First, a spindly apple tree descended from Richard Hodges’s plant trailer.
He lowered the base of the sapling into the hands of two students, and the next pair moved up in line. Fourth-grader Kelsei Douglas conducted traffic, advising that her classmates “watch out, watch out” and reminding them, “guys, we’ve got more over here.”
Carrying the heftier Asian pear tree required three children, balancing, yelping, bumping the fence enclosing the Southwick School’s nascent food forest in Northfield. A food forest is a tiered orchard, a planned garden built primarily from perrenial plants that reliably produce a harvest year after year.
Last Friday, the school began the process of converting its existing orchard, with its already fruit-bearing trees planted several years ago, into one such forest — one of 30 planned for schools across New Hampshire through a $10 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant awarded in 2024 to the University of New Hampshire, Dartmouth College and Yale University.
“I brought Asian pears, which are round, crispy and delicious. And we also brought other things to make the orchard even more diverse and exciting,” said Hodges, founder and program manager of ReTreeUS, a Sandwich-based experiential education nonprofit. He elongated his syllables in the way of an experienced educator. “We have some strawberry plants, and I have one herb plant that I call ‘the pizza herb,’ oregano.”
The five-year grant supports three prongs, each one aimed at promoting agroforestry, an integrated approach to farming in forested areas: research into reducing the environmental impact of farming through agroforestry, training for 18 conventional farmers seeking to adopt agroforestry practices and training for 60 educators through UNH Extension’s 4H program.
“The benefit of food forests in schools is providing an opportunity for students to get out into the environment and recognize where their food comes from, and see this interplay between plants on the different strata,” explained Mike Smith, the program manager leading UNH Exension’s Farms, Forests and the Future professional development program.
So far, the program has enrolled 34 educators, who over two years attend workshops and make inroads on agroforestry projects of their own. Not all will create food forests, but Smith, a former Mascenic Regional High science teacher of 23 years, sees these as effective teaching devices.
“When you think of a school, they have a certain amount of landscaping that comes with the school. That could all be edible landscaping,” Smith said. “To just go with ornamental plant that then have to be taken care of by facilities — turn that into a food forest instead, and I think it’s just a great learning laboratory.”
Brian Winslow, a unified arts teacher who splits his time between the Southwick and Sanbornton Central schools, developed his concept early on, knowing that he wanted to fill in the orchard with blueberry bushes, shrubs and other ground cover plants.
He began working on his own over the summer and continued last week with help from Smith, Hodges and his troupe of fourth-graders. They put trees in the ground, digging with their hands and loosening roots with as little mess as possible.
Hodges explained the grafting process that guarantees an apple tree will bear a desired variety, like tree surgery. “Does anyone here look exactly like one of your parents? Yeah, not really. It’s the same with fruit trees. If you plant the seed, a lot of times it’ll be different from the parent,” he said. “So, this is two trees in one, and sometimes we make even more mutant trees.”
Each child returned to class with a snack fruit from the orchard, but not before one necessary reminder.
“With anything that’s growing outside, it’s never a bad idea to just rinse your fruit. Your hands have a little dirt on them that came from the ground, and you can get that onto the peach before you eat it. It’s a good idea to wash your fruit and wash your hands,” Winslow said.
