Last fall, Jennifer Newman organized the first organic garden at Our Lady of Sorrows, her son’s elementary school, getting the students involved in gardening and learning about healthy eating.

She wrote an article for Patch chronicling the hard work of the staff and 200 students that caught the eye of Marcal Small Steps, an environmentally-friendly company that named Newman one of its hometown heroes and asked her to be a judge for the first official Small Steps for Big Change awards.

 “The Marcal Small Steps brand is based on the philosophy that small actions can make a big environmental impact,” said MJ Jolda, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Marcal Small Steps. “...This campaign is about honoring the everyday environmental heroes that normally fly under the radar, but are actually making a big impact in their communities and beyond.” 

Newman also won a year’s supply of recycled paper products, which she is donating to Our Lady of Sorrow since “I wouldn’t feel right accepting that generous award for only myself when really all the hard work in the garden will be done by the children themselves,” she wrote to the company when accepting the award.

During the school year, OLS Science teacher, Christine Watkins, will incorporate the garden into the curriculum. Students will learn how to grow plants indoors and once springtime arrives,  they will plant them in the garden.

“Knowing where their food comes from is enlightening and empowering for the students,” says Newman.

All of the food from the garden will be used in the school lunch program, and all surplus food, and most of the summer harvest, will go to the 90 to 120  hungry families who rely on OLS Food Pantry each week.

In her article, Newman said "the organic garden is the centerpiece of a progressive, new "Outdoor Learning Program" at OLS School.   The garden will be used to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs, all planted and cultivated by the students.  Until they are ready to plant in early Spring, important garden lessons will be incorporated into the science program. Children will get to do all sorts of fun things like grow plants from seeds, create compost from lunch scraps and learn about how plants grow, live, and produce. The next school garden day is planned for early Spring, when students will transfer plants they've grown inside over the winter to the outdoor garden."

Hoping for a good plow

As the impending snow moves closer, the folks on Hall Court have more than a day off from school to hope for -- they are hoping that this time around, their little cul-de-sac of a street in Montrose gets plowed. (Check out the pictures.) Clearly, their street got plowed once because there's not three feet of snow on it, but it's still covered in ice and snow, making manuevering a little difficult. "We're out of the way and a little secluded and we like that," said resident Debbie Caldwell. "But it seems like we're one of the only streets not clear. Maybe they forgot us."  There's always tomorrow.