Our Hands On Approach
Our "Farm to Table" program at Paoli Community Schools is completely ran by the students, and providing products to the students. Our animal science classes work to produce the pork used in our school lunch programs, Our horticulture classes work on producing many of the fresh vegetables for use in our lunch program. Our mechanics class builds all of the various things to keep this project running smoothly. The business class runs all of the business aspects of this project, including maintaining our website and marketing.
The techniques that we show and teach the students, will enable them, not just in school, but in the workforce as well. They will learn to work together, to communicate, and to meet expectations and goals.
Farm To Lunch Table
Our program not only helps to feed the community, but makes it a bit more personal by selling to the school! This gives our elementary students the opportunity to eat fresh, home grown pork, and the AG program someone to sell a good amount of supply to. Our AG Business classes fully run and manage the selling of the pork, and this gives them a good chance to see what sells are like with larger scale buyers.
Our Greenhouse
In our greenhouse toward the end of the year, we grow a number of plants and have a sale to raise funds for the program.
All plants are student grown, watered, and taken care of. We also help to decide which plants we order based off of what we sold best the year before.
Students get a full hands on experience from seeds, clippings, and plugs, to watching them walk out of the door to a new home.
Our Hydroponic System
Lettuce grown by our students in the agriculture department.
This will later be used to make the salads in the lunch program.
This is the Arc. The Arc was designed and created by the students to save room while growing lettuce. The Arc produces the lettuce that we sell to the cafeteria. It makes it easier to produce lettuce since the water is constantly moving, the provides the lettuce with a light system, and makes it a fast and simple process to grow and harvest lettuce.
This year's pigs
Our pigs are brought in and taken care of by students. They're then bred and their babies are taken care of by students until they're old enough to be sold. This gives Animal Science students a chance to work in real world situations.
For more in-depth information on our programs, click on the buttons below!