Down on the farm with De La Salle school students

Earlier this month, the De La Salle School resumed its annual Vermont farm trip, giving some of its students the chance to combine agriculture with academics.

Since 2002, the Pine Street school has offered the adventure to boys in grades 5 through 8. The all-male school, which has fewer than 80 students, enrolls at-risk Latino and African-American boys from low-income families, and its curriculum integrates academics, the arts and the study of Catholicism.

The yearly farm trip, to the Spring Brook Farm in Reading, Vermont, had been on pause because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the administration was given permission to revive it this fall. Typically, just one class would be allowed to go, but to make up for lost time, the school sent both fifth- and seventh-graders this time around.

“The program was established to give students an opportunity to do something they would never have an opportunity to experience otherwise,” De La Salle Principal Jeanmarie Becker said. “The trip teaches them something about themselves; it develops an inner confidence in them. So we’ve just felt that the program gives the students many benefits through its learning experience, but also it bonds the gentlemen that go together.”

The trip is part of Farms for City Kids, an educational program offered to students in the Northeast that combines classroom lessons with practical agricultural experience to give urban children an appreciation and understanding of how fundamental academics are in everyday life. At Spring Brook, a traditional dairy farm, they work at a dairy barn, a small-animal barn, a greenhouse, a garden and a cheese house, taking on team-oriented duties and living in dormitories, with the aim of developing interpersonal, leadership and problem-solving skills through hands-on projects.

“It was an opportunity to experience the presence of God in nature and a world beyond their city dwellings,” the school’s executive director, William L. Gault, said. “Through the generosity of the Farms for City Kids program, our fifth- and seventh-grade students had the opportunity to travel to the Green Mountains and experience life on a working dairy farm.”

Farms for City Kids covers all costs except transportation, so the school must raise the money to charter a bus to Vermont. This year it secured the funding through donations at its 20th annual Golf Outing and Bocce Tournament on Sept. 26, which it co-hosted with the La Salle Military Academy Alumni Association.

The Spring Brook Farm encompasses more than 1,000 acres, and is home to a diverse range of animals, whose upkeep and care keeps the students busy. Becker and three other faculty members accompanied 18 pupils from the school to the farm on Oct 10. They returned on Oct. 14.

“The farm trip was very fun, and the food was amazing,” said fifth-grader Mateo Mendez. “We had so much fun making apple cider and milking a cow. All the activities we did made us think outside the box, but it was still fun, because we had to use our minds to get out of the situation. It was the best time of my life going there — I am so lucky. I wish I was still there. It really was the best time of my life.”

The students had the chance to try a wide range of activities, both physical and academic. Schooling and agricultural work are both part of the curriculum. They learned a variety of practical skills on the farm, from the basics of animal farming to measuring food, and kept daily journals.

“We took part in the activities with them, and the chores, and played active roles during the trip,” Becker said. “As their principal, I felt very responsible to make sure that everything went as smoothly as possible. I acted as the point person to keep the parents up to date and informed on their daily activities.”

Hiking up a mountain, harvesting apples to make apple cider, guiding heifers to pasture, milking a cow, watching the birth of a calf and even riding a pig were just a few of the students’ unique experiences.

“The young men grew in responsibility, developed leadership skills, worked as a team, and bonded as De La Salle Gentlemen,” Gault wrote in an email. “They learned how to make cheese and apple cider. They piled wood. They ate eggs for breakfast that they took from the chicken coop the afternoon before. They cleaned the dairy barn. They bit into apples they just picked from the tree.”

The boys returned after five days with memories that will no doubt last a lifetime. “If you ask any of our kids, years after they graduate, what’s one of their fondest memories of the De La Salle school,” Gault said, “they’ll tell you their experience on the farm with their friends.”