School kids learn farm skills

The Skeetchestn Community School has opened new facilities aimed at reconnecting students to the land by teaching agriculture, animal husbandry and sustainability practices.

The school on the reserve near Savona officially opened the $160,000 Skeetchestn Stables last week after two and a half years of work.

Skeetchestn Community School Principal Bryce Ross said programming run out of the stables is layered on top of the provincial curriculum all students are taught.

“We just find the natural parts of the B.C. curriculum where this fits in,” he said.

“Our intention is to get our students out here on the land in 45-minute intervals, where our agricultural coordinator will rotate through our classes, get them out here doing the hard work.”

He said the driving force behind the initiative is to teach students about animal husbandry and the “symbiotic relationship” between gardening and farming.

Terry Deneault, a language and culture educator at the school, said the stables will teach students sustainable practices and encourage appreciation for agriculture and trades work, which he thinks is sorely lacking.

“This world needs young agriculturists — that's where our food comes from, everybody being fed by all the people that run all these operations,” he said.

“A lot of the stuff that we teach, it's not on books. You can't learn it from the books. You got to be here and hands-on in order to understand our traditional lifestyle.”

Deneault said the school's agriculture program “offers hope for the future of our young people.”

The initiative began more than five years ago with the opening of a food forest next to the school. With the stables now complete, the school's programming is expected to expand.

Destre Porter-Nicholas, a Grade 10 student at Skeetchestn Community School, said he thought it was an amazing opportunity for the school

“We used to only have the school, and then we were still getting our garden together,” he said.

"Now that we have all of these, it's amazing because we get to have farm animals, we have our own smokehouse, we get to do cultural things.”

He said he was most excited to work with the animals that will be housed in the stables, noting the pigs, goats and cows his family cares for at home.

Porter-Nicholas said a week before the stables opened, four students were already getting to work hauling over a hundred bails of hay into the stables' hay loft.

All together, the total for the entire initiative cost roughly around $200,000, funded through donations from within the Skeetchestn community and from other donors.

“Hopefully we see more and more of this in the public sector and in other schools,” Ross said.

“If anybody wants to come visit Skeetchestn Community School, they're more than welcome.”