the Farm School | connecting people to the land since 1989

The Farm School connects people to the land by serving as a family farm for the coming generations. We are an organization of three interweaving programs spread out over the land of four old family farms in rural Mass, now linked together under our common stewardship. Careful mentoring, meaningful work, humor and kindness are at the center of all we do.

Our Program for Visiting Schools provides multi-day, residential, school-year and summer farm programs for over 2,000 young people and their teachers each year. Our typical program is a two and a half day field trip for middle schoolers, in which we task the students with running all the aspects of the farm: cooking the meals, and working in the garden, forest and barn with the animals. Children are given the opportunity to experience their own capacity to contribute to the farm.

Our Chicken Coop Middle School is an onsite, full-time, one-room home school cooperative for local kids. Students attend classes with our teachers on the farm everyday, sharing the farm yard with the adult Learn to Farm program. Farm life, art and music classes run alongside math, literature, social studies and science.

Our Learn to Farm Program is a year-long, residential, practical training in sustainable agriculture for adults. Now in its fourteenth year and with over 125 graduates, the program is a rigorous, curriculum and skills-based immersion in small scale, diversified farming. As part of their learning, student farmers grow certified organic veggies on 12 acres of our fields for our 200 family Summer Vegetable CSA and farmers markets, and we raise pork, lamb and beef on our pastures for our Winter Meat and Egg CSA.

Here at the Farm School, young people work the land and take home the cultural history, vital experience, and personal identity that farms nurture. Teachers work alongside their students and leave with new insights into their craft and children they teach. And adults learn to farm and carry essential knowledge from one community to the next.

Food-matters