KINBURN – Limestone Farm School’s innovative program graduated 15 kids at the end of June after a fall, winter and spring of working in a small farm environment and learning where their food comes from.

Amanda and Gord Gillespie, affectionately known as Mrs. And Mr. G, just graduated their first class of Limestone Acres’ Farm School students – a program that focuses on teaching kids aged two to five about life on the farm and producing food for the world.

West Carleton Online dropped by on June 26 to meet the Wednesday graduating class and see some of the things the young students have been doing, and learning.

“We just finished our first year,” Amanda, affectionately known as Mrs. G, said. “It was really, really good. We had full enrolment for the majority of the year and will definitely continue next year.”

Farm School runs once a week for students aged two to five from September to June, on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday mornings.

“In the next session were going to add Thursday afternoons as well,” Mrs. G said.

Amanda said they had full enrolment in their first year with 15 kids – five per day.

“They get to have a different kind of experience learning things about food, where it comes from and how it actually gets to their dinner plate,” she said. “Something they don’t necessarily get taught at school or at a daycare centre. It’s a different experience for them and sometimes it’s the first social experience the kids have with their peers.”

Farm School is held on the Gillespie two-acre farm called Limestone Acres. The husband and wife bought the farm on Limestone Road in 2016. When Amanda isn’t running the school she is preparing for the several farmers’ market she attends each week in Arnprior and Constance Bay. The farm grows a variety of vegetables, produces honey from their colony of bees, produces chicken and duck eggs from the flock and recently added goats to the farm.

Six-year-old Devin Romanyk says he has enjoyed his time during the first year of Farm School.

“I likethe big, fat animals,” Devin told West Carleton Online. “My favourite think about farming is sharing all the things I grow with my friends.”

The day West Carleton Online was there, the class was busy making a fruit salad (along with all the other chores). Devin has one other favourite at Farm School.

“My favourite thing is Mrs. G,” he said.

Mrs. G’s farm school students get to learn and help with all of the chores and farm duties.

“The kids are pretty fearless,” Mrs. G said. “It’s fun because it runs from September to June. We get to plant some things in the fall and watch it come up in the spring and that’s pretty exciting for them. Then they get to help me in the spring to seed all the early plants and then they get to help me harvest them while they are still there. They get to see the whole cycle of things and they find that really interesting.”

It’s a unique education you can only get on a small, working farm.

“I love it,” Amanda said. “They show up and at first they are so shy and very timid and by the end of the school year everyone is so comfortable with each other and they look forward to seeing all their friends each week. To watch them expand their knowledge, even just from how does a plant grow, and to see that and see they can grow something they can eat, watching them experience that realization is really cool.”