The Farm School’s farmers and animals are accustomed to listening for a packed school bus huffing and meandering its way up Moore Hill Road to bring young helpers for the day. On March 31, 2022, they also heard the unbridled joy of cheering girls ready to take on the possibilities of the day ahead. Sophia Academy’s 5th and 6th graders had arrived!
After a hiatus of two years, Sophia’s students were back. With masks, snacks, and sanitizer in tow, the farm was ours for the day to make new friends, split wood, tidy up the brush near the sugar shack, bring Fabio the goat his daily twig munchies, and softly stroke the bridge of Belle’s nose (who is a gentle and giant horse). We helped in the greenhouse, gathered eggs, groomed, milked, and snuggled up to cows. We also took turns pushing friends on the mountain swing through the morning’s fog that hid all but our voices.
There’s a good chance that you know the Farm School is my favorite of places, a place where you can share your favorite color or your pronouns, be who you are as you are - and maybe discover something new about yourself and the world around you. Thoughts and understanding have a way of coming into visceral focus here…like the path of our Sun’s energy into working the land to grow, gather, raise, and prepare the food that sustains us all. The Farm’s land was first Nipmuc land, the indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. Currently, the farmers are in collaboration with the Nipmuc to return ancestral land back to the tribe.
Sophia’s students napped on the long bus ride home to Providence that day, hugging their parting gifts of potted daffodils, and with memories to last, to cherish, and to shape their world. We can’t wait to go back!
Written by Alyssa Wood, Science teacher and fifth grade advisor