By Gates Guarin

Students celebrate one year of hands-on learning at Irvine Agricultural Discovery Centre

Sep 22, 2022 | 4:59 PM

IRVINE, AB – Students at Irvine School will be hosting a farm gather and production sale this Saturday to celebrate all the work done during the first year of the school’s Agricultural Discovery Centre.

All year, students got an all-access pass to running a farm right in the school’s backyard. From planting and growing produce to caring for livestock, all 350 students were able to see and learn about what life is truly like on the farm.

The event will include a tour of the centre and student-led programming on a variety of topics such as beekeeping, wheat and crop types and poultry life cycles.

Following the tours, a dinner cooked by students will be served and will feature a menu on which most of the ingredients were grown and picked at the centre. The centrepiece of the evening will be a live and online auction of the centre’s livestock, which were raised right on the grounds.

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Trent Rayner, Irvine School principal, says the past year has been a resounding success, and parents and students alike have embraced the opportunity to get hands-on experience about learning sustainability practices.

“This is our chance one, to kind of show off all the hard work that all of our students and staff and all of us have done,” Rayner says. “Everything came through; the animals are beautiful, they’re ready to be auctioned off. The produce we’ve grown is going to be delicious and it’s going to make for some great meals, and it really gets to show our students that will be here to show what they’ve learned and how important it is to them, and that’s really what it’s all about, and of course to raise some money so we can have this sustainability aspect and run through it again starting next April.”

Money raised will go toward purchasing new animals and upgrading equipment. The centre is also hoping to purchase a new worm composting trailer to make the farm even more sustainable.