(bright musi - Hi, welcome to Gorman Heritage Farm.

My name's Nicole.

We're really excit for a field trip here in southwest Ohio just near Cincinnati.

Ohio has a long history of fa starting with the Native Americans who grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers right here on this land.

In the 19th century, when Europeans came to the th ey valued the soil and abundant water here in O The history of Gorman Heritage Farm goes all the way back to 1835.

That's when the Brown family immigrated from Scotland.

They purchased this land and they started a farm.

They even built this barn that we're in today.

The Brown family passed their small family farm down through the generations.

One of the Brown daughters married a Gorman so instead of the Brown family farm, it became the Gorman family farm and it stayed in the family for over 160 ye In the 1990s, this was Jim and Dorothy Gorman's farm and they were offered millions of dollars from a developer who wanted to build houses here on th and they turned it down.

They turned down the money and they donated their farm instea Today, most children do not grow up on family farms so it's really important that there's a place where t if they come for a field trip, if they come for summer camp.

If they come for a visit with their family they can come here and learn where food c They can learn the history of farming, they can learn about sustainable food production right here on Gorman Heritage Farm.

One of the important parts of sustainable food produc and today you're going to visit parts of the farm and learn about how food is grown and the importance of that soil.

I'd like to introduce you to my friend Kelly.

She's going to take you around the farm today.

- Hi Nicole.

- Hi Kel - Hi, friend I am so exci We are gonna be visiting different areas of our farm while we learn about how food is grown.

And I love what Nicole said about the importance of It's important to remember while we'r that everything on a farm starts wit We are gonna head out to the garden so that we can look at compost and plant a se Are you all ready?

Okay, let's go.

(upbeat music) - Hi, farm friends.

My name is J at Gorman Heritage Farm.

Today I'm gonna be talking to you about Healthy happy alive soil is what helps to grow high quality fruits and veg here on the farm.

The best way to get high qua Some of you might know what composting is, but I'm gonna use a couple of big w and then we'll talk about what those words mean.

Composting is the controlled decomposition of organic material, controlled meaning human guidance.

So humans are helping guide this process, decomp meaning decaying or breaking down an organic material, meaning stuff from the earth.

So composting is a process that's happe and it's the breakdown of natural materials.

To make a high quality compost pile you need nitrogen, carbon, air, and wa Nitrogenous materials or materials that have Think about cooking a meal in your kitchen.

The carrot tops that might not sound too tasty, the onion peels that aren't edible, or even those strawberry tops that aren't All of these have tons of nutrients in them to make good compost.

The other material that we need is or carbonized material.

Carbonized material Wood chips, dead leaves, those grass clippings from wh Mixing those with our food scraps and adding in a little bit of help us grow amazing vegetables.

So how does all of this compost break down?

We have chunky food scraps and chunky wood chips.

How does it turn into amazi Well, with the help of microorganisms and fungi and bacteria and also worms, this is how the material breaks down.

You heard me, worms.

There are two species and red wiggles that are so hungry.

When we put them in our compost piles, they munch on all of those food scraps and they poop it out.

Their poop is called worm ca and their worm castings have a ton of for growing high quality vegetables.

Worms also swim through the compost pile.

They create tunnels in the pile which aerate it.

So in addition to nitrogen and carbon, we also have air and water to help turn this into lovely comp Why is composting so important?

Composting is important because food scraps have so much nutrients and energy in them.

When we put this in our trash can in our kitchen and it's taken away to the landfill, all of that goes to waste.

When it's composted we instead divert Composting is also important because it allows us to th at came from the earth back to the earth.

My favorite motto about composting is that if it comes from the earth, you can put it back.

I know that composting and you're probably wondering how you can participate and you can do it at home.

There's a couple of ways that you in your very own kitchen.

One of those is by just seeing if your local neighborho that can pick up your food scraps for you Another way is by getting a worm bin for you You can get a worm bin and feed all A third way that you can start composting at home if you have a backyard is to start throwing those food sc in a pile with some wood chips.

Maybe get some neighbors and some frien It's a really easy way to help the planet and feel like you're getting your hands dirty and doing something exciting.

Why are we talking about composting on a farm?

Farmers need to grow fruits and vegetables.

As Kelly mentioned earlier, soil is the life force of a fa So now we have this nutrient-dense finish and sifted compost and we're gonna use it He re with me, I have some lima beans seeds.

We're gonna dig ourselves a trench and lay these seeds a couple inches apart fro and cover it up with that beautiful soft compost.

In a few days or a few weeks those will germinate and Food growers need high quality soil to make these amazing vegetables.

Compost has such potential and so there's no better place to d (bright music) (rooster crowing) - Welcome to the hen house.

This is where the Gorman family kept their ch and where we keep our egg laying chickens today.

There are two types of food that we can get from chickens on a f One of them is meat, the other one is eggs.

Back in the day the chicke were just old egg laying hens that got too old to produce eggs anymore.

But today we have different breeds of chickens that we raise for meat versus the chickens that we raise for eg Here on our farm, we have lots of di and sometimes different breeds of chickens lay different colors of eggs.

Our chickens lay their eggs in these nesting boxes.

I'm gonna open one of these boxes and see if our chickens have Oh look, there's a chicken in this box right now.

I wonder if she has any eggs underneath her.

I'm just gonna gently lift her up and check underneath.

Oh, look at that.

She has a lot of egg These eggs are very warm because this chicken has been sit I also notice that these eggs are two different colors, so some of our chickens here on the farm lay brown eggs, some lay blue eggs, and some even lay white eggs.

I'm gonna put these back under here and close up the box.

Our farmers will come back later today to collect the eggs.

We collect our eggs two times a day, one time in the morning and one time i You might be wondering, "Is there a baby c Well, these eggs are actually food eggs.

This is one of our laying hens.

Her name is Clarissa.

She has some very interesting body p that we can learn about.

Here on the top of her head she has a body part called her comb.

When we get really hot, our bodies sweat to help coo but chickens can't sweat.

So that comb sits on the top of and it is full of blood vessels.

That's what makes it red and that comb helps to cool when it gets hot, it kind This thing underneath her chin does the same thing, but it's got a different name.

It's got kind of a It's called her waddle.

If you look at her body you can see that it is covered in feather That's because chickens are a bird and all birds are covered in feathers.

Her feathers serve different purposes for her.

Some of them help to keep her dry.

Her top feathers, they let the rain fall off Un derneath her top feathers she has her soft fluffy down That's what helps to keep her warm.

And if we take a look at her wing you can see that she has these long flight feathers.

Chickens can fly just a little bit.

They use their wings to help get them up into the nest boxes where they lay their eggs.

She also has some pretty cool looking feet.

I think her feet kind of look like a dinosaur's feet.

That's because chickens are the clos On the ends of her feet she has some pretty long c They kind of look sharp, but they're not and they are really good for Our chickens eat feed that's made up of ground corn and other grains, but chickens also like to eat insects and worms and they use those claws to dig into the ground to uncover tho While they are doing that, they are affecting the soil.

When they are scratching at the ground they are taking out surface an d making it nice and loose and fluffy.

Their droppings also do something to the soil.

Their droppings contain nutrients that plants need to grow like nitrogen and phosph So our chickens have an impact on the soil of our farm too.

Now we're gonna head out to our market garden where our gardener Jason is gonna teach us about harvesting.

(upbeat music) - Hi farm friends, I'm Jason and I'm the vegetable gardener here and I'm really excited to share with you one of my favorite crops to grow and to eat, the sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes are delicio which means they're good to eat a baked into pies, or even as taco fill They're nutritious, which means they're go They're high in vitamins, minerals, especially vitamin A, which is good for our eyesig and good for our immune system.

Now finally, the best part, they're easy to grow.

Sweet potatoes are actually modi that grow in the ground, and in fact, we call them tubers.

If you look closely, they kind of look like, well a tube.

And in this case, it's a tube of minerals and nutrie And more importantly, for the next We plant our sweet potatoes as a patch.

Here you can see it's a low growing ground covering vine that looks like this.

We grow our sweet potatoes from little tiny cuttings th from the potatoes themselves.

We cut them in half, we put toothpicks all around, and we place the bottom part in a cup of water and outgrow new shoots and that's what we plant here in the soil every 12 inches apart.

Now in September, this is when it come We planted these way back in the beginning of June.

Sweet potatoes love hot weather.

So the summer is the perfect time to grow They take anywhere from 90 to 170 days to fully mature.

What's great about sweet potatoes too, they store right in the ground.

So we're gonna harvest some now and continue harvestin which makes them a really useful crop.

And it's one of my favorites.

Let me show you how we get them First thing I've gotta do is cut back these vines.

Now I wanted to add, not only are the tubers, the roots ed so are the leaves, which makes this an ev The leaves are actually very similar to spinach and can be used in the same way.

Not bad.

The first thing I do is get rid of all t pull the vines back, and cut them fro where they're grow The next step then is to use the digging which is also sometimes called a potato fork for this reason.

I've used that to lo and remove the top layer of soil.

So I'm gonna show you now the final st which is bringing it out of the an d then I'll talk a little bit about what before it gets to your kitchen.

So here we go.

So before we put o we need to first remove the top layer of soil, which you see we've already done.

Because they grow underneath the surface of the s we want to be careful not to stab into our potatoes and damage them.

So I need to be able to see where they are.

So I'm going to now put my fork in and gently loosen, wiggle, and lift up so that I can pull those potatoes out of the ground.

Here we go.

Now you can see they kind of pop out and here is a really nice sweet potato.

They don't come much nicer than that.

Now we might expect a sweet potato or orange or pink, or even this kind of sal So you might be wondering why is it and discolored here?

Well, this is really just from the mulch which is called leaf mold.

It's broken down shredded le and that dies the skin brown.

It's perfectly safe and healthy and edible.

We'll clean them, we'll peel them, and they'll look ready to eat.

Now there aren't just these big ones.

There's also these side roots, which we sometimes call laterals or seconds.

Now let me show you, they can grow as far away as 12 inches from where we originally plant them.

You can kind of see one sneaking out here.

Let me see if I can get this one out too.

And sure enough another really nice looking sweet potato.

Man, that looks delicious.

So, after we've gone through and we've brought these sweet potatoes out of the we're not quite done yet.

First they need to dry.

Because they grow un their skin is kind of damp and a little bi So what we do is we set them out in the sun.

This time of year it's nice and dry with hot sun.

And for about 10 days, we let them dry in the sun keeping them out of the rain.

And in that time, the skin begins to harden and that's what helps make these sweet potatoes so easy and long storing, meaning they las Sweet potatoes that are harvested this time of year they can last well into February four to six months from now even.

Sweet potatoes are a wonderful addition to any garden.

They're delicious, they're nutritious, and they're easy to grow.

So I'd really like to encourage you to and find out for yourself.

(upbeat music) - Hi Kelly.

How was - It was awesome.

We explored our gardens, learning about composting by look We planted a seed, harvested some sweet potatoes, and we even met a chicken in the hen house.

- That sounds like so much fun.

- It was great.

Nicole, can you explain to us why farms like ours are so important to - Absolutely.

So Gorman Herita of over 75,000 farms in the state of Ohio.

Now, things have changed in Ohio since this farm started in 1835, but agriculture is really important in our state.

There's over 14 million acres that are farms.

90% of those farms are owned by families and individuals and one in seven jobs in our state are related to food and farming.

So farming has a really big impact here.

Here at Gorman Heritage Farm we can make an impact by welc and have experiences about food, where food comes from.

They can have a field trip like y The mission of Gorman Heritage Farm is to cultivate a healthy community through farm-based education and experiences about fo sustainable agriculture, and the natural world.

And having a healthy community is than just a community that isn't sick.

People are healthier when they know They can make healthy choices at the market or the They can learn how to grow some of their even if just in a flower pot or a buck And when they can be spending time outdoors in nature that makes a healthy community.

Small farms like ours are important places.

People can learn and grow here, we can build that healthy soil, and we're so glad that you Thank you so much for coming to join us for a field trip program at Gorman Herita - [Both] Bye!

(bright music) - [Narrator] Ohio Learns 360 is made possible through a partnership of the Ohio PBS stat and the Ohio Department of Education, offering free PBS resources for out-of-sch and serving students in grades K through 5.

Learn more at OhioLearns360.org.