Juana Lona cradled a black hen in the chicken run at Live Earth Farm in Watsonville, as kindergarteners from a Pajaro Valley charter school milled around trying to approach the skittish, scattering fowl.
“You have to hold the wings together, and put them close to your body,” said Lona, an education intern with Farm Discovery at Live Earth, as she demonstrated for the tots. “So like this, they feel safe like this. If we put them up in the air, they’re going to try to fly away. You see how she’s calm? You have to give her like a big hug.”
She gently handed the hen to 5-year-old Jaelene Serrano, as a couple of Jaelene’s classmates gathered around to pet the hen in her arms. “So fluffy!” the kids said as they gently stroked the hen’s feathers and a rooster crowed nearby before Jaelene handed her to classmate Michelle Rodriguez Meza.
“It’s so soft,” Michelle, 5, said.
The hands-on experience is one of the programs the nonprofit Farm Discovery at Live Earth provides for thousands of youngsters throughout the region each year. The organization provides more than 1,800 local youth with farming, nutrition, and environmental stewardship education through 64 field trips a year as well as 8 weeks of summer camp. And it also works with students to grow and deliver nutritious, organic food for nearly 9,000 community members in need, including the elderly, veterans, foster youth and farmworkers.
Farm Discovery at Live Earth is seeking $5,000 in Wish Book funding to increase organic produce production to 5,000 pounds by December 2024, as well as to maintain its practice of providing scholarships for 40% of its field trip and summer camp participants, many of whom come from impoverished districts.
On this day, Farm Discovery was hosting a kindergarten class from Linscott Charter School in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which serves a northern Monterey County region devastated by severe flooding of the Pajaro River back in March.
That disaster seemed a world away on a sunny autumn morning as teacher Lindsey Kitz gathered the class at the 150-acre farm overlooking the fertile valley. The kids took seats in a circle of rocks on a hilltop, and Emily Hackett, an AmeriCorps service member assisting with the field trip program, gave them the lowdown.
“We’re going to see a lot of animals on the farm today,” she said as the class erupted in approval, yelling “Yeah! ” in unison.
“Raise your hand if you think organic food is good for your health,” Hackett said, as a few hands rose. “Raise your hand if you know where your food comes from,” she said as a few other hands rose. “Raise your hand if you know how to grow your own food,” she said, and a few other hands stretched upward.
Farm Manager Ulises Castillo led them to a small patch of row crops. “Is this a farm?” they shouted.
“What foods do you see?” Castillo asked the tots. “Want to try some fresh food that’s never been in the supermarket, never been sprayed?”
Lona distributed some fresh lettuce leaves for the tots to munch.
“What else goes in salad?” Castillo asked as he encouraged them to look at the plants. “Who likes pizza? Who likes spaghetti? What do they both have in common? They both have tomatoes!”
“I found one!” shouted Belle Galeana Ramirez, 5, clutching a small, olive-shaped orange tomato.
From there, they walked over to a pen where a cow named Bella and a pig named Lucky sauntered over to the wooden rail fence to greet them.
Lona pointed to a pile of vegetables on the ground. “Bella loves zucchini. I’ll show you how to feed it to her.”
She slipped a plump, green zucchini to the cow who lapped it up with a long wet tongue. A couple of the girls in the class gave it a try, then shrieked and dropped the zucchini as the cow’s long tongue reached out for it. They giggled and and gave it another go, to more shrieks and laughter. Eventually they got the vegetable treat into Bella’s mouth.
The group stopped to visit a pony named Star and a pair of horses, Flair and Cody. Then they were off to the chicken run.
“These chickens, they lay eggs,” Lona explained as they approached the enclosure. “If we stress them out too much, they won’t lay as many eggs. We want eggs, so we have to be very calm.”
She warned them not to mess with the roosters, and gave the children another bit of advice as they made their way to the goat pen: “Don’t grab their horns,” Lona urged.
“They’re so beautiful!” Michelle said as she rubbed the white fur on one of the goats.
The children went one-by-one through a handwashing station, then on to a barn where they lined up at a wooden apple crusher with a black iron wheel, taking turns dropping apples into the device and turning the wheel to mash the juicy fruit.
When they finished, they stood in a row as Castillo cranked the heavy wheels on a wooden apple press to squeeze juice into a ceramic jug, from which Hackett and Lona filled small cups for the children.
Hackett then sat them in a circle and asked what they liked best.
“The apple press!” said Michelle.
“Everything,” added Jase Flowers, 5.
“I like how they’re getting a hands-on experience and seeing all the animals we talk about in class, and seeing where their food comes from,” Kitz said, as the class broke for sack lunches and to run around an open meadow. “We’ve been talking about growing our own food. We’ve been talking about what plants and animals need to survive. We’ve been learning about apples.”
Jessica Ridgeway, the nonprofit’s executive director, helped the farm’s owners establish Farm Discovery at Live Earth in 2008. The organic farm is solar-powered and provides foods to local farmers markets. Older kids get experience growing, harvesting and preparing produce, making snacks like kale chips to eat. The organic food they help produce goes to local programs like Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes, dedicated to providing nutritious food for farm workers, the elderly, disabled and homeless.
For younger kids, the programs are an introduction to farm life, including goat and chicken care, planting, seed saving and cider making.
“We focus on things that are accessible by their age,” Ridgeway said. Kindergarteners are fun to host, she added. “They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Donations will help Farm Discovery at Live Earth increase organic produce production to 5,000 pounds by December 2024, and maintain its practice of providing scholarships for 40% of its field trip and summer camp participants, many of whom come from impoverished districts. Goal: $5,000
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com/donate or mail in this form.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.