Small Seeds Bring Great Harvest To Fountain Valley School!

Last May, Fountain Valley School of Colorado boarding student Preston Nash ’19 was moving hay bales on the ranch with Land Manager Tyson Phillips. 

As Nash told the FVS community in a recent All-School, the two were talking about life, the universe and everything, and Nash asked why the School doesn’t grow its own food. Good question, Phillips probably said. 
  
So, Nash said, “Let’s make a garden!”

Four months later, FVS has a garden, and the first harvest was delivered to the dining room last week.

Nash, fellow senior J.T. Winston and Dave Brudzinski’s outdoor education group planted the seeds, literally and figuratively, before FVS let out for the summer. Then, Phillips and math faculty Blake Pelton P ’15, ’16 took over for the summer.

Pelton heard about the garden from Brudzinski, and she took it upon herself to plant even more seeds over the summer.

“The students had gotten so into it in the spring that they came back on their free time and brought their friends,” Pelton said. “With Tyson’s help, they created a really big raised bed garden, sided with hay bales and filled with the dirt from the compost pile.”

The student planted sunflowers, pumpkins, summer squash, carrots, rutabaga, watermelon, cantaloupe and parsnips. Pelton planted more and then invited Scott Wilson, master gardener at Colorado Springs’ Galileo School, to tour the garden. Pelton said she has visited the Galileo School garden on three different occasions with FVS faculty.

“Scott toured our land and shared ideas with us on crops and a potential orchard site,” Pelton said. “He shared his extra chard and beet seeds with us.”

During sophomore orientation, students planted those seeds and created a new garden. Phillips will protect the fall planting with plastic so the students can do a late fall harvest. That’s something the community can look forward to after last week’s delicious fresh produce.

Juan Rodriguez, head of the FVS dining room (run by FLIK Independent School dining), said his chefs used the harvest for roasted carrots, maple brown sugar acorn squash and roasted pumpkin last week. This week, students can look forward to pumpkin cheesecake!

- Written by Laura Fawcett, Director of Digital Communications, Fountain Valley School