Chad Bryan, Staff Reporter

Nestled beneath Wareika Hills and near the towering concrete stacks of the Jamaica Flour Mills in east Kingston, Rennock Lodge All-Age School has been instrumental in providing students with a balanced diet.

And as school reopens on Monday, there will be no stopping the school from maintaining its robust "Eat what we grow, grow what we eat" programme facilitated by their farm. They have even won awards for their agricultural endeavours.

Early weekday mornings, principal and former past student, Jacqueline Lewis, is knee-deep and covered in mud along with her students, preparing the land to add produce, reaping crops, feeding chickens and cleaning them to cook among other farming-related practices.

All the eggs, chickens and vegetables provided on the school's compound are supplied to the canteen and prepared so that the students can eat. "I don't just sit in the office and do administrative work and think that that will help the students. for me, feeding them, teaching them to fish, teaching them to do their own stuff, will help them far better than me sitting in the office just doing administrative work," said Lewis, who has been principal for only a year. With the types of students the school often receives, Lewis says she utilises the farming to teach them mathematics and other subjects. One of her students, Alex Gordon, says the farm has helped him tremendously. excited " I am excited about the farm. It has helped me because it has provided me with things to eat. I even have a farm at home where I plant cabbage, callaloo, all types of things," he said. The community has also given the school its full cooperation as it is not fenced.

Footpaths through which residents traverse without interfering with produce and poultry provide testimony to this. "They don't trouble our stuff. You'll see that banana on the tree and it will ripen and nobody troubles it,"� she said. The school's watchman agreed.

community help

"If the community sees a man interfering, only God alone can save him. One man break into the school and they went for him out of his house and he had to put back everything," the watchman claimed. The only problem Lewis seems to be having is with the animals that pass through the area and eat off the crops. She has, however, found ingenious ways to make use of the animals waste by using it as manure for the crops. "As principal, I can move mountains. I use the resources from my pocket and allow it to turn over. I have changed the uniform to something like Campion's purple to lift the morale of the school,"� Lewis said.