Lessons of Land and Classroom Mix at ‘Farmer Brown High’
The white leghorn chickens are laying nicely, but the apples succumbed to a blight. It was a bumper year for peaches--but so too for corn borers, cabbage loopers and tomato worms.
A tree grows in Brooklyn; a farm flourishes in Queens.
Here at John Bowne High School in Flushing, “Farmer Brown High” to its teen-age detractors, the lessons of the land are taught along with those of the classroom.
For the “aggies,” a select group of 400 out of a student population of 2,700, that means rising with the chickens and retiring with the sun. To an aggie, football ranks somewhere behind flower arranging; rock music plays second fiddle to rototilling.
Tractors, Eggs and Animals
Each day, before and after their normal load of classes, the aggies head for the 4 1/2-acre “land lab” behind the school to man the tractors and gather the eggs. There are cages to be cleaned, animals to be fed, and greenhouse plants to be watered.
Additional classes--in silage crops, harvesting and storing, welding, beef cattle management, sheep, swine and the like--are wedged into odd hours usually reserved for lunch periods and study halls.
From the street--Main Street--John Bowne High looks like most city high schools: a three-story blond brick building atop a neat, manicured lawn. Out back, hidden from view by a thick, thorny hedge, the students scurry amid vegetable plots, chicken house, greenhouse and compost heap.
Career Preparation
In summer, a thick fringe of flowers lures bees to the apple and peach orchards. In autumn, a jewel-green cover crop of rye grass awaits the tiller.
They are here, these aggies, to prepare for careers in agribusiness, agropharmaceuticals, pet shops, laboratories, horse breeding, zoos, greenhouses and conservation. They are here to try to narrow the gap between a childhood spent largely on concrete and one rooted in the good earth.
The majority want to be small animal veterinarians. Perhaps one student per graduating class will get accepted to veterinary school. For that slimmest of chances, all 400 give up most of their leisure time during the school year to make weekend field trips to county fairs, orchards and agricultural colleges.
In addition, they sacrifice two precious summer vacations: one, to plant and raise crops in 15-by-15-foot plots in the land lab, and another to work full time in an agriculture-related job. For many, this means putting in 12- to 16-hour days in exchange for room, board and $35 a week at the dairy farms, orchards and stables of Upstate New York.
Medical School as Backup
“Some will be policemen, lawyers and doctors, and some will be veterinary assistants, urban park rangers or florists,” says Sam Shapiro, a veteran of 13 years of teaching agriculture to city kids at John Bowne High. “For many, medical school is their backup application. They’ll have had all the science requirements.
“The number of kids we send to veterinary school may sound small, but actually it’s a record for New York state. There are 26 vet schools in the United States, with an average entering class of just 80 kids.”
At the least, Shapiro says, “I want the kids to know the language and be able to follow along” when they enter agricultural colleges. Shapiro, who did not know the language when he left Queens for Kansas State University, recalls walking into his first class in beef production to find that the bulk of the other kids “had just stepped off a beef cattle farm.”
Fond Memories
Likewise, assistant principal Margaret Corbellini, another Queens native whose riding boots are tucked under her desk, recalls her first assignment as an animal husbandry major at the University of New Hampshire.
“I was assigned to go down to the barn and watch a pig farrow,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what farrowing meant, so I had no idea what she was going to do. Suddenly, there appeared 16 piglets and she was passing them to me to break the sacs and help her. I ended up missing curfew and getting locked out for the night.”
By contrast, she says, “these kids should be given a year’s college credit for what they know when they get out of here.”
Gary Richardson would gladly accept a year’s credit for the work he did last summer, putting in 14-hour days at an Upstate dairy farm. “I milked and cleaned stalls and raked and hayed and rototilled,” he recalls. “It was my first time on a farm. I thought I’d die.”
‘Aggie Pride’
Between their freshman and sophomore years, “we lose some kids,” says Shapiro. “Some think they’re just going to play with animals or arrange flowers. Then they find out that animals also need their cages cleaned and flowers have to be fertilized.”
They also learn something about discrimination. There are two basic groups at John Bowne: The aggies, who come via subway and bus from their homes in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens; and the “zoned kids,” non-agriculture students who happen to live in the neighborhood.
The lines between the two are clearly drawn, and the division has fostered what the students call “aggie pride,” which consists of a great deal of handshaking and back-patting among them.
“One teacher shakes hands with us, then wipes his hand on his pants,” says Jeannette Faulkner, a senior, who spends her spare time cleaning cages and feeding animals at the Queens Zoo. “When we walk into some classrooms, the teachers sniff the air and say, ‘I smell an Aggie!’ ”
‘We Stick Together’
“There’s a lot of jealousy,” Kim Amodio, a junior, agrees. “The other kids say, ‘All you do is shovel chicken stuff.’ So we stick together. We’re sort of a clique. To us, this is a special place. To others, this is Farmer Brown High.”
Shapiro acknowledges that “some teachers think the aggies are elitist. It’s not really true. They’re just a very together group and they organize and do things. There are enough numbers to accomplish things. And the vast majority of the ag kids do go on to college.”
For an aggie in New York City, fitting in is a chronic problem. Says Patti Fallacara, a sophomore, “Upstate, we get knocked for being city kids. Here, we’re aggies. A lot of the zoned kids don’t even know what’s out back. When you come to school summers to work in the land lab, everyone thinks you’re in summer school ‘cause you’re stupid. They say, ‘What subject did you flunk?’ ”
Long, Hot Summers
Summers at John Bowne are long, hot and dirty. And although some zoned kids may well be oblivious to the bounty of fruits and vegetables hidden behind the school, an impressive array of insects have managed to find it.
“On any given day in the summer,” says Shapiro, “there are 100 different insects out here, from corn borers, tomato horn worms and cabbage loopers to helpful insects--praying mantis, bees and ladybugs.”
Claudine Hollingworth, a junior who stuck it out to become a veritable textbook on horticulture, agrees that “some kids complain a lot their first summer.”
But Claudine, whose snapdragons, roses and daisies won a bouquet of ribbons at this year’s Queens County Fair, says the summer she spent raising crops “was the best. Even though we had a water shortage, we still had water fights. By the time that first summer’s over, you get dedicated. When the zoned kids destroy what you’ve cleaned or grown, you get real dedicated.”
Fruits of Their Labor
Summer students are allowed to keep the fruits of their labor. During the spring and autumn, the produce is sold in the school’s ag store to help pay for seeds and fertilizer, as well as feed for the chickens, rabbits, mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters, fish, snakes, ferret and poodle cared for by animal science majors.
The dot of farmland behind John Bowne High is a legacy of World War I, when a shortage of young men on the farm prompted Congress to fund vocational agriculture programs as part of the Land Grant Colleges Act of 1917. Originally part of Newtown High School, the land lab once covered 23 acres, most of which were sacrificed for Queens College and its law school, along with an elementary school.
When John Bowne was built in the 1960s, the program was transferred to the new school. While several New York City schools offer courses in small animals or agriculture, Shapiro says, John Bowne remains the only one to offer both.
It doesn’t bother Shapiro that none of the students want to be farmers anymore. “You need almost $1 million just to start a farm. And let’s face it, if you had $1 million, that would be about the worst investment you could make.”
