In a matter of minutes they had picked nearly a bushel of cucumbers of all sizes from the robust green vines in the weed-free Quabbin Community Garden.
And apprentice Lindsay Higgins, a sustainable agriculture student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, enjoyed the unmistakably crisp, straight-from-the-garden goodness of the harvest.
For Ms. Higgins, a core group of about 20 Quabbin Regional High School students and composting director Karen DiFranza of Hubbardston the summer’s continuing harvest was reward in itself, closing the loop of an on-site cafeteria food waste composting project launched in the spring of 2008.
Since then students have had a hands-on experience in diverting about 3 tons of leftovers from student trays into meat and meatless bins, the meat leftovers going to feed pigs on a farm in Barre and everything else destined for composting bins behind the school.
Ann McGovern, consumer waste reduction coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said there may be classroom demonstration composting programs in other high schools across the state, but Quabbin’s program of composting cafeteria waste, using the compost to establish an organic garden, and then either selling harvested crops at the local farmers market or using them in the school cafeteria is unique.
“I can’t think of any other school that is doing composting on the scale and scope that Quabbin is,” she said.
Ms. DiFranza said despite the challenge the weather presented this summer to growing a successful garden, the Quabbin soil enriched with the “black gold” of compost and fish emulsion produced sugar snap peas, baby carrots, dill, parsley, cucumbers, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and shallots as well as dye plants.
Saturday was the last day that produce would be sold this year at the Barre Farmers Market. With the start of school this week, Ms. DiFranza, said all of the harvest from the garden would be used in the school cafeteria.
Hannah Peckham, a Barre student who graduated from Quabbin in June, said she will follow Ms. Higgins’ example and enroll in the sustainable agriculture and food systems program at UMass this fall.
Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of a farm to produce food indefinitely by employing scientific practices that ensure the health of the farm ecosystem.
Not only does Ms. Peckham work in the Quabbin Community Garden, but she has parlayed that enthusiasm into experimenting with different vegetables in her garden at home this summer.
Up until she got caught up in the school composting and gardening program, she said she was unsure of what she wanted for a college major. Now she is convinced that spreading the word about sustainable agriculture and the importance of composting is what she wants to do.
Ms. DiFranza said the Quabbin program followed a successful composting program at Hubbardston Elementary School instituted by then-Principal Joan Paula, an organic gardening enthusiast in 2005.
“The students loved it and the community has been very supportive, so it made sense to see if the program could be extended to the high school, given that Hubbardston students were already familiar with composting,” she said.
Ms. DiFranza said Quabbin Principal Marilyn Tencza was very receptive when approached with the idea of a composting and gardening program at the school.
It was launched, she said, with the help of $20,000 in grants from Waste Management Inc. and the Greater Worcester Community Foundation and the assistance of the East Quabbin Alliance for a Healthy Community.
Some of that grant money, she said, was used to establish scholarships for Quabbin seniors.
Of the 20 students involved in the program, some work primarily in the cafeteria, some work in the garden, and some do both, she said.
She said students monitor waste food buckets during the school’s three lunch periods and mix lunch leftovers with high-carbon-content brown matter, leaves and straw, on a one part leftovers to three parts brown matter ratio.
“The thing to remember about composting is that it’s an aerobic process, and exposure to the air is essential,” Ms. DiFranza said.
“Food waste that decomposes in an anaerobic environment creates methane gas. The best example of that is a landfill,” she added.
During the garden-growing season, students work two afternoons a week after school.
Ms. DiFranza said the composting and gardening program may never reach the pinnacle of being self-supporting, but her goal is to create value-added products to sell from the crops students grow, such as oils, herbal salves and cloth dyes.
Despite a washout on the opening night of this year’s Hardwick Fair, the composting program students mounted a comeback with a demonstration Saturday that was well-received.
“Education and outreach is also a very important part of the program. As with recycling, if you do it every day it becomes routine. The composting demonstration at the Hardwick Fair was really the culmination for the program this year and students will be doing a similar demonstration in October at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival in Orange,” she said.
Ms. DiFranza said she hopes to enlarge the program by offering sustainable agriculture apprenticeships to Quabbin seniors, compensating them for some of the time they spend working on the program.
