Dear Curiosity Journal,
We had so much fun this weekend hosting the UW Madison students in the Scan Design Program for a Custom Curiosity adventure. These Danish students were curious about sustainability, small-scale agriculture, and making maple syrup, so we planned an action packed visit. On Saturday, we talked about some of the ways we build sustainability into our farming practices and toured the greenhouses, where the students used the vacuum seeder to plant 5 trays of kohlrabi. Then we visited the sheep and goats, where the students delivered a wheelbarrow of hay and gave the flock some barley treats while I talked about their multi purpose roles on the farm (grazing, wool, meat, lambing, companionship). We finished the day with a tour of an Amish farm and market to learn about some of the unique agricultural practices of our neighbors, including an ice house they use for refrigeration, and their different horses for pulling buggies and plowing fields. On Sunday, the group returned for a workshop on making maple syrup. We talked about the sustainability of maple syrup vs. sugar cane, the history of maple syrup in Wisconsin, and our “rustic” setup on the farm. Then we hiked down to the sugar bush, where the group setup lines, tapped trees, and looked at the tanks and boiler. We didn’t have enough sap to get a boil going, but we talked about the process of evaporation and finishing syrup. Back at the homestead, we shared one more point of sustainability at Keewaydin, our partnership with birds as part of our pest management strategy. Before they left, the students helped us to install one of the songbird nesting boxes near our perennial plantings of asparagus and hazelnuts. We’re thankful for our partnership with the Scan Design Program at UW Madison, and hope to continue planning fun and educational field days for the students.
~Joy
