Corn grown by Isis District State High School students is popping out the door of Childers IGA as customers can’t get enough of it.
Childers IGA owners Bruce and Deb Mahoney said they stocked the popular vegetable a number of times during corn season and it was always swiftly purchased by supporting locals.
“We always try to support local groups, and the corn the school students grow goes so fast,” Deb said.
Bruce said more of the delicious corn from the Isis District State High School was due to arrive yesterday, 25 June, but he said it wouldn’t last long.
Isis District State High School agricultural teacher Lyndon Walmsley said the school students had been growing the corn for a few years and all the agriculture pupils were involved in producing the sweet crop that ended up on local’s dinner plates.
“The school has been producing a good crop of corn now for the past three years,” he said.
“It is part of the senior subject, Agriculture Practices, which gives the students an experience of ground preparation, planting, maintaining, harvesting and selling a crop.
“I feel the students take a little more pride and ownership of the crop when they know it is being sold locally.”
Lyndon said by selling the corn at Childers IGA a small profit was made and it went back into the school’s agricultural department, and he said there were more fruit and vegetables on the way.
“We have just finished a crop of zucchinis and we also have some strawberries on the way,” he said.
“As well as that, we are in the process of putting in six rows of passion fruit, approximately 50 plants, in which we plan on selling locally.
“We also have some grafted avocadoes and citrus trees for sale which the students have had a hand in grafting.”
Lyndon said there were also a few other small fruit and vegetable stalls that sold Isis District State High School’s produce locally.
He at the moment the school’s agriculture section was in the rebuilding phase after relocating to another part of the high school 12 months ago.
“This has meant we have had to start again with establishing a lot of our areas in ag such as garden plots, animal enclosures, storage facilities,” he said.
“This is not a small feat, but with the help and support of the Childers Fruit and Veg association and Education Queensland we are slowly finding our feet again.
“As the coordinator of the Ag department here at the high school I would like to see us get to a stage where we are operating as a small farm, so that students can see what it is like to be involved in the agricultural industry, from planting to marketing and selling and hopefully come to a realisation that it is a very important industry both locally and nationally and one they may want to be a part of.”
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