This month has been humming along with a variety of young people visiting the farm including:

Standing Tree Nature School, a Santa Cruz-based program that connects youth to nature came for an overnight program this month. Leaders, Tod Haddow & Whitney Cohen, brought fourteen 9-12 year-olds to the farm where they toured Pie Ranch and learned about the intersection of wild & cultivated nature. Everyone had fun playing with the baby goats, chasing chickens, collecting eggs, tasting strawberries and harvesting produce for their dinner.

Out of Site, a nonprofit that invigorates the educational climate in San Francisco public high schools by expanding and nurturing visual arts, architecture, and performing arts education, brought a group of youth for an overnight visit to the ranch. They spent two full days farming, creating art, eating good food and exploring the surrounding area.  The students baked pies with strawberries, olallieberries, rhubarb, and freshly-milled wheat flour from the farm, harvested produce for their dinner, and collected eggs while engaging in a variety of art projects.

The Geneva Car Barn is a building in San Francisco submitted for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and a site that now provides job training for underserved youth (ages 14-19) in areas such as the culinary, digital, literary, media, and technical arts. A group of eleven youth from the inaugural culinary arts program came for a full program day at Pie Ranch. They toured the farm, baked strawberry rhubarb pies, and prepared a nutritious lunch with ingredients they harvested that day. They were full of enthusiasm and smiles — thanks all!

Friends of the Urban Forest brought fifteen youth from San Francisco to the farm for a tour and farm activities. They planted our next round of Early Girl dry-farmed tomatoes and helped with a number of farm chores. Thanks, Friends!

We’re eagerly anticipating the start of the school year programming and bringing back students from Mission High, John O’Connell, Oceana, Urban, and many more wonderful youth.