Terra Nova Community Farm (TNCF) is a 2-acre farm based at Terra Nova High School in Portland, Oregon. TNCF is a student run entrepreneurial venture that focuses on rigorous student learning, community building and sustainable agricultural growing practices. Two years ago we plowed the school baseball field and turned it into a small farm. In 2009, we successfully completed our first season by serving our 15 family Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program as well as providing food to local food pantries and families in need. The main areas of importance are education, environmental conservation and building community.

Through the building and operation of the farm, students earn credit in ecology, economics, science, math, nutrition, health, physical education, social sciences and language arts. In addition to classroom work, the Farm Crew completes individual projects pertaining to the farm. These projects have included medicinal herbs, compost tea, vegetable nutrition analysis and beneficial insects and how they benefit our local ecology.

Paramount to the farm's existence is it's commitment to environmental conservation and education. We use only organic growing practices and teach our students why this is important. We analyze our soil to see how our practices are affecting the soil through time. We also closely monitor the bio-diversity  on our property. This includes tracking wildlife species and numbers. We closely keep track of our insect populations as well to make sure we are providing habitat to beneficial insects so they can help keep our "bad" bug population in check. Water conservation is another area of high importance to us. As water becomes more precious and scarce we feel it is out duty to conserve as much water as possible when irrigating our crops. This is why we have developed a comprehensive drip irrigation system that only waters the plants we want to water and only delivers the absolutely essential amount of water to them.

We also believe in the importance of building community around the farm and spreading awareness about the importance of environmental conservation and healthy eating and lifestyles. This is why we chose the  Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model of marketing. Through the CSA the students are interacting with the 30 families who consume their food every week and educating them about what they have accomplished on the farm every week. We also have established a strong community outreach within our own school district. We currently mentor 3 elementary schools in our district and 7 other schools around the state of Oregon. We know it is important to inspire and educate others about the work we are doing so we try to get out to as many schools ads time allows.

At TNCF students are involved in every aspect of farm management including marketing, soil analysis, crop selection, CSA distribution, cultivation, harvest, post harvest production and financial management. As the students become more engaged in the farm so does their level of responsibility and ownership. A wide ranging community has been built around the farm. We are connected with many local farms, businesses, schools, and non-profits as an effort to support community building. One example of this community is apparent when CSA members come out to gather their shares and students give tours and share the knowledge they have learned and exhibit their hard work. TNCF has grown immensely in its short life. For the 2010 season we have expanded onto a second property and have grown the CSA from 15 to 30 shares. Additionally we are working with the Nutrition Services Department of the Beaverton School District to get student grown food into multiple cafeterias.

As we move into  the future we have ambitions for increasing production as well as increasing out target audience for educational purposes. For the 2011 season we will be working with the Nutrition Services department of our school district to come up with a plan for producing vegetables for almost all the schools in our district (38,000 students!!!). We will increase our educational outreach to these schools as well. We will increase the number of CSA shares as well so that we continue to grow the community education component of the farm. Ultimately, as you will read below, our plan is to compile all of our learnings, teachings and findings into a format that is easily accessible for schools around the country. That means that we would have a "package" of sorts that we can give to interested schools so they could replicate this model and teach their students about the importance of growing healthy food and building community around such a project.

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