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Volunteers have spent the summer getting Kemper Elementary School\u2019s garden ready for an inaugural start of the Montezuma School-to-Farm project.<\/p>\n
School-to-Farm has been hosting volunteer days in the past few months, which garnered helping hands and donations from businesses to get the project rolling in time for the fall school session.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest new additions to the garden \u2013 started by teachers in Kemper\u2019s courtyard two years ago \u2013 is an outdoor adobe oven that will be used by Kemper\u2019s School-to-Farm project for cooking demonstrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big plan is, since kids love pizza, is to cook pizzas out here and get them to try different veggies from the garden,\u201d said Montezuma School-to-Farm coordinator Danyel Mezzanatto. \u201cI\u2019d also love to have movie nights out here since we grow our own popcorn.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea for the adobe oven, Mezzanatto said, came from a visiting student from Carbondale\u2019s Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork. Ansel Baker, 14, comes down to Montezuma County every summer, and helped with a previous oven build at Dolores Elementary. As part of his end-of-the-year eighth-grade project, he decided to get an adobe oven built at Kemper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying to find something to do, and this seemed like a good idea,\u201d said Baker.<\/p>\n
Brett LeCompte, owner of Swallows Nest Natural Building in Dolores, offered his cob-building expertise and some extra supplies to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnsel was looking for a mentor to help him with the build, and got paired up with Brett, who donated all the clay, sand, straw and multiple days to help mix as well as the tools and expertise. We would have been lost without him,\u201d said Mezzanatto.<\/p>\n
LeCompte, an experienced cob builder, said he\u2019s always happy to volunteer with School-to-Farm, and this project was in line with his expertise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI helped build the garden shed at the middle school, so I got involved last year. I do a lot of cob building, but never an oven before,\u201d said LeCompte.<\/p>\n
Established in 2009, the Montezuma School-to-Farm Project teaches more than 12,000 student educational hours every year, and has school gardens in Mancos, Dolores and Cortez, as well as a children\u2019s garden at Cortez Recreation Center. Kemper Elementary is most recent Cortez school to join the program.<\/p>\n