Agriculture & Horticulture

Healthy Soils Competition

Congratulations to the Year 9 students who have each won a $100 JB Hi-Fi Gift Voucher as winners of the Calvin Muller Prize in the recent Healthy Soils Competition:

Gabriella Sinclair (highly commended - poster), Lily Harris (painting and poetry), Cody Fairless (children’s story), Helen Nguyen (poster), Hajar Mehdi (powerpoint), Jed Ferguson and Sakhi Baba (powerpoint), and Alicia Cann and Sophie Cairns (Powerpoint).

The competition was run by Soil Week Australia and had entries from across the nation. The topic fitted perfectly with the Year 9 Sense of Humus subject and students from both the Semester 1 and 2 classes entered.

Students had to create a project around the topic “Healthy Soil, Agriculture and Climate”. Our students relished the opportunity to be creative and emphasise their creative strengths, resulting in a wide range of works ranging from Cody’s “Danny the Dung Beetle” story for young children to stunning art, poetry and calligraphy.

The organiser’s feedback was most encouraging: “As a group the quality of the entries was wonderful. The creativity of the artwork or the stories and presentation was informative, showed good research, and importantly told the story well".  The entries have each won the Calvin Muller prize. The judges thought the entries comprehensively covered the topic engaging with the audience to outline the key concepts.

Wool Processing

Following on from their wins, the Year 9 Sense of Humus class experimented with washing and dyeing sheep’s fleece. Students worked in groups, each with a handful of Mrs Drinnan’s Southdown X Corriedale hogget’s fleece. They washed it gently in warm water and dishwashing detergent to remove the lanolin and dirt, rinsed it and then gently placed it in a pan of simmering dye. The three dyes were made from onion skins (which came out orange), wattle (pale yellow) and Swamp Yate (beige).

Charlotte Drinnan

Agriculture & Horticulture