Farmers’ Market Has Sixth Graders Seeing Green

“It’s really fun to work with stuff you don’t usually work with—planting seeds and watching things grow,” said Taylor Santaniello ’25. Added Joyce Do ’25, “The lettuce comes out so huge,” as the controlled conditions of the Freight Farm optimize growth.

The farmers may be young, but they’re savvy. Along with fresh produce they had grown from seed, they were hawking value-added items like pesto, salad dressing, and pickles, created with help from Rivers executive chef Michael Clancy. “It was really cool to go into the kitchen,” said Ella Swenson ’25. The pesto was a big hit, selling out early on the first day the market was in operation. That was no surprise to the sixth graders: “It’s crazy good,” says Griffin Chisholm ’25.

Figuring out how to scale up the recipes contained its own lessons: “We had to put a lot of math into it,” said Swenson. She noted that math was also involved in figuring out how to set prices so as to maximize profitability. Proceeds from the farmers’ market go to the Middle School Community Service Club.

The Freight Farm, in operation for the past couple of years, has proven to be a fruitful educational tool—not just for the sixth grade but also for other students who work there and study the many biological processes that occur under its multi-hued grow lights. And the greens are sometimes on the menu at Kraft Dining Hall and have been donated to local nonprofits, benefiting the community at large.

Do appreciates that a whole farm is housed in an item—a retired shipping container—that might otherwise have been deemed trash. And, like her classmates, she relishes taking on the responsibilities that come along with tending the farm: “Usually only grown-ups can do this kind of work. It’s cool that we get to do it.”

To see a SmugMug gallery of photos from the farmers' market, click here.