New Ventures This past year Sprout Creek was the beneficiary of the generosity of YRDC’s (Youth Resource Development Corporation) YouthWorks Program. YRDC is a community-based not-for-profit organization committed to fostering an environment that enables youth to excel and to meet the employment and training needs of Poughkeepsie’s youth. The curriculum designed to build self-esteem, ensure employability and instill an appreciation in civic responsibility. Twice a week for several hours a day, six to ten youth between the ages of 14 and 21 came to Sprout Creek where they gardened and painted. Their hard work, positive attitude and consistent presence here broadened our sense of community and added new beauty to our gardens and our environment. We thank them for their generosity and lively spirit.

Where does everything begin?

Think of something you walk on or at least something that supports what you walk on everyday. It's underneath every roadway, sidewalk, racetrack and parking lot, every chem-lawn, swimming pool, subway, and stadium. BIG HINT: it's underneath grass. Getting it? DIRT!

Here at Sprout Creek Farm we call it soil. Have you ever thought of getting to know your soil? If you're not a farmer or an environmentalist or ecologist, your vacuum cleaner probably has more intimate knowledge of it than you ever will.

Take a leap, for a moment, and let the soil be the catalyst it truly is, because we at Sprout Creek Farm think the bases for our values, for our ethic and our ethos, for our deepest and most heart-felt gratitude lay with our life on and in cooperation with the land. It feeds us, gives us meaning, and grounds us on the same plane, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, alike. It all begins (and ends!) with soil.

Sprout Creek Farm is a learning environment with structured and unstructured experiences, a broad array of possible subjects to explore using the range of liberal arts and integrating their content differently and in an unusual and living context. What does this mean? This means that teachers, farmers, and students function as a community of learners. Many RSCJ, Collaborators, Colleagues, Alumni, and Friends have found their way here over the years, and have greatly enhanced the possibilities for learning in this environment.

Sprout Creek Farm is an RSCJ owned and operated working farm. Find out why 5,000 children from all over the country, ages 6-18, enroll in programs each year at Sprout Creek Farm in (of all places) Poughkeepsie, NY, where they really harvest food for meals everyday, and where cows, sheep, and goats really do graze our 200 acres of pasture and hay fields, where "virtual" has no attraction, and real is real.

Sprout Creek Farm boasts a Creamery that uses its own cows' milk in the production of a very fine mold-ripened, aged cheese. And here it's plain to see the complete cycle: from the soil to your table, with a few stops in between. Connections and diversity. Can't have one without the other, right? Our cheese travels to tables from New York City to San Francisco. Imagine learning bio-chemistry and bacteriology in a creamery. Then imagine eating your experiment!

Replenish your stores of awe and spend some time with creatures domesticated by humans for almost 20,000 years. Come to Sprout Creek. Click on the link provided, but understand that the aromatherapy that our farm can provide for you only comes with the real thing. (No scratch and sniff gimmicks available.)

Article by Margo Morris, rscj
Photos by Georgie Blaeser, rscj
Sprout Creek Farm