What a fun and bountiful season in the garden! When students returned in January, we were harvesting chard, collards, pigeon pea and lots of citrus. Our bok choy was growing well (in anticipation for it’s use in kimchi and the May Day meal), and onions were loking healthy and some were starting to bulb!

We experimented with a few crops like Romanesco Cauliflower and Pink Celery with varied success. The cauliflower had a hard time with our variable weather, but the celery was beautiful and abundant! With more than we could handle, we starting a supportive relationship with Chef Stephen Rouelle, currently of Healthways II, where he purchased a mixture of our produce to highlight in a weekly lunch special. Win-win!

Students loved building our tipi trellis, cutting bamboo and eventually tying it all together to create a solid structure for vining plants. We started with Ipu gourds from Ms. Bowman :)

And of course, our new beloved chickens that arrived from Oahu in February have been introduced to their forever home! They are fat and happy, and should start laying in July. Also a good reminder of the extra work it takes to steward animals, mahalo for all our volunteers past, present, and future that help with chicken care! In addition to donors that support our chickens at fundraisers ;)

From January to May we served all 205 Waimea Middle School students in the following ways:

collaborated with 6th, 7th, 8th grade Science, PE/Health, and Life Skills to teach 36 classes in the garden,
brought in 5 guest speakers,
taught 13 afterschool classes,
and grew over 700 pounds of produce for students and the greater community.

What a productive semester!

We topped it all off with a delicious “scratch-cooked” (all fresh ingredients) lunch for 225 students, staff, and volunteers of Waimea Middle School. Much of the 700 pounds of produce went into the meal, which consisted of poke, poi, sauteed green, rice, and a choice of beef curry or kalua pork & cabbage. It was gourmet! Deliberately choosing a variety of dishes, the goal was to monitor the process, the recipes, and reactions for possible replication in the future. We know how important a good lunch is too a students ability to stay focused and succeed; Māla‘ai remains committed to feeding our keiki ‘ai pono!