Ben Heller

Olney in Ohio is very similar to Scattergood!

Great questions!

The school attracts a wide variety of students. A lot of kids came during COVID because we are so cautious in that we were masks at all classes, test the students weekly, and have a very socially conscious student body and staff. We have a fair number of international students and are trying to get that back to pre-Trump levels (his policies made it harder for our international students to come unfortunately). The largest number of our students are students for whom public schools were not the right fit. A lot of our students are members of the LGBTQ+ community and public schools can obviously be really hard kids that identify as part of LGBTQ+ community. Scattergood is a really accepting community and have a strong representation of staff who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community as well.

There aren't really classes devoted solely to learning about how to grow crops or raise of livestock but for the whole month of September we have something that we call farm term in which we spend the whole morning out at the farm diving into one topic that involves the farm. This year I co-taught a course on seed saving with the farm manager and we taught about how to grow vegetables for seed production. I also have not been here for the start of the growing season so there may be opportunities to learn about vegetable growing in May. I know that the head of school and farm manager want to develop a farm internship program over the summer. I also try to involve the farm and prairie as much as I can into my curriculum such as studying the ecology of rotational grazing or teaching about fungi through shiitake log inoculation.

There are lots of kids from local areas! The middle school is entirely made up of local students since it is not a boarding middle school and about 30 percent of the high schoolers are from local areas.

If you have any questions or would like to speak to our admissions director, I would be more than happy to link you with them!

-Ben

Hi Permies Community,

I've been on Permies for a while now...not posting much but enjoying the threads, and have appreciated the community that is Permies. I'm writing to do a bit of advertising for a boarding high school I recently took a job at, Scattergood High School. I recently took the position of assistant farm manager and biology teacher and have fallen in love with the community and space that is Scattergood. Therefore, I wanted to share my love for it and let more people know about it. Scattergood is located just outside of Iowa City, outside of West Branch Iowa. Our farm manager is a well respected member of the Iowa sustainable agriculture community, as a board member of Practical Farmers of Iowa. The farm has 8 acres of organic horticulture crops and a large amount of pasture for a small beef and sheep herd, pigs for processing the school kitchen's waste, chickens, turkeys, earthworms, and a friendly donkey. All of the food we produce goes to the school's kitchen. We also have a 26 acre prairies, a beautiful campus with lots of trees, and a couple of small orchards. The school has an emphasis on sustainability and being super accepting. We try to integrate the farm as much as we can into the curriculum and while it may be a bit expensive, we do offer need-based scholarships.

Please feel free to call contact our admissions team or respond to this thread if you would have any questions!

I've also attached a link below to the

I've attached a link below the school's website. If you know anyone who public school is not working, who feels like they need an accepting community, and want to be connected the food that they eat, I think this school would be a great fit for them!

https://scattergood.org/

Hi Permies,

I'm a biology teacher on an alternative high school in Iowa City, Iowa with a large campus farm (it's called Scattergood, you should definitely check it out!) and I'm looking to grow some mushrooms as it would be a great product to add to our farm's repertoire and would be great hands on lesson for biology while we inoculate logs. I am currently looking for logs and know that the best ones to inoculate for shiitakes and oysters are oaks and sugar maples that are cut in winter. However, it is obviously hard to find these logs because of them being really nice wood. However, my folks in central Minnesota had a big windstorm come through and knock down a bunch of trees, including maples, in September. Is this too early? Can I use this wood? Does it really need to be cut later in the year? Any thoughts anyone has would be welcome! Thank you!

-Ben

Hello permie community,

I am currently in college and as happens at almost all colleges, there is a significant amount of drinking that happens. Party after party, I've seen hundred of half finished cups, bottles, and cans of beer, sugary cocktails, and wine been left to be poured down the drain by the poor hosts of the party. My question is, what can I do with this leftover alcohol? I love the idea of composting (regular, vermi-, and with black soldier fly larvae); using waste product to grow or feed something else. Beer and the aforementioned drinks have a ton of sugar and other carbs that could be used to grow something productive, I just do not know what. I've done a little research and haven't found much. The idea of using it as a starter for a compost pile is interesting but there is a loooootttttt of wasted beer on campus, enough to start hundreds of compost piles I do not have.

Looking for any suggestions...thanks!

Hello Permies!

This is my first post and I'm sad to say that my actual experience in practicing permaculture is fairly low but I would love to hear more from you people with actual experience. I think that pigs are a fantastic animal that has many great uses in a permaculture system but I also feel as though there is also a potential for destruction.  Taking ideas Salatin, Mark Shepard, and Sepp Holzer, I would love to find a pig that could turn compost piles like Salatin's do (pigerators), graze brush in the summer (Shepard's pigs with nose rings), fatten up on woodlots, and keep outside in the winter (Holzer) and feed a steady stream of food leftovers from the local high school.  However, at the same time, I do not want a pig that would destroy the landscape with rooting or escape and make a feral population that would destroy the landscape.  A lot of these traits contradict each other...if one were to put nose rings in, it would prevent rooting and encourage grazing but at the same time it would not allow them to turn up compost.  I'd love to have a hardy pig that would require minimal care in the winter, but I do not want them to escape and create a problem for neighboring farms and forests.

I guess my question is, is there a perfect pig breed or way of training pigs to achieve all of these goals? How difficult/expensive is castration to prevent feral communities? Can you take out and put back in nose rings? What is the best type of mobile fencing? What are some inexpensive ways to keep pigs over the winter?

Any input you have would have be thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.

Thank you!

Oh and the climate I am working from is Central Minnesota where temperatures drop to below -20 degrees Fahrenheit and rise to up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.