Farmschool
Creating time and space for young people to live with the land, reconnect with nature, and gain the awareness and tools to build a better future — learning from past mistakes and imagining new possibilities.
FS in collaboration with Comini Microschool
What is Farmschool?
Farmschool reimagines learning beyond theory and even beyond experiential education.
While formal schooling focuses on academics, it struggles with context and application. For example, despite studying French for 7 years, once in Quebec, I couldn’t form a sentence to ask for a glass of water. A familiar struggle, I’m sure.
Experiential learning blends disciplines across context and areas. While many schools use the word "experiential," it usually means a classroom activity with better props. At Farmschool, experiential means actual mud, actual water, actual trees.
That said, both systems overlook the powerful lessons we learn simply by living — nurturing creativity as we invent games, problem solving as we bring down the ball lodged in a tree, group dynamics as we play with neighbourhood kids, sharing and responsibility being a family member, and so on.
Farmschool is NOT about theoretical knowledge. It is NOT purely about experiential knowledge (though, there is a lot of space created for experience). I dare to go beyond it. Farmschool aims to restore the lost space for life-based learning.
Farmschool aims to restore the
lost space for life-based learning.
Farmschool also opens a door to a model that’s different. Every creature in nature finds the best ecosystem and the best season, to lay its eggs. For humans, imbedded within the fabric of the way we live, is the destruction of the very nest we birth our young in. This is NOT a recipe for species survival.
Farmschool gives the youth access to the raw materials again. To empower them to re-envision, redefine, rewrite. To do this better than we did.
Farmschool creates time and space for young people to live with the land, reconnect with nature, and gain the awareness and tools to build a better future — learning from past mistakes and imagining new possibilities.
Why?
Kids today don't have access to mud to play in, water bodies to jump into, or trees luring them with ripe fruit. These natural experiences attribute to creating a well (g)rounded individual. In our evolutionary history, the urban construct is but a mere second compared with the time we have spent in nature. Gaytri Bhatia wanted kids to have access to these experiences.
She also strongly believes that the kids of today (the leaders of 2050), should be equipped for the future, that is, be climate resilient, know to grow food, know water, know how to light a fire, to douse a fire, to swim, to barter skills, and so on.
Farmschool acknowledges that modern lifestyles have damaged the natural ecosystem humans depend on. Our health is inseparable from the health of soil, air, and water, and the current trajectory of resource destruction is unsustainable.
The next generation needs not only literacy and academics, but also practical connection to nature and foundational skills: understanding natural resources, foraging and growing food, staying safe, learning to swim, interacting with ecosystems, and seeing themselves as part of a larger whole.
Farmschool gives the youth access to the raw materials again. To empower them to re-envision, redefine, rewrite. To do this better than we did.
How?
Kate Chaillat, a long-time consumer of VF produce, introduced Priyanka Rai, co-founder of Comini, with Gaytri of Vrindavan. Both carried similar ideas of what they believed important for a child's upbringing. Priyanka took a leap of faith bringing a core group of parents and their kids for the Pilot Farmschool in April 2023. As we enter the 3rd year of this blossoming effort, we stay grateful to Priyanka for the trust in us.
The term "Farmschool" was coined by Priyanka herself.
