Education

We believe that growing one’s own food is a human right, and having access to the knowledge and skills to do so should be public and accessible for people of all ages and abilities. 

Grow Food Northampton encourages and supports community members and students of all ages to take part in building a just and resilient local food and farming system. We have so much to learn from the land itself, farmers and landworkers, community members most harmed by food injustice, and each other. When we listen to and learn from each other, we can create the affordable, accessible, fresh local food system we all deserve. 

At the elementary school level, Grow Food Northampton provides every Northampton Public School K-5th grader a cost-free field trip to the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm every year! On these field trips, 

• Students learn to grow, access, prepare, and enjoy nutrient-rich food grown sustainably right here where we live. Field trips focus on the hands-on skills of organic farming, and students are invited to take part in farm activities such as planting, weeding, mulching, and harvesting. 

• The farm becomes an outdoor classroom! Students participate in lessons tied to curriculum, bolstering education around plant science, climate change, pollinators, soil health, and more. Students also take part in collaborative projects on the farm, practicing Social and Emotional Learning skills and contributing toward the greater success of the farm. 

• Students are introduced to ideas of justice within the food system, such as the affordability of local and organic food, racism within the food system, justice for farmworkers, and the accessibility of culturally important crops. Students may also have the chance to visit and tend to our Living History Garden. 

Elementary school students also spend time learning about the Northampton Association for Education and Industry, an abolitionist community in Florence in the 1840s. Florence residents also grew crops to boycott the products most profitable to enslavers – for instance, growing sugar beets to divest from sugar cane. This important local history invites students to reflect: what does it mean to be proud of our town’s history and take action against injustice today? 

At JFK Middle School, 

• Grow Food Northampton offers two weekly after-school clubs: Garden Club and Stir it Up Cooking Club, offered for free or at sliding-scale cost to families. 

  • In Garden Club, students learn the basics of planning, planting and maintaining a garden, with students choosing the design, crops, and growing methods, taking into account culturally or familially significant crops, climate change, and organic farming methods. 

  • In Cooking Club, students experiment with different recipes, techniques, and flavors, using ingredients from the garden when possible! We learn about food justice to understand who has access to which foods and why, the role of food in social movements throughout history, and imagine what a just food system for all looks like.

• Grow Food Northampton also maintains the school garden, facilitating garden to classroom connections with social studies, science, and special education classes at all levels. 

At Northampton High School, Grow Food Northampton collaborates with the AP Environmental Science class and the Plant Science and Food Justice class to bring hands-on, farm-based education straight to the classroom, as well as bring NHS students to the Community Farm for hands-on learning! 

Grow Food Northampton also facilitates a number of community-based, all-ages food and gardening workshops, all offered free or sliding scale and open to the public on topics such as:

• Farming and gardening for climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation;

• Local food and cooking workshops;

• Organic farming and gardening techniques, methods, and skills such as no-till;

• Food and land justice, and Indigenous history of the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm;