Part Garden, Part Classroom, Project Seeks to Connect Youth With the Land

teacher Megan Donner is scrambling this week before the very first benefit for Casa’s OLE project, an innovative outdoor learning environment that will transform the one-acre campus lawn area from shoe wrecking bog to an outdoor classroom complete with a vegetable garden, fruit orchard, a kitchen with a pizza oven and an mphitheater that will seat 150 people.

“Each winter this lawn turns into a muddy swamp," said Donner who has taught culinary arts and organic gardening at the school for the past seven years. "It’s right in the middle of the campus and we just felt it was time to do something productive with it."

While science, art and culinary teachers are already using the existing garden as part of their curriculum, the OLE farm will be open to the entire community. Organizers envision the venue to be used for music, theater, dance, cooking demonstrations as well as lectures. OLE will also be a place for outdoor classes for adults and children and organic farming.

With a small group of like minded folks including English teacher Dinah Lee, retired librarian Susan Thompson and supporters like Sheila Bride of , chef and cooking instructor Kay Baumhefner and her husband, winemaker, Don Baumhefner, the OLE project will begin Phase One over summer break.

That’s when the grading, paving and utilities infrastructure should be completed. The money to get started comes from a $250,000 grant, but they’ll need more funding, hence this weekend's fundraiser.

First, young people should be able to grow their own food and then know how to cook it, Donner said.

“They’re so disconnected with all their electronics. They need a way to connect with the outdoors, and feel comfortable and excited doing so,” Donner said. “Getting out and being active reduces childhood obesity, too.”

Donner also told me that when kids participate in outdoor garden programs, their test scores rise.

Finally, the OLE space will be a portal for other classes to develop curriculum that emphasizes outdoor learning.  It could be as simple as a physics class dropping an apple and measuring its velocity compared to a feather floating in the fresh air, or long-term studies of the ecosystem underneath ground cover.

Leaders in the sustainability movement don't have to be convinced that the project is needed.

“Casa Grande’s Ole Project is vital to our community on many fronts," said Trathen Heckman of , a local leader in the sustainability movement. "These sort of innovative ecological models are an essential step towards creating true sustainability while turning the resource shortage problems we are all facing into beautiful, cost and resource-saving models of what is possible."

Donner’s commitment to OLE includes cutting back her teaching hours in order to move the multi-phased project forward.  She’s making the same checkbook- depleting sacrifice next year.

“You know what teenagers do when they see a bug? They scream. They’re afraid of worms. I want them to get excited about what bugs and worms do for us,” she said. 

The OLE benefit will be held Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Buckeye Ranch in Petaluma. You can buy tickets at the front office of the school or visit www.casagrandeole.com.

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On Sunday Three Twins Ice Cream hosted a benefit hometown screening of Worst in Show at The Phoenix. Even though my friend and former colleague John Beck co-directed it, I hadn’t had the opportunity to take in the delicious satirical look at , which takes place every summer at the fairgrounds. Did I mention I’ve been a contest judge twice?

Well, I laughed so hard, I think I may have damaged my spleen.

After a Question & Answer segment, the had adoptable dogs up on stage and I’m crossing my fingers that a few got scooped up. They’re weren’t particularly ugly, but the crowd gave them a big round of applause anyway.