<\/p>\n
Mancos third-graders spooned worms into a composter Monday as part of the Montezuma School to Farm Project.<\/p>\n
Drought conservation is the new focus of the School to Farm Project, after receiving a $40,000 grant from the Colorado State Conservation Board at the end of 2013, Project Director Sarah Syverson said. The project must match the grant with $20,000 of cash donations and $20,000 worth of in-kind donations by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Healthy soil is a key to drought resilience, and that\u2019s why the students started by learning how to compost and keep their red wigglers healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to use our knowledge of fractures to feed the worms in a way they will like that will not gross them out,\u201d said School to Farm coordinator Erin Bohm.<\/p>\n
She explained the worms require 50 percent dry carbon-based food such as grass and 50 percent nitrogen-based food such as rotting vegetables.<\/p>\n
The new grant will help fund materials, administrative costs and school coordinators at Dolores and Mancos districts continue their work.<\/p>\n
The coordinators, in place since 2011, also plan to build models of a watershed to show on a miniature scale how water flows, how pollution gets into the water, and how water rights work, Syverson said.<\/p>\n
At the school garden at Mancos, which started in 2011, organic and sustainable growing practices such as mulch use, compost and drip irrigation have been the standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonorganic growing is not a sustainable choice for a place that doesn\u2019t have enough water,\u201d Bohm said.<\/p>\n
Continually using herbicide and fertilizer tends to be very expensive, and you get \u201chooked into a cycle of more and more application,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Healthy soil creates strong plants and prevents many problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrought has been the cause of civilization collapse in the past, we need to plan and prepare for drought in our civilization,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The project enjoyed other successes over the course of 2013.<\/p>\n
The School to Farm Project started a pilot garden at Cortez Middle School during the fall semester and is pursuing funding for a full-time coordinator.<\/p>\n
The project staff was also tapped by the National Farm to School network to help create trainings for other organizations that would like to start similar projects. Bohm recently presented a version of this training to members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/p>\n
The Mancos school garden harvested 500 pounds of produce during the fall.<\/p>\n
The next School to Farm fundraiser will be the Good for What Ales You Talent Show at the Dolores River Brewery on Feb. 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
third-graders learn the twists and turns of worms and composting as part of School to Farm Project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[529,738,13,961],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-59875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-conservation","tag-environmental-issue","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mancos-elementary-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59875"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=59875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}