Kitchen and Garden & Sustainability News
Garden News
The garden is looking amazing and the students have been busy harvesting broad beans, cabbage, cauliflower, silverbeet, beetroot and heaps of herbs.
We have be trying really hard to keep the garden watered and students have been popping in at lunch time to help water.
Our tomato plants are in and this week we finished planting the remainder of our summer crop.
We are so excited there is heaps of fruit on our apricot tree so fingers crossed for a bumper crop this summer.
Tasks we worked on this fortnight are, weeding, watering, harvesting, composting, chop and drop, chicken care, seed saving, planting, pruning, pest control and much more.
Feed Me Bellarine Donation
Today students decided it would be better to donate our excess produce to Feed Me Bellarine and not sell it. They kindly donated 5kg of beetroot and a huge bag of chard that FMB can either cook, give to families in need or sell in their market.
Feed Me Bellarine provides a vital service and is in need of food items to help feed our community. If you have any excess produce growing in your garden or items in your pantry you would like to donate, please drop them in to their shed in Sinclaire Street, Ocean Grove.
Creative Crew
Our creative crew participated in a bit of habitat gardening this week. They each selected a plant and chose where they wanted to plant it in our native garden as you enter the school. They learnt about the importance of providing plants for food and shelter for our native animals, insects, birds and reptiles. They carefully planted their plant and have declared they will look after it as it grows.
Plant and Food Cart
We have now installed our plant and food cart at the entrance to our school. This cart is there for the community to purchase plants that the students have grown and also share excess produce when we can. Check it out the next time you are in.
Kitchen News
Kitchen has been a huge success with in season cooking. We have settled back into routine after a huge Fresh Food Fair cook up. This fortnight we cooked seasonal muffins, seasonal salad, pear and ginger upside down cake, flat breads and white bean dip. All of the students really enjoyed their sessions and devoured our share table. The highlight was obviously the cake however our staff favourite was the White bean dip. This was super flavoursome and could be used as a spread, dip, thinned down as a dressing or as Clancey was busted doing, eaten straight from the bowl :)
Food Scrap Fridays
Nude Food
Nude Food is officially starting again! Of course, we would love every day to be a nude food day but Friday is the day where we will be tallying up our Nude Food stars. Students are encouraged to bring lunch box to school each Friday that is free of plastic wrappers. Each fortnightly assembly the class with the most Friday nude food lunch boxes will be awarded the Nude Food trophy. Such a great way to reduce our school waste and to keep our school grounds clean. Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm so far.
Classroom Food Scraps
Our Food Scrap Friday volunteers are helping out with our classroom food scrap collection. It’s so wonderful to divert all our food scraps from landfill, and our garden and chookies will love it too. A big thank you to our students for getting behind this and making sure our compost bins are put to good use.
Please continue to bring your household scraps to the garden every Friday morning. It's great to see our measured mass of food scraps grow each week.
Plastic Bottle Lid Recycling
Bring your bottle lids to school to be recycled. Our Environment club are very passionate about repurposing these pieces of plastic. Either send them in with students to add to each class collection or you can take them directly to the office.
Watch out for our Christmas gifts that we will be selling at the end of term. Made from plastic bottle lids in our local Southern Ocean Environmental Link (SOEL) program.
Here is a little bit of information if you’re interested.