Devonshire visits Roots and Shoots

Early last Wednesday morning, Devonshire Grade 3 students braved the grey November skies and headed South of Ottawa to visit Roots and Shoots Organic vegetable farm. Once on the we met Robin Turner, the organic farmer himself, and Danny, one of his employees. Robin wanted the uniqueness of Roots and Shoots to sink in, so we started by playing a game, learning about the "Global Industrial" food system versus the "Local Sustainable" food system.

Danny then took us on a small tour, showing us one of Roots and Shoots' large greenhouses. Swiss chard, spinach and dinosaur kale were all happily growing away and to our surprise, Danny and Robin can harvest these greens well into December, all thanks to the heat of the sun captured by the greenhouse!

We then headed to the fields where the last potatoes of the season were waiting for us to be harvested. 

In no time at all we had buckets and buckets!

Before leaving the farm, we loaded up a 50 lb bag of carrots to bring back to school. We thought about the average carrot and it's journey from farm to plate and how different it was from the organic carrots from Roots and Shoots. The carrots we were bringing back to Devonshire were grown without pesticides or other dangerous chemicals and were grown with care not a twenty minute drive from where they would be eaten. Roots and Shoots also sells directly to its customers - this means Robin gets a fair return for wares and speaks to his customers face-to-face  ...Now we were hungry for carrot soup!