Last week we received an invitation and a request from David Gilroy, a science teacher at Questa High School, to visit the school for a presentation on seeds and perhaps set up some kind of collaboration. The timing was perfect in that our Taos School District had some days off for Easter while Questa was still in session. I saw this as an opportunity to allow our Chrysalis ‘Sembradores’ to practice their public speaking and presentation skills, especially since we are scheduled to present at a Farmer and Rancher forum next weekend. Chris Duran, Kiko Pacheco, and Cody Apodaca were up for the challenge and gave three presentations to three of Mr. Gilroy’s Environmental and Physical Science classes. My portion of the presentation was about seeds and seed saving and the students presented on acequias and their involvement in agriculture over the last two years.
While we were at Questa High, we were able to check out their greenhouse-in-progress. This structure is being constructed in collaboration with Ed Galusky, who was a student in a “Sustainable Food and Farming” class I taught a few years back as part of UNM-Taos’ Green Technology program. It is nice when a person finds past students carrying on the teachings and the work in a meaningful way.
So we checked out the greenhouse and gave some perspective on our experiences with indoor growing. Most importantly we were able to provide seed to David Gilroy and the students from our Living Seed Library to help them get started. We look forward to the development of our relationship to mutually support each others’ efforts. We are lucky to have Cody Apodaca, who is one of our students from Chrysalis, who actually lives next to Questa High School. We will be working with Cody to be our liaison between our programs, especially over the summer….
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