Farm to School Programming

The Partridge Creek Farm to School Program teaches students through hands-on learning experiences both outdoors in the Ishpeming Middle School Garden as well as in the kitchen. Partridge Creek Farm’s approach fosters a sense of community and encourages students to continue to make lifelong healthy habits.

Through the Farm to School Program students are encouraged to build a connection with local agriculture, food, and one another wile learning about nutrition, agriculture, and sustainability.

Farm to School Offerings

Partridge Creek Farm is thrilled to offer the following Farm to School Programming to Ishpeming Students in partnership with Ishpeming Public School District #1!

5th grade students learn about vegetables growing in the Ishpeming Middle School Garden led by PCF Education Coordinator, Keats Dormont. Photo taken by PCF’s Camden Kinnie.

Since its launch in 2013, PCF’s cornerstone Farm-to-School program has flourished, offering 5th and 6th graders weekly, year-round nutrition, cooking, and gardening education. PCF is excited to expand its food and educational initiatives through continued partnerships with Ishpeming Schools. Partridge Creek Farm staff and key partners are working to develop a Farm to School curriculum to help more teachers and students get involved with this programming.

In collaboration with Birchview Elementary in Ishpeming, Partridge Creek Farm helped establish a garden site there where the teachers, students, and parents foster the site and incorporate some early Farm to School lessons into their curriculum.

Farm to School

2023 Healthy Cooking students recreate their healthy recipe on TV6 news with the help of their teacher. Photo by PCF’s Camden Kinnie.

The Healthy Cooking Program takes place during school hours at Ishpeming Middle School. This program is aimed at teaching 5th and 6th grade students how to independently prepare and enjoy nutritious meals while students also try new recipes and healthy food. Remarkably, 70% of participants report trying—and liking—a new vegetable they hadn’t eaten before.

Students learn how to independently cook a new simple recipe while working within their group to accomplish a shared goal! This program is an important part of hands-on learning to teach youth how to make lifelong healthy choices.

The Healthy Cooking Program was made possible by the support of the West End Health Foundation, who generously funded our 2025 Healthy Cooking program, and supported us in purchasing new equipment for the program. Thank you also, to the Marquette Food Co-op , for supplying our students with fresh locally grown produce!

Healthy Cooking

Ishpeming High School Flipping the Food System Students plant seed starts with the PCF growing team. Photo by PCF’s Camden Kinnie.

This Career Technical Education Program launched in January of 2025 and is taught by Partridge Creek Farm’s Education Coordinator, Keats Dormont. Flipping the Food System is a horticulture semester long Ishpeming High School class. This course will begin by covering the history of this country's industrial food production practices and their impacts on human and planetary health. In the classroom, students will explore the benefits of local, small scale, and regenerative food production practices. Outside of the classroom, students will visit local farms & gardens that put these practices to use before beginning to design and actualize such living systems themselves.

Flipping the Food System will focus on how our community can begin to design food systems that function in beneficial harmony with our surrounding ecosystem. In the winter/spring semester the students will begin by learning the principles of regenerative agriculture and permaculture before practicing protracted observation of the landscape to start to understand and design the gardens they will plant in May & early June.

Learn more about Flipping the Food System below.

CTE Program | Flipping The Food System

Learn More About Our Ishpeming High School CTE Class

  • CTE stands for Career Technical Education. This opportunity provides students with hands-on training and education focused on specific careers or industries

  • This is an Ishpeming High School CTE class taught by Partridge Creek Farm’s Education Coordinator.

    Homeschool and local high school students WILL need to provide their own reliable transportation to and from Ishpeming High School daily to attend this class.

    Ishpeming High School Students Welcome

    • 9th-10th Grade students welcome to sign-up

    Local High School Students Welcome

    • 9th-10th Grade students welcome to sign-up

    Local Homeschool Students Welcome

    • Ages 14-18 welcome

  • This CTE class is taught at Ishpeming High School, in downtown Ishpeming.

    To enroll your student up please:

    If your student is not currently enrolled at Ishpeming High School please be sure to speak to your current school’s office for help navigating enrollment in this class.

  • Key topics and elements of the class will include:

    • Permaculture & regenerative agriculture

    • The soil food web

    • Making high quality compost

    • Microscopy

    • The impacts and history of chemical vs biological agriculture

    • The basic biology of plants and soil life

    • Climate and ecological sciences

    • Crop and pest management

    • Growing whole-diet perennial polycultures and staple foods in the UP

    • Food preservation

    • Permaculture design projects

    • Community engagement projects

Thank You to our Funders and Partners

“The Farm to School program has allowed my students to be curious, ask questions, and explore.”

Ishpeming School District Teacher