Morales Farm Partnership
Making Locally Grown History with Edible Education
June 2010
Bainbridge Island, WA
Whats New at Morales Farm!
Wilkes students and parents are harvesting the crops that they planted last Spring!
The produce that is featured in a “Taste of Bainbridge” during the month of October, represent a number of locally grown “firsts” for the school district and the Bainbridge agricultural community. This fresh, sustainably grown food comes to the school lunch menu through a ground breaking farm to school program involving Butler Green Farms, Laughing Crow Farm, Bainbridge Island Farms, Bainbridge Island School District, Friends of the Farms, City of Bainbridge Island and The EduCulture Project at Global Source Education, which developed and coordinated the program. Please visit the Bainbridge Island School District online to learn more about their Farm to Cafeteria program and view school lunch menus for October featuring produce grown for the Edible Education Program at Morales Farm!
October Harvest: We have successfully harvested over 2500 potatoes and giant edible sunflowers! Thanks to Wilkes Elementary students, Island Cooperative Preschool, and the Fall Educators Retreat participants for helping us with this years harvest! Still to come we will be harvesting sweet corn and sugar pumpkins, just in time for Halloween. It will soon be time to put the plot to bed for the winter and plant a cover crop!
Stay tuned for further updates!
Contact us if you would like to get involved!
 
Wilkes students and parents harvesting the potatoes that they helped plant last Spring
 
Wilkes students digging for potatoes
 
Wilkes students, parents and the EduCulture Project staff at the July 15th work party
Summer work party planting sugar pumpkins with Karen Selvar of Bainbridge Island Farms
A plot of edible sunflowers grown by second graders from Wilkes Elementary
In 2010, through a new pilot project in edible education, a group of Bainbridge Island farmers, educators and students have been seeding some locally grown history. For the first time on Bainbridge Island, publically owned farmland is being used in service to public education to create public produce that will be distributed to the school lunch program starting this fall.
A view looking south onto Morales Farm
Betsey Wittick of Laughing Crow Farm instructing First Graders from Wilkes Elementary how to plant potatoes
Neighboring Wilkes Elementary is our partner school for this pilot project at Morales Farm. During the final weeks of the 2009-2010 school year, Wilkes students in grades 1-4 planted potatoes, corn, sunflowers and sugar pumpkins at the Morales Farm plot. Students will be involved in growing this food from seed through harvest, and have a hand in the processing, distribution and consumption of the produce. What is grown through this outdoor classroom program will be served in the Bainbridge Island School District lunch program, studied and consumed through classroom projects, donated to the community, and used to “farmraise” to keep the project going. We expect the fall harvest to yield more than 1500 pounds of vegetables.
 
Seed potatoes from Laughing Crow Farm (left); an apprentice helps Wilkes students plant potatoes (right)
Through educational interest and generosity, local farmers and Friends of The Farms, who manages the city-owned farmland, have set aside a parcel of community landscape at Morales Farm for a dedicated farm-school program. Brian MacWhorter of Butler Green Farms, Betsey Wittick of Laughing Crow Farm, and Karen Selvar of Bainbridge Island Farms, are serving as master farmers to oversee the agricultural integrity and authenticity of this edible education program. Brian MacWhorter prepared the plot for planting, and Betsey Wittick donated 400 seed potatoes to get the program started. Apprentice farmers and educators are being trained to help manage the farmland and lead learning experiences. The EduCulture Project has been developing locally grown farm-school programs on Bainbridge Island for the past four years, and is overseeing the design and development of the Morales Farm program.
 
Brian MacWhorter of Butler Green Farms instructing Third and Fourth Graders (left); third badmouth graders planting corn (right)
Wilkes Elementary School was the ideal partner school for this pilot project at Morales Farm for several reasons. The farm is in walking distance from the school, and it is a natural extension of the teaching and learning already begun with neighboring Suyematsu-Bentryn Farms and farmers. These farms are part of the school’s backyard, and over the last few years they have become integral outdoor classrooms for students to learn lessons in math, science, social studies and more. Wilkes Elementary is approaching the vanguard of local food and farm education, and has become a model for the rest of the district.
Students walking back to Wilkes Elementary School after planting at Morales Farm.
This exciting new project is taking place on Morales Farm, located on the corner of Highway 305 and Lovgreen Road and one of Bainbridge Island’s oldest working farms. Teddy Morales moved to the region in 1929 at age 16, where he joined relatives in doing seasonal farming up and down the west coast. After serving in WWII, Teddy and his first wife Gloria Paul settled on the island to raise four children and to help farm his cousin’s Lovgreen property. Teddy traded his expertise and help on the farm for 5 acres of the land, which makes up what we know today as the Morales Farm. During the height of the season, the farm produced an average of 800 ears of sweet corn each day. Teddy and his second wife Tita grew “berries and a variety of vegetables sown in perfectly straight rows over the sunny rise of their property. Their neatly trimmed farm is one of the cornerstones of our rich agricultural heritage”. The Morales Family retired the farm and moved back to the Philippines in the 1990’s. Through an open space levy, the Morales Farm was purchased by the City of Bainbridge Island to keep in perpetuity as community agricultural landscape. Friends of the Farms has contracted with the City to manage this farmland, and has spent the past few years bringing it back to working status.
First Graders from Wilkes Elementary plant rows of seed potatoes at Morales Farm
Edible Education Program Goals and Curricular Objectives
• To help educators and schools cultivate a more lived, local curriculum around food, farming and related subjects
• To provide outdoor landscapes of learning to enrich and enliven core curricula and meet standards
• To create pathways for building stronger relationships between farms, classrooms, and lunchrooms.
• To practice the integration of scholarship, stewardship, citizenship, and sustainability.
• To build skills sets in farm stewardship and food citizenship
• To model the state standards on education for sustainability
• To experience sustainable farming and agrarian ideals practiced at neighboring farms
• To nurture school and home gardens
• To develop, implement and assess a series of curriculum projects that actively connect farms to classrooms to lunchrooms and nurture best practices and model curricula on a community wide scale.
• To assist with locally grown food production that will contribute to a more sustainable school and community food stream, and a stronger local food economy.
• To expand farm-school projects throughout Bainbridge Island and Kitsap County.
• To conserve a taste of Bainbridge Island and preserves landscapes of learning for this and future generations.
• To build an apprenticeship program that trains the next generation of farmers and educators on Bainbridge
• To build stronger bridges between classrooms and communities and establish sustainable community-school relationships.
This edible education program at Morales Farm is made possible through partnerships with:
- Brian MacWhorter, Butler Green Farms
- Betsey Wittick, Laughing Crow Farm
- Karen Selvar, Bainbridge Island Farms
- The EduCulture Project at Global Source Education
- Wilkes Elementary School & Families
- Bainbridge Island School District Food & Nutrition Program
- Friends of the Farms
- City of Bainbridge Island
- Bainbridge One Call for All Campaign
- And through the generous support and contributions of many individuals in our community
The seed funding for the first phase of this pilot project has come from Wilkes PTO class enrichment funds, Bainbridge Schools Foundation grants, and other school sources already allocated to Wilkes farm-school programs, along with generous pro-bono and financial contributions from local individuals and organizations. We are looking for funding sources that can enable this program to continue and grow in a more sustainable direction. If you have any ideas or suggestions for capacity building with this edible education program, we would like to hear from you.
For more information please contact
The EduCulture Project at Global Source, or call 206-780-5797
Read recent news about Suyematsu/Bentryn and Morales Farms and farm programs
Press Release for the Morales Farm Program
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