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News & Events
A bountiful harvest at Westfield Park
The students at Westfield Park Primary School in WA celebrated with a piscatorial feast when they harvested their first yield of trout from their aquaponic grow system. Over ninety students from Years 3 to 7 cooked fillets and whole trout on the barbeque and prepared salads and vegetables dishes with produce harvested from the garden.
“We were able to feed ninety students plus staff and volunteers with our own fish and fresh garden produce” explained Mike Burns, the school’s Program Coordinator, “All we needed to buy in was one onion, a bulb of garlic and a capsicum.”
The potato harvest proved particularly rewarding, with students digging up kilos and kilos of creamy Ruby Lou potatoes. “It was like digging for buried treasure” enthused a student.
Staff and students alike were thrilled with the bounty on offer once all the food was prepared and presented on platters. It was enjoyed by everyone, with second and third helpings ensuring that not a lettuce leaf was left.
The school is looking forward to their kitchen being ready for weekly classes in the first term of the new year. The kitchen overlooks both the aquaponic grow beds and the conventional vegie patches – with cabinets and bench tops built by students at Swan TAFE. Moving forward, the garden will be expanded further, and students are looking forward to harvesting fruit from their citrus grove and pressing their own olive oil. The aquaponic tank has now been restocked with barramundi and silver perch. The school is already planning their next feast and can’t wait to see Principal Tim Sewell manning the barbie again in his floral apron!
A teacher’s tale of celebration
By Mike Burns, Teacher, Westfield Park Primary School
In the hectic day to day life of a school, the exact date has long since vanished from my memory but the looks on student’s faces whilst they ate the beautiful food, their co-operation in preparing it and the smiles all round will stay in my mind forever.
Leading up to the big day, we had our fair share of disasters. It began with the loss of some of our trout to a power failure over the mid semester break and then the remaining fish to vandalism. Suddenly the school harvest and planned celebration seemed an impossible dream. Fortunately the day was saved with a generous donation of large trout to the school by Joel and the team at Backyard Aquaponics. Thanks to them, we were back in business.
We aimed to feed every student who had been involved in building and maintaining the gardens and aquaponic system this year. This included all students from Years 3 to 7 in a complete sit down meal (about 100 students).
With the temperatures rising, a sense of urgency grew. The menu and cooking was planned in two parts. Trout dishes were managed by Tim, our school Principal (when setting out to prepare and cook 60 trout, my being allergic to seafood is actually a good thing), and the vegetable dishes by myself with plenty of assistance from the classroom teachers.
Much to our delight, our fresh produce shopping list was limited to lemons, garlic, onions, shallots and a capsicum, with the remaining fresh produce harvested from our gardens. Considering our classroom kitchen is still under construction and we did all the food preparation and cooking in classrooms and outside, the result was fantastic. All food was prepared entirely by our Years 5 to 7 before being thoroughly enjoyed by all.
The menu included:
Spinach and walnut salad
Tossed green salad
Broccoli, bacon pasta bake
Warm beetroot salad
Broccoli and chilli noodles
Stir fried garlic spinach
Potato and leek gratin
Roasted leek, rocket and sweet potato salad
Potato salad
Trout fillets with lemon, garlic and herbs
Whole trout with lemon, garlic and herbs
Trout fillets dipped in egg and barbequed
Whole trout with butter, garlic and paprika
Other than seeing the students’ efforts and dreams for the year become a reality, perhaps the best part of the day was watching the unexpected learning. Seeing students diligently preparing the trout and listening to their conversations as they cleaned, gutted and filleted them was amusing to say the least.
“Ewww! Look its brain!”
“Brain? Where is your brain?”
“In my head.”
“So would a trout’s brain be in its guts?”
“Oh yeah.”
Kids learning through exploration, you have got to love it!
Needless to say we are looking forward to harvesting barramundi in May 2010 when the construction of our six station classroom kitchen will be finished.
I’ll let the picture tell the rest of the story.
A Message from Stephanie
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