In Evanston, a decidedly urban suburb, a tiny farm flourishes just a few blocks from downtown. The farmers are on the small side, too, but that's because they're all 5th graders, students at Evanston's Dewey School.
Their two crops are basil leaves and tomato plants. The basil they grow throughout the school year, selling the fragrant leaves to parents, friends and a local restaurant. The tomato plants, all heirloom varieties grown from seed, they are growing to sell to local gardeners May 20, one of the two days of the Evanston Garden Fair.
These farmers raise their crops raise organically under lights in the three 5th-grade classrooms. "When you use pesticides, the things you eat from your plant might make you sick," says 5th grader Dana Hafter-Manza. Classmate Reuben Doetsch adds that "When you grew it yourself, you know for sure it's good for you. Sometimes you don't know what's on the food you buy at the store."
The indoor-farming project at Dewey School is not only about food safety; it touches on many parts of the curriculum. There's math--graphing the growth of plants, tracking the costs of raising plants and the income from sales. Spelling and reading have come into play during production of a basil cookbook. The students also learn about botany, both through the basic process of growing plants and through lessons on how open-pollinated, or freely reproducing, plants preserve a wide range of valuable genes in a world where most commercial crops are hybrids.
A look at business comes when the students go to local natural-foods grocers and check the competition's price for organically grown basil so they know where to set their own price. And they learn the satisfaction of cultivating something from start to finish.
"They're learning things they don't even know they're learning," says Dewey principal Andrew Krugly. "The project takes a real-life situation and makes it a learning situation. They didn't read about it, they did it."
It's also tons of fun. "The first thing the kids do when they come into the room in the morning is go over to see how much the plants have grown," says Kara Bourke, the teacher in one of the three rooms.
Known as the Dewey School Farm, the 5th-grade agriculture project is in its second year. Parent volunteer Polly Hawkins, the mother of two former students at Dewey and a current 4th grader, dreamed it up as a way to help urban kids understand where food comes from. Merely growing the plants wasn't enough; Hawkins and other adults involved wanted the kids to learn how a farm works. That means selling the product.
Hawkins thought it could work because "kids this age not only like to grow and water plants," she says, "they love to make money." Last year they did just that. The 5th graders that year made $1,000 on their sales of basil to their parents and Campagnola, an Italian restaurant in town, and tomato plants to gardeners. The proceeds went to buy seed, growing trays and other supplies for this year's class.
In September the new 5th graders started basil from seed, and harvests have been scattered through the time since. The tomato plants, 360 in all, were started in March and have since been transplanted into the 6-inch pots in which they'll be sold for $6 each.
Dewey's farmers have raised a dozen varieties of flavorful heirloom tomatoes. Heirlooms are varieties that were popular before commercial hybridization narrowed the range of plants available. Unlike hybrids, the heirloom plants usually sprout "true," meaning seeds from one year's crop, if saved properly, can be used to start new plants the following year.
Among the varieties Dewey's kids will sell are three that are suitable for balconies and other container gardens. There are also cool colored tomatoes--yellows, purples and one that is nearly black.
Buy a few different varieties at the Dewey sale and you'll get to experiment with different flavors, as the farmers themselves have when taking their school-grown basil home.
Veronica Steege's family tried it on pizza: "That was good." Laura Schmitt's family put it in pesto: "Very good." But Octivia Dorsey sprinkled it in popcorn. Any good? "Oh, no."
The Dewey School farmers will sell their tomatoes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 20 at the First Congregational Church, 1417 Hinman Ave., Evanston, across the street from the Evanston Garden Fair. For more information, call 847-864-3201.