From Orchard to Applesauce: How a Harvest Became a Learning Experience

Kindergarteners were seated in GSB’s Kitchen Discovery Lab, carefully chopping McIntosh apples atop colorful cutting boards in preparation to make apple sauce.

“We’re busy chefs,” one of the students told Interim Lower School Director Jill Fedon as she walked into the lab, which was completed in 2022 and allows Lower School students the space to explore and experiment with food.

Students picked the apples the week before from one of GSB’s apple orchards.

“We picked them all so we could share them together,” Lower School Science Teacher Lynn Prosen told the Kindergarteners. “We are doing something together and contributing to the whole group.”

In addition to apple sauce, Kindergarteners had the chance to help produce apple cider with the abundance of apples picked together. Over the coming weeks, apples will continue to be integrated into the curriculum, which Prosen explained helps students build a foundation of scientific thinking moving forward. 

“It’s starting their practices of being an observer and question asker. That’s the foundation of science,” Prosen said. “It’s making the connections of our observations lead to questions. These questions lead to investigations.”

During the spring, the students may be able to revisit the apple orchard when the trees’ bloom to make observations and recognize changes during seasonal shifts.

Through apple picking, cider production, and apple sauce making, the students learned how to do their part and contribute. They were pushed to think critically about their actions, including using a careful twist to pick the apples off the trees and correctly handling tools, such as a cutting board and knife. The students gained a better understanding of food systems, from growing to harvesting followed by processing, eating, and waste.

“It’s not just about figuring out how the world works. It’s understanding how what we do impacts the world,” Prosen said. “These explorations can bring about some incredible learning.”

Around 300 apple trees sit in GSB’s Home Winds Farm, which provides an experiential learning environment for students. By scouring just a few of those trees, Lower School students had the opportunity to pick their own apples and learn that the fruit comes in all shapes and sizes, many having imperfections that make them just as good, or even better, than the shiny, smooth ones found at a supermarket. 

“Food is so much more diverse than what you see at the grocery store,” said Home Winds Farm Manager Ned Lincoln. “One of the things that’s beautiful about apple harvesting at GSB is it widens the students’ aesthetic experience of life. It broadens their scope of appreciation.”

“It was an opportunity to connect to place,”  Prosen added. “We’re really lucky to have what we have here. It makes us special. It makes GSB the place to be.”

Home Winds Farm spans 128 acres of GSB’s 208-acre campus. In addition to two apple orchards, the bucolic working farm includes a 29,000-square-foot vegetable and flower garden, 40 acres of hay land, and 35 acres of fenced paddocks for rotational grazing for livestock such as donkeys, sheep, and cattle.

With access to the farm, students can experience a deeper connection to nature and agricultural systems while gaining a better understanding of the impact they have on the world. 

“The farm provides for the learning experiences that are real life,” Lincoln said. “I think the farm gives the opportunity to see the beauty in nature and life, which is so deeply human.”

This year’s apple harvest comes from trees planted about 14 years ago and marks GSB’s largest apple crop in 10 years, said Prosen. 

Through experimentation, students learned the abundance of apples needed to make cider.

“I hope the kids had a ‘wow’ moment,” Prosen said. “It takes a lot of apples to produce cider.”

Cider was made using a cider press funded by a 2018-19 Parents’ Association grant request dedicated to the purchase of equipment and supplies to help develop Home Winds Farm educational programs, including STREAMS. 

Part of that programming instructs students that technology is more than just computers— it’s also tools including the cider press and an antique metal sieve brought into the lab by Kindergarten Instructor Diane Lipnickey to help produce the apple sauce. The sieve was passed down to Lipnickey from her grandmother. Growing up, Lipnickey would use the sieve alongside her grandmother to make tomato sauce. 

“If we can embed story, history, an experience, or a phenomena into what they’re learning, that will help them remember these experiences,” Prosen said. 

Apples grown in GSB’s orchards are for sale at the Community Farm Stand on campus. Lincoln said they’ll be available for purchase as long as the farm can store them.

Through the students’ experimentation, they not only connected with nature but also the GSB community, from faculty who enjoyed surplus cider and helped pick apples to a handful of Upper School students who joined one of the cider making sessions. 

“There is so much of our world we need to stop and take a look at. We’re all interconnected,” Prosen said.