The last time I saw the sheep, it was making its escape down the hill of the Tappan Middle School athletic field. As I tried to catch up, all the while cursing my dead camera battery, it headed down Brockman with about 30 middle schoolers hot on its heels. When I run through Burns Park, I think “wow, look at all the houses for sale.” I wonder what the sheep was thinking? “Iiiyyyeeee! Freedom!!” perhaps? A dad turned to me, saying, “Can you imagine if the kids corner it in someone’s yard? …some poor lady who just planted all her impatiens last weekend.”
The renegade sheep was the cap of a sunny, springtime evening shared by over 200 locals at the Agrarian Adventure’s Spring Festival. The Agrarian Adventure is comprised of students and volunteers from Tappan, learning to integrate sustainable foods and healthy living into their own lives and in the da
y-to-day activities of school and the community. Kids and volunteers showed off the club’s brand-new greenhouse, as well as their garden and projects from the year. I don’t have a comprehensive list of the businesses who donated to the evening, but I know DuRussel’s Farm, Grazing Fields, Garden Works, Great Harvest Bread, Nature and Nurture, Needle Lane Farms, Tantre Farm, and Zingerman’s contributed goodies offered up as tea sandwiches, salads, and smoothies. I can vouch that the egg salad sandwiches with sunflower sprouts were divine! Pioneer High students, a local 4-H group, and other clubs joined in the fun, too – there were chickens, guinea pigs, and goats (two ba
bies!), in addition to the restless sheep.All of this brings to mind a news feature I saw on “the TV” recently. Tufts University’s Nutrition School shepherded a program in its community promoting healthy eating and exercise district-wide with “Shape Up Somerville.” Having read the headline in tonight’s Ann Arbor News that our own University of Michigan just hit $2.519 BILLION in its fundraising campaign, this begs a question. Surely the Maize and Blue can find the resources and the initiative to partner with it’s own hometown schools in taking sustainable foods, healthy eating, and exercise for our children to the next level? The U talks a good game about a diverse student body equaling a successful student body – wouldn’t you say that healthy eating and exercise habits are a key part of insuring that children of all walks of life today are the university students of tomorrow?
