About the Farm
Our Mission
Farms for City Kids Foundation provides a stimulating outdoor classroom where urban youth explore new dimensions of learning and where academics are seamlessly integrated into everyday farm activities.This innovative agricultural classroom—so different from a student’s everyday environment—makes an impression that will last a lifetime.
Welcome to the Farm
Our Program
Farms for City Kids is a unique educational program combining classroom study with firsthand farming experience to give urban kids an understanding of how vital academics are to everyday life.In our thousand-acre classroom‚ reading‚ writing‚ math‚ social studies and environmental study skills are applied to hands-on farming tasks. Through group-structured tasks—such as learning to care for farm animals—students discover untapped character strengths‚ develop critical teamwork skills and strengthen core values such as hard work‚ leadership‚ respect‚ self-confidence and responsibility. Students are challenged to overcome fears‚ accomplish feats they never imagined and are empowered by our Farm staff to achieve success everyday.
Participating teachers view the Farms for City Kids program as a vital part of their curriculum as it not only reinforces academics‚ it puts ideas into action and brings education to life.
Our Kids
Typically between the ages of 8 and 12‚ our students arrive at a pivotal pre-adolescent juncture. Decision-making and reasoning skills learned at this time help to ensure proper maturity development into the teenage years and beyond. Hands-on learning is especially effective in reaching kids at this stage of life.Hands-On Learning‚ Teamwork & Character Building
The Farms for City Kids program combines the three primary methods of sensory learning—auditory‚ visual and kinetic. While all three methods are used at the Farm‚ tactile learning—often limited in a traditional classroom environment—plays a heightened role.Students rotate team-structured tasks daily between the dairy barn‚ small animal barn‚ greenhouse‚ garden and dormitory. By achieving hands-on project success‚ students build interpersonal‚ leadership and problem-solving skills.
A Contract for Success
During their first night on the Farm‚ each student class creates a Community Contract that states how they will live for the week. Care and respect—for each other‚ for yourself‚ for the environment and for the animals—are the cornerstones of our program.About the Farm
Spring Brook Farm is a traditional dairy farm located in Reading, Vermont. It spans more than 1,000 acres and is home to a wide array of livestock—the maintenance and care of which keep our students quite busy. Our farm is home to over 100 registered Jerseys, and the 42 milking cows produce over 600,000 lbs. of milk each year, now used to make our artisanal Tarentaise Cheese. In addition to the cows, we have horses, sheep, goats, chickens, roosters, pigs, turkeys, dogs, cats and even some humans–just for good measure. All these efforts play an integral role in helping us help ourselves. The Farm sells hay for horses, sweet corn to the local market, chickens and turkeys seasonally and this, combined with our egg and meat production, enables us to take the lead in feeding our program annually.Our students help grow all sorts of vegetables including sweet corn, peas, tomatoes, pumpkins and potatoes as well as caring for the animals. The greenhouse, raspberry and blueberry bushes, grapevine and small apple orchard also keep the kids busy. The Farm's honey bees pollinate it all, while still finding time to produce fresh honey. And the addition of the Spring Brook Farm Cheese House, designed for the kids with a glassed-in viewing area so the students can watch the cheese makers from two different levels, further enhances our mission by creating an important venue for students to study chemistry, microbiology, food preservation, economics and health and nutrition. This new learning experience enables our Lessons for a Lifetime ® workshops to take on a new level of meaning and importance as the students, perhaps our next generation of future cheese makers, see all of their efforts transformed into a product that will be consumed by people they may never meet.
Of course, it just wouldn't be Vermont without a maple sugar house. When the Spring Brook Farm Foundation bought Spring Brook Farm from the Vermont Land Trust in 1992, the farm had 3,200 taps on its maple trees. Currently, the farm has 3,500 taps on trees and in the spring, typically produces between 400 and 600 gallons of maple syrup. Children learn to gather sap from maple trees and boil it down in the sugar house to produce a sweet treat for use on our breakfast pancakes, waffles and many other foods.
