rabbit Tea Party Fridays and Little Sprouts Cool Downs, all with the help of our Teen Corps summer employment participants. And now, we are amid Fall Programs, which have been extended this season due to the mild weather and requests from our community.  In addition to the full-force return of these programs, there are many more highlights to share as follows.     

As of November 1st, WFCF Education Programs have:

  • Welcomed approximately 1800 individuals to the farm through farm based education and agricultural and environmental based enrichment programs: 1500 Youth , 300 Adults, 300 Families

  • Held 10 Workshops around agriculture, wellness, food and plants (most of which continue to fill to an average of 95% capacity!) Some for the family, some for adults only.

  • Hosted a handful of Birthday Celebrations in the Learning Garden with the help of the rabbits and hens to make dozens of new friends, young and old. 

  • Continued to connect with our new remote community through our free, unique, custom designed media and content. Our videos have received over 7,800 views in total so far this year with approximately 600 hours of our custom made, stress free, farm-based media streaming in households, classrooms and community centers. We continue to seek subscribers to the youtube channel, so if you haven’t already, please do like and subscribe!  Once we reach 1000 subscribers, it will unlock the Live YouTube Feature which will allow us to stream live from the farm FOR FREE!

  • Distributed over 200 sunflower growing kits to the families at McDevitt Middle School and connected more deeply with the Waltham Public Education Administrators, as we supported each others efforts to continue reaching and educating youth and families in Waltham during the early part of this year when COVID cases continued to impact the fluency and consistency of the end of the 2021-22 school year. 

  • ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS FOUND THEIR NEW NORMAL  We Hosted 25 On-Farm Field Trips and visited 45 classrooms, meeting students and their educators outdoors in playgrounds, parking lots and  for in-person farm to classroom enrichment programming for the first time since February 2020!

  • We welcomed the 2022-23 school year in September and rejoiced along with our Community of Learners as members of our after school program returned for a ‘typical’ first day of school in 2 years, our Teen Corps members prepared to reengage with high school in-person, and some of our Little Sprouts proudly had their first day of school 

  • Outreach IN PERSON returned!  We stood together with Waltham Black Future Fund at the Waltham Farmers Market opening day this year, Lamplighter, Earth Day celebrations at the Astrazeneca BioHub here in Waltham and at Lamplighter Brewery.  

  • Fitzgerald Enrichment Programs Returned (even though we stayed outside)  We fully returned after 2 long years of cautious pause on in person programs to visit every classroom at Fitzgerald Elementary School, a long-standing enrichment program that brings the farm to the students and the students to the farm.  Special thanks to Robin Doherty for remaining an advocate and conduit for this special program, which is more of a tradition now.  

  • Waltham Recreation Department Partnership Returned!  We fully returned as a Community Program Partner after 2 years of cautious pause, offering programming during all 4 seasons of the year to over 75 Waltham families in partnership with the Waltham Recreation Department, with plans to continue forward into 2023.  

  • MFA Community Arts Project 2022-23 Program Partnership was born!  150 students from the Greater Boston Area joined us on the farm as the starting point for this year’s Museum of Fine Arts Community Arts Project 2022-23. Youth from the following partner organizations visited the farm, picked carrots, munched on apples, met the English Angora Rabbits and learned about humane and sustainable wool and plant fiber production as an introduction to textiles they will use in their art project. The final art pieces created by these young artists will be displayed at the MFA in 2023! MFA Partnerships for Enrichment Field Trip Series: Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), Boys & Girls Club of Dorchester, Sociedad Latina, United South End Settlements (USES), West End House Boys & Girls Club of Allston-Brighton, Vine Street Community Center, Berkshire Partners Blue Hill Boys & Girls Club, Charlestown Boys & Girls Club, Edgerley Family South Boston Boys & Girls Club, Gerald and Darlene Jordan Boys & Girls Club, Orchard Gardens Boys & Girls Club, Yawkey Boys & Girls Club of Roxbury

  • Participated in our local food system by growing produce and herbs for Rancatore’s Ice Cream farm fresh flavors for the third year in a row (seasonal flavors are still for sale in the barn store!) Youth in the garden learned the value of produce within the food system in a special way this summer by helping to grow, harvest, deliver and taste farm-produce based ice cream flavors in collaboration with Rancatore’s Ice Cream! 

  • In-Person Interns returned!  Education hosted 9 interns this year from Bentley University, the Yawkey Foundation, and the Forest Foundation.  These individuals completed projects that related to their field of study and contributed many hours, efforts and ideas to help further our mission at WFCF in so many ways and we are grateful! Our Spring Yawkey Foundation Intern, Sydney Romagnolo, helped to win the grant that is funding our spring 2023 Butterfly Rearing Station and will provide funds to bring over 200 youth to the farm and the Learning Garden for a special, immersive field trip experience.  Recipients will include classrooms within the Waltham Public Schools and Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and Beyond. 

And we are not done yet!  In fact, are we ever done?  In moving with the rhythm of nature, the farm-based learning provided through Waltham Fields is so much more than a few hours of farm-based fun and learning from one season to the next. We are not just teaching and inspiring here in the Learning Garden.  We are not solely growing food and feeding our neighbors.  We are empowering our neighbors to harness the power of growing their own food, sharpening our skills and our understanding of the natural world, and weaving friendships through the common ground of love for the farm (and the bunnies and the chickens… and even the red tail hawks who reside here with us).  

WFCF is supporting the well being of those learners, families and neighbors who have been working hard to get through some challenging times, and now, we continue providing a safe place to gather and recover from the fierce overcoming of those challenges.  We offer a place for folks to gather together and ‘come as they are’, knowing they will be respected, accepted and befriended.  We are the place students share their joys and struggles with each other, and learn to support each other through the community we continue to propagate alongside our seedlings. 

We continue to nurture this space that grounds us in playful but meaningful experiences through natural arts, the excitement of growing and tasting your own food, and by offering the freedom and tools to encourage everyone to explore, and better understand the natural world that surrounds us.  We learn together.  We grow together. We continue to forge our way together, comforted and nourished by this precious land, this lovely Learning Garden and the community who finds a place here. 

THANK YOU!  To all members of our Education Team - workshares, educators and student volunteers - for supporting and strengthening our community of learners and lending your voices to help create a diverse collective of amazing humans who nurture our learning spaces and our learners at WFCF!

Learning Garden Workshares: Jennifer LaTourneau and her right hand lady, Katie, Amanda Smith, and her assistants Hazel and Maeve

2022 Supervisory and Lead Educators: Susan Busheme-Folkins, Mary DiMaggio, Helen Germyn, Cathy Miner-Hartenstein, Sydney Romagnolo, Amanda Smith

2022 Teen & Assistant Educators: Sofia Ayala, Sam Shea, Matthew Swift, Frankie Worman 

2022 Yawkey Intern in Partnership with Bentley University: Sydney Romagnolo

2022 Bentley Service Learning Interns: Zoë Ragland-Haines, Dally Tran, Javier Wu, Mira Welches, Jibin James and Sadie Caccia