It has been a pleasure leading the team this year, after the garden was established a few years ago.
The purpose of The Grange is to produce fresh crops primarily for Mrs Riitano’s Kitchen (the college cafeteria) and for the Food Technology and Hospitality classes; which are both very popular subjects in the TAS Department.
Over the semester we have planted, cared for and harvested many crops including potatoes, carrots, spinach, broad beans, oranges, passionfruit, rocket lettuce, saffron and many more.
Each week Mr Paul Ware, from our College maintenance team, joins the team sharing his wealth of knowledge about ‘everything that is green'. He has been able to explain the subtle changes of each plant, as it is growing, and guided us to achieve the best tasting crops possible.
In our team photographs you can see the bumper crop of carrots which were proudly sent off to the cafeteria recently and by the next day quickly turned into scrumptious Moroccan carrot soup for sale at lunch from Mrs Riitano’s Kitchen! It tasted fantastic.
Although we have been creating some great crop supplies for the college over Semester 2 it is now time to look beyond our own needs and share our team’s skills with the wider community.
Our enthusiastic team will be heading to Lurnea Anglican Church with their gardening gloves and shovels to lend a hand establishing some colour and life to the church’s garden over a few weeks, whilst keeping our eye on The Grange back at the college.
Students have been with us for a term and some for a couple of years; including long time gardener Year 10 Nicholas Vassallo. He has brought to the team his own personal knowledge of farming and developed great leadership skills within the team. It is wonderful to see Nicholas given the opportunity to mentor younger students outside the classroom but in an area valued greatly by the community of Thomas Hassall Anglican College.
We will keep you up to date with the Lurnea Anglican Church Garden ‘makeover’ in the near future.
Mrs Genelle Griffin
Secondary Teacher