Farm Visit Full Of Adventures For Browne Students

You can tell the breed of trees by their bark, the guy in sunglasses told the second-graders, pointing to the towering tamarack. See, here’s the distinctive patterns of…

“Turtle alert!” came the yelp from down the hill, and the Browne Elementary students bolted. This tree lesson was done; there were turtles in the pond!

A day at the Riddle Farm in Greenbluff for 1,500 Spokane School District 81 students last week was intended to provide context for classroom lessons in biology and science.

Instructors from the Northwest Natural Resources Institute, a nonprofit conservationist group funded by the Department of Education, did their best.

“I ask kids where eggs come from, and they say pigs,” said Shane Phillips, program coordinator for the institute. “If the kids learn just one thing here - why we log, to save trees; why we seed across the field, to save soil; or where chicken McNuggets come from, from chickens - I’ll be happy.”

But turtles, “squiggly bugs” and sharp cutting things seemed much more relevant to the 60 Browne second- and third-graders who visited the farm with teachers Mary Keith and Lindell Haggin.

The massive combine, with its long metal arms bristling with threshing blades, became an instrument of death to a 7-year-old mind. Jared Lewis and Ben Carson stood side by side, arms crossed, staring at the combine.

“Very interesting,” said Lewis, a second-grader.

“A balance beam?” asked Carson, a third-grader.

“It’s going to kill somebody! It’s scary!” shouted Lewis, jumping up and down.

“Don’t do it, don’t do it! It’ll cut us up!” said Carson, waving his arms in front of the combine.

They and their classmates climbed on, ducked under, poked around and petted the rusty combine as Rich Baden described the evolution of farm equipment.

“Where do you think the seeds go when they are separated from the chaff,” Baden asked the class.

“Somewhere else?” said Lewis.

In the barn, piglets slept peacefully. Gaffney explained what kind of food they required and how big they would grow.

Kristin Stiltz wanted to know where mom was.

“Did they butcher her?” asked Stiltz, a bright-eyed 9-year-old with a tie-dyed T-shirt, a blonde bob and scabbed shins. No, said Baden, the pig was asleep in another pen.

As the tour wound up, the students huddled at the turtle pond. Farm owner Greg Riddle remembered being their age and visiting this farm, then owned by his grandparents.

Tours ceased for about 30 years, until he started them again this year. “I remember this was so much fun as a kid,” said Riddle, tugging at the bill of a baseball cap to shade his eyes from the sun.

The Browne students agreed. As a stranger listened to a lesson on farming techniques, a student tugged at his pant leg. “Did you see the tadpoles?” said the boy.

A look from the advocate’s side

School job shadowing programs are supposed to give high school students an inside look at a potential profession.

After spending a day last month with a Spokane County victim advocate, Deer Park senior Amber O’Keefe now knows what it’s like to be a victim and to be someone who helps them.

Her father was convicted seven years ago of killing her mother. A victim advocate helped her through the horror, including moving from Tacoma to Deer Park, where O’Keefe now lives with her grandparents.

“I know what it feels like to be a victim,” said O’Keefe.

During her job shadow day, she watched a murder trial. She paid special attention to the children of the victim; she got flashes of her father’s trial.

“I was thinking (about) what the victims were going through, what the children of the mother were going through,” said O’Keefe.

She attended her father’s sentencing in Walla Walla and got a letter from him in December, the first contact in five years.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about it,” said O’Keefe. The day ended as it was intended: O’Keefe decided to go into witness advocacy. She plans to attended Spokane Falls Community College, then transfer and get a paralegal degree.

Pop can be good for kids

Students at Garfield Elementary and St. Aloysius school have given dozens of kids with long-term illness a little relief.

They’ve gathered more than 130,000 tabs off pop cans, which they will donate to the Ronald McDonald House. The tabs will help pay for lodging for parents of terminally ill children.

Garfield fourth-grade teacher Jenny Egly thought up the idea as an illustration of a million. If the kids could raise a million pop tabs in a year, she’d buy each a Happy Meal.

They fell a bit short, but they challenged St. Al’s to match their total. The school, at last count, had 100,000.

, DataTimes