For an elementary school class, a farm is like a laboratory, though the experiments aren't what you'd see in an ordinary classroom. Hartland Elementary School third-graders spent yesterday morning discovering how much force it takes to uproot a pepper plant or to push a wheelbarrow full of wood shavings or composted cow manure. They experienced the thrill of removing golden honey and beeswax from a beehive's frames.

Once a month, the 36 pupils spend a morning at Hartland's Cedar Mountain Farm, where they learn about the seasons on the farm and get an idea of where food comes from.

“The third grade will get a sense of the whole year at the farm,” said Peter Allison, coordinator of the Upper Valley Farm to School Network. Although the farm-school partnership in Hartland is three years old, this is the first year the pupils will follow the farm through the seasons.

Last month, the children pulled up potatoes and carrots, which were then served in the school cafeteria. Yesterday, they helped put the asparagus to bed for the winter, and in the process learned about the cycles of compost, from the fluffy wood shavings the farm's 26 Jerseys bed down in, to the composted manure spread on the asparagus.

The program also is a laboratory for other farm-to-school programs, which are proliferating in Vermont. Yesterday marked the start of National School Lunch Week, and all week, the public is invited to farm-to-school programs around the state. Tomorrow morning, Sharon Elementary School holds taste tests of a recipe made from food grown in the school's gardens. Cooking starts at 9 and the taste test is planned for 11:30.

VT-FEED, which stands for Food Education Every Day, recently received a $476,000 grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, funding secured by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to expand and study the farm-to-school programs. The CDC has seen that the programs can be useful for combating obesity, Allison said. The grant also is intended to help the people who run the programs figure out what's working.

On a bright, chilly morning yesterday, the program seemed to be working for the children, who were enjoying the exertion, the smells and the dirt.

“We like it a lot,” said 8-year-old Logan Dunne, who was towing a garden cart with classmate Sara Kleber, also 8. “I like the smell of the cows,” he said. Logan keeps chickens at home, but the farm experience is something different. “It feels like you're a farmer for a day.”

“This gives them a chance to touch the roots of the state, no pun intended,” said Scott Gray, assistant principal at Hartland Elementary. “A lot of them would never have a chance to have this kind of experience if they didn't come out here.”

For information about Upper Valley farm to school programs, go to www.uvfts.org or contact Peter Allison at (802) 291-2019. For information about the program tomorrow in Sharon, contact Principal Barrett Williams at (802) 763-7425.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or at (603) 727-3219.