On Saturday, September 28, the Knowlton Academy Garden Project hosted its first Harvest Festival picnic. The children celebrated the complete food cycle where they had planted the seeds, tended and harvested the plants and finally cooked and ate the food.

“Today, few people know anything about the food that they buy in the store,” said Heidi Neil, Curriculum Coordinator. “We at Knowlton Academy are doing our best to expose our children to that most important life-process.”

Every grade had a role in the preparation of the food. The children in Grade 1 made apple sauce and juice. Other grades prepared Pumpkin Brownies, Zucchini Muff ins, Tomato Salsa, Coleslaw, Veggie Kebabs, Apple Crisp, English Tea Sandwiches (Cucumber and Tomato) and Italian Tomato Flatbreads (Pizza to you and me). Later this month, the Bistro program will be supplying the Literary Festival with muffins.

Beyond enjoying themselves, many of the children had also discovered that they liked a lot of foods that they would never have tried before at home. “The secret,” added Neil, “was that their peers and not their parents cooked the new foods.”

Thanks go to Principal Renalee Gore; Bistro Coordinators, Lynn Plouffe and Kathleen Ruel; apples from Amanda Parkinson and Garden Coordinators Jennifer Muir and Stephanie Marks.