Lewisburg students learn farm-to-table skills at first Farm Field Day

Lewisburg Area School District turned its greenhouse into a classroom and kitchen Friday as kindergarteners and high school students worked side by side in the district’s first Farm Field Day.

The May 16 event put Lewisburg High School students in the Sustainability: Farm-to-Table class in the role of teachers, guiding younger children through regenerative agriculture, organic gardening, farm-to-table cooking, caring for chickens and other hands-on lessons. Teacher Alex Oliver said the day gave his students a chance to prove what they knew by teaching it to someone else, which he called one of the best ways to demonstrate learning.

The greenhouse became a series of learning stations that made the lessons visible and practical. Kindergarteners sampled microgreens, planted seeds, painted pots, identified leaves and searched for items in a nature scavenger hunt. At an indoor cooking station, they made veggie pizza using ingredients grown in the greenhouse, tying the day’s lessons directly to food they could taste and recognize.

The event also highlighted a larger system already in place at Lewisburg schools. Vegetables grown in the greenhouse are sold at the Lewisburg Farmers Market and used in culinary classes, while eggs from the school chickens support those same programs. That connection gave the field day a broader purpose than a one-day activity, linking agriculture, nutrition and classroom instruction in ways students can see for themselves.

Kindergarten teacher Makenzie Vance said the field day brought together farm visits and classroom learning in a meaningful way. The mix of younger and older students was central to the event’s design, with seniors Herianne Pagan, Ellis Reed, Caitlin Lyons and Cate Lowry helping lead the stations and model the skills they had learned in class.

Jennifer Shabahang of the Green Dragon Foundation said the foundation partnered with Geisinger to sponsor the greenhouse program and the field day, and Bucknell University athletes also helped. The result was a local effort that crossed grade levels and institutions, showing how Lewisburg schools, community partners and university volunteers are building a hands-on agriculture program that reaches well beyond the greenhouse.