"Seed parents" care for their young

Working in their chilly greenhouse last week, Telstar Middle School students in the Greenhouse of Telstar (GOT Farms) program planted a variety of pepper and tomato seeds. The “seed parents” will now care for the plants at home until after April break, because the school greenhouse is still too cold this time of year to start seedlings. After April vacation, the trays of seedlings will return, where they will grow until it is time to transplant them into the garden. Pictured are, from left: Teacher Melissa Prescott, Koley True, and Cassidy Webster. GOT Farms is a service-learning project intended  to improve the health of citizens in SAD 44 by using the school gardens and greenhouse to grow food for the Telstar complex, raising awareness of the importance of eating organically and locally, strengthening  the “Farm to School” connections and working together with the kitchen staff and the community to bring local foods to the Telstar table more often, and developing partnerships with organizations and businesses in the SAD  44 community. This past year 67 students and 70 adults put in 3,860 hours on the project. For more on the program go to the website at http://gotfarms.wordpress.com/.