The Ishpeming Lions accompanied by Lions from all over the Upper Peninsula spent this Sunday, September 11, building twelve Raised Bed Gardens at The Birchview Elementary School in Ishpeming.
The District 10 Lions of the Upper Peninsula established Partridge Creek Farm as an officially sponsored project in 2016 and appointed founder Dan Perkins as its chair and Shawna Moore of the Marquette Lions Club as its co-chair in 2021.
Today’s Garden Building Project included building 2- 3’X12‘raised beds for each grade in the elementary school including kindergarten and special education. The beds were framed, leveled, painted, and filled with soil and worm compost from Partridge Creek Farms Compost Facility in Ishpeming. The Lions crews also installed animal protection fencing and built a gate for the garden.
The building of the garden is followed by the initiation of the Farm to School programming at Birchview elementary school starting Monday, Sept 12th.
Monday’s programming is a full daylong event that involves every student in the school being introduced to their garden beds, adding vermicompost to them, and painting their hand prints on the beds that their class will plant in the spring. The educational programing involves understanding the soil, how it lives and how it provides food for us and moves into nutrition and healthy eating through the winter months.
The gardens the classes start will be maintained by partridge Creek Farm over the summer with the help of summer camp students, and when the student return in the spring, they will learn to harvest, prepare and preserve the food they have grown.
They among those present at the daylong event were Matt Bryce, Birchview principal, Gary Perala of Negaunee Lions, the District Hunger Chair, Gretchen Preston, the District 10 Lions Governor, and Jenny Ware of Rapid River who was a past International Director of Lions Clubs International (LCI).
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