Organic Farm

Description

The farm project which included the creation of a 13 hive apiary, 30 capacity chicken coop and the creation of our organic raised bed gardens has served to enhance our summer camp. The children K-6 have enjoyed a hands on experience working with the Bees, harvesting honey and making lip balm, soap and candles. The children even had a contest to create the best label for our honey jars.

The children have learned about the care of chickens and help feed and harvest eggs daily.

The organic gardens feature many varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers. The children work in the gardens learning how we make organic “tea” fertilizers, composting, transplanting and dividing plants. The summer culminates in a farm to table luncheon hosted by the counselors, managers and our Executive Chef. The children harvest all the ingredients for the lunch with one highlight being the garden salad with a honey mustard dressing made straight from the honey combs. This dressing is made in the field and doesn’t get any fresher! Besides enhancing the Children’s camp, our Executive Chef makes daily trips to the gardens to harvest fresh ingredients to be used on our weekly menus for our Members.

To name just a few, the garden features:
Fresh raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and wild blackberry
Organic Beets, garlic, leeks, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, pole beans, eggplant, peppers
Cantaloupe and honeydew melons, pumpkins
Herbs featuring Rosemary, thyme, chives, basil, sorrel, dill, fennel and many others
Many varieties of flowers are also grown, with our in house florists teaching the children how to make flower arrangements

Implementation

Our General Manager Ken Koch (and the Boy Scout inside him), always wanted to create a small farm for the features previously mentioned. When the Club installed an irrigation pond located on a 4 acre plot of land on our east golf course...the perfect space presented itself to create the Maidstone Farm as it exists today. With the help of our resident Head of maintenance Jim Abran, who was a born and raised outdoorsman, the construction of the farm then began. Jim utilized a strand of cedar trees to create the border fencing of the gardens and eventually the perches for the interior of the chicken coop. Jim built all of the raised beds for the gardens. After our first year of operation, we discovered that one of our grounds crew workers who happened to be a Vietnamese monk had extensive experience working with organic garden and raising chickens. Long (we call him Happy!) Nguyen has now become our full time Gardener and also does a great job teaching the children his many skills.

The Membership has embraced the Farm creation and see the benefits of their children learning about all elements of the farm. Members also enjoy peaceful strolls through the farms as well as our Chefs creations on the menu featuring fresh ingredients straight from the garden.

Maidstone and its team have embraced doing its part into making our environment a better “greener” place. Nurturing the bee colonies who help pollinate many plants in the local area, tending and caring for our chickens and producing all organic fruits and vegetables has proved to be a worthwhile project that all of our Members their children and guests have come to appreciate and are very proud of.