Tuesday 12^th December 2017

Presentations!

 

Last week we were busy putting all of our crop yield data together and learned how to present our data in tables, pie charts and bar charts. We then had to analyse our data to discover which crops had been a success and which crops maybe we shouldn’t grow again next year. Today we were to present our data to Siobhan from Adnams.

A big part of our business is managing public relations. We have a small team of pupils who are in charge of this so their task today was to work with the accounts manager to email ‘The Plough’ at Wangford and find out which crops they have been the most impressed with this year, which crops they would like to see us grow again and which crops we might not grow this year.

Siobhan was very impressed with or data. Back in July she ran a few sessions for the pupils on ‘presenting’ and ‘public relations’ so it was wonderful to see all the teams looking so confident and presenting their data with such precision.

By the end of the session we had taken questions from Siobhan and the growing team had kept notes so that next term, when we have heard back from ‘The Plough’ we can write a ‘growing plan’ for 2018.

It’s been a wonderfully productive year. We have exceeded our targets and made almost £800 having grown 157.05kg of crops! An incredible second year as ‘Vegetables R Us’ and the learning just goes on and on!!

 

Tuesday 28^th November 2017

Every cloud has a silver lining!

 

Sometimes things happen that test us and sometimes you just have to find a silver lining in every cloud!

This morning we came to school after a dark and stormy night to discover that our wonderful poly-tunnel was wedged in our school sycamore tree.

With lots of hard work by the adults we managed to remove the poly tunnel from the tree…but as we worked to take the framework apart, we noticed that most of the bars had been bent or indeed broken beyond repair so sadly the poly-tunnel was no more!

Siobhan has often taught us about ‘resilience’ during her sessions with us…so that’s exactly what we practised! After a whole business meeting we decided that we would write some persuasive letters to local businesses who have been so generous in their support of our venture.

When analysing our crops we had decided that the tomato crop hadn’t been as good as it should have been. Similar was said of the cucumbers. After lots of discussion where we thought about the science of growing cucumbers and tomatoes, we decided that the location of the poly-tunnel (under a large tree) just wasn’t giving our crops enough light to grow and ripen. Also the growing team noted that the green cover didn’t let much light through. After some research they found that poly carbonate greenhouses let more light through and as they are not made of glass…are safe for our school grounds.

So there we are…our silver lining! Hopefully with the wonderful support of our local business community, we can put up a poly carbonate poly tunnel in a much brighter location and grow a much larger and healthier crop of tomatoes and cucumbers next year!!!!

Tuesday 14^th November 2017

After lots of number crunching we finally analysed our growing results today.

We had some really surprising results. It turned out that a lot of our high income crops were actually from established plants like trees and bushes. The Apples were a great seller as were the plums and medlars (can you find out what they are?!)…all in our top ten yield/income list.

When we analysed the vegetables we discovered that Rainbow chard was by far our highest earning crop. We then tried to reason why this might be. Possibly the soil is just right for rainbow chard or maybe we just set it somewhere where the pests couldn’t find it. It was also suggested that maybe the weather was just right for growing it this year!

One of our most disappointing crops were the tomatoes. After some thinking we decided that the biggest problem for the poly-tunnel is a lack of sunlight. The class suggested investigating different, more transparent covers but obviously this would be costly. Other suggestions were asking if we could trim the overhanging trees or simply investigating other crops or varieties of tomatoes that grow better in half light. It’s good to think and I’m sure we will come up with a good solution to improve our yield.

The market research group had a busy day trying to find the favourite fruit and veg for all the adults and children in school. It was no surprise that their completed bar charts showed that strawberries were the top choice for the children! The adult tastes at Wenhaston Primary School are a little more refined with Asparagus coming out on top! Food for thought when it comes to planning next year’s crop!!

Table completed by the Finance Team...thanks to Ty, Jessica and Freya

Crop	Rank Ord.er	Total Income
Rainbow Chard	1	£91.50
Desert apples	2	£82
Rhubarb	3	£76.80
Cooking Apples	4	£60.26
Courgette	5	£50.68
Plums	6	£43.13
Lettuce	7	£37.80
Medlar	8	£28
Marrow	9	£18
Tomatoes	10	£15.48
Blackcurrant	11	£10.10
Beetroot	12	£7.50
Gooseberries	13	£6
Cucumber	14	£5.04
	15

Tuesday 31^st October 2017

 

From today a lot of our blogging will be handed over to our team from ‘Vegetables R Us’. Today’s guest bloggers are Alexis and Emily who will talk you though today’s happenings!

 

Today we have been promoting our ‘Vegetables R Us’ business. The class was split into four groups. One group is making a power point presentation to explain our business to Adults while the other three groups are making presentations for class 1, class 2 and class 3.

We hope that our presentations will help us to spread the word about our business as well as teach the younger children how they can join in and help us with our business as one day they will be doing what we are doing now!

Our finance team has been preparing our invoices to ensure we get paid by Adnams. After using lots of maths skills to work out our totals (we had time times the cost per kg by the weight of fruit or veg we had grown!) we discovered that we had made a grand total of £604.10 in 2017.

Some of the money we made is profit…you have to knock off the amount we have spent on poly tunnel covers, wood for raised beds and seeds to work this out. Now we can use the money to improve our garden and business and if there is any leftover we may be able to afford to buy something we can all use at school to improve our environment.

We are very proud of what we have achieved in our first, full growing year!!

Friday 16^th June 2017

Our first big harvest of 2017

 

After much effort we have finally made our first harvest of the year. Look at our lettuces…they are GIGANTIC!! We managed to keep the pests at bay and keep them well watered though the recent dry spell….our reward…42 perfect lettuces and some succulent rhubarb.

We also had a special visitor today. As much of our produce would be sold to 'The Crown' in Southwold, we invited their head chef (Rory) to take a look at the produce we would be growing for him to cook in their restaurant in 2017.

Our next job was to work out which crops Rory could take away with him today. As a result we also did some mathematics in our gardening slot this week. After working out the average of lettuce prices, based on the four biggest supermarket prices and adding a little for our ‘organic' approach, we decided that 60p would be a fair price to charge. A little multiplication later and we came up with a total of £25.20 for the lettuces with which the pupils would invoice Adnams themselves. Not a bad start at all!

Harvesting our iceberg lettuces.

The Lolla Rosa lettuces look juicy too!

Packaging the lettuces for transport to The Crown, Southwold.

Our next harvest was the rhubarb. This time we had to use our skills of estimation to work out a price. We weighed a bunch of stalks to give us a good idea of the cost per bunch. We then had to multiply that by the number of bunches of rhubarb that we had harvested. Again we discovered a total close to £25! That means that we have already surpassed our income from 2016…a great effort…well done ‘team Food for Thought!

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 20^th June 2017

Organic Growing

One of our aims as a business is to grow organic food. If we are going to sustain this (keep it going!) then we are going to need to make our own compost. This would also be a  great opportunity for us to investigate micro-organisms in science!

With class 3 keeping chickens, there was an opportunity for using the chicken manure to make our own compost, full of the rich nutrients that our plants would need to grow strong and healthy. Once produced, we might need to do a science experiment or two to work out an effective dose of our organic compost!

This afternoon we also need to replenish our lettuce beds which have been emptied from our first harvest. We have Italian ‘Canasta lettuce’ to fill the rear beds and cucumber plants for the poly tunnel. We will also need to prepare our first invoices to send to Adnams for the crops we have harvested so far.

Our business is a great way for us to learn our maths. It’s a great ‘reason’ for learning estimation, multiplication, division, percentages, ratios and much, much more. It makes us ‘think on our feet’ developing our mental maths skills in problem solving. A part of our maths challenge this year will be to keep a running total of all of our produce for this year. Up to June the business 'Vegetablesrus' has already made an impressive £50 which will eventually be spent of upgrading the garden further throughout 2017 and beyond. Well done team!

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday 29^th June 2017

Spread sheets and book keeping

 

After all the excitement of seeing our news report on Monday…today we settled down to learn how to use Microsoft Spread sheets to keep a track of the money we were making.

Working in teams, the pupils familiarised themselves with how the programme works. We are hoping that this will help to make our  ‘book keeping’ so much easier and manageable.

By the end of the session we discovered that we had already made £66.10 from our crops so far!

We quickly worked out that by using our spread sheets to keep a track of our profits, we would soon be able to see which crops are worth growing and which crops we maybe should pass on next year.

In terms of helping us to develop our thinking skills….this project is beginning to really take off and here we have the business women and men of the future learning key ICT and maths skills!