Clare Hall School Agricultural Students visit two Farms
On Thursday 23rd March a group of nineteen third formers accompanied by Teachers Karen James and Ariel Mascal paid a visit to a Farm located between Bethesda Village and the Donkey Sanctuary. They were met by Joel Matthew, Extension Officer for the South East District and his co-worker Andy Elwin, Agricultural Assistant. The owner of Veno’s Farm was introduced to the visitors and then the walk-through began. The farm produces mainly vegetables such as lettuce, seasoning peppers, tomatoes, onions, squashes and pumpkins. In addition to vegetables watermelons and papayas are also grown there and a few pigs were reared.
The purpose of the field trip was to sensitize, educate and motivate the students to continue pursuing Agricultural Science as a subject throughout their school tenures. It is compulsory for all students attending Government Secondary Schools at least for the first two years in attendance to do the subject. However, upon entering the third form level it’s up to students to determine which subjects they would pursue until the end of their school lives.
While at the farm they were shown various concerns such as pests, arid soil conditions, plant health and some of the utilized solutions such as plastic mulch, useful insects such as the ladybug and drip irrigation system. During the interaction, some questions were posed to the students by Matthew and some in return asked a few of their own. One student asked, why plastic mulch? “Plastic mulch serves three main purposes (1) protects the soil from too much evaporation or loss of moisture (2) minimizes soil erosion (3) controls weeds and insects”, Matthew informed the students.
After departing from the farm, the expedition then led the students to another farm operation. They were given the opportunity to visit Indies Green which is an Aquaponic Farm on Seaview Farm Main Road. While there they observed that this system does not require as much land space, other observations and comparisons were made. “The main focus of this field trip is to give the students a hands-on pertaining to the two types of cultivation so that they could make a comparison”, James said.
The excursion allowed them to see first-hand two different types of cultivation where the methods used were totally different and also the pros and cons that came with both.