Over 120 pupils (six classes) were involved this year in the project promoted by the Farmers’ Association in collaboration with the Municipality and the Comprehensive Institute.
They have been ‘pioneers’ of a simple, innovative, ingenious idea: teaching primary school children to grow a small vegetable garden in a box filled with soil, from the first seedlings to the final product. This, in a nutshell, is ‘l’Orto in cassetta’, a project conceived and promoted several years ago by the Castelfiorentino Farmers’ Association in collaboration with the Municipal Administration and the Comprehensive Institute, which this year again involved six classes and over 120 pupils in the cultivation of many ‘small vegetable gardens’, using simple wooden crates.
Coordinated by an adult, the pupils enthusiastically tried their hand at sowing or planting plants, carefully following their growth until harvest time. A rewarding activity, and also one of great pedagogical value, where perseverance and dedication are rewarded by the end result (salad, spinach, chard, etc.) which is then consumed in the school canteen. Every year, the project takes a quantum leap forward, expanding also to include knowledge of microfauna and the organisms that are part of them (from earthworms to small bird nests)
“The ‘Orto in cassetta’ project,” observes the Councillor for Schools and Educational Activities, Francesca Giannì, “confirms itself as one of the pillars of education in the schools of Castelfiorentino, with a view to enhancing the agricultural tradition of our territory. Through the farmers’ association, our children rediscover the pleasure of slow things, of the unexpected, of caring for nature, supported as always by our teachers. An outdoor education, of experience and devoted to the territory, which has been going on for years and which contains the potential of a great continuity activity for the entire Comprensivo and for all the Castelfiorentino schools. I therefore thank the farmers’ association that has been following this project for years, with a thought for Marco Locci, who passed away recently, who always followed and supported it with great passion”.
“We were among the first in the district,” notes Rosanna Spinelli, secretary of the Farmers’ Association, “to implement this initiative for the 2016-2017 school year, supported by the municipal administration. Today we see that in other schools in our neighbouring municipalities, school gardens are being created, this makes us proud and shows us that it is always necessary to educate people, even the smallest, to care for and respect the land and its fruits”.
‘This year Marco Locci left us,’ continues Rosanna Spinelli, ‘who was always actively involved in the project. Our Association and the teachers and pupils of the Castelfiorentino Primary School remember him as helpful and competent in teaching, sowing and planting with patience and always with a smile. As we watch our vegetables grow, we remember him and want to imagine him as one of our butterflies that flew away. But we cherish a wonderful memory of him and we are sure he will continue to watch over our project”.
