Orange Anglican Grammar School markets its first boxed lamb

As part of the Central West-based school's Agricultural Centre of Excellence (ACE) program which commenced at the beginning of this year, the food-chain based learning experience has students fully immersed in the production of sheep, chickens, honey, trout and dung beetles, along with a plethora of other things.

"The whole idea of the ACE program is to teach kids from transition [pre-school] to year 12 where food comes from and the responsibility to be sustainable into the future," OAGS agriculture teacher and ACE program coordinator Sarah Eyb said.

"It is a paddock-to-plate approach involving lamb, beef, meat chickens which has supplied the kitchens all year. We are currently building the specialist ACE building, which has been held up due to COVID and the recent rain."

Twelve second-cross prime lambs sired by White Suffolk rams were grown out to a 50-60 kilogram live weight before they were processed by Breakout River Meats at Cowra and butchered by Michael Borg at Moulder Street Meats, Orange.

The lambs were finished on a pasture consisting of vetch, lucerne, Italian ryegrass, perennial ryegrass and white clover, which is part of the school's regenerative agricultural system on-farm.

"The lamb was packed and we worked out a forward contract price that took into consideration our processing and growth, with Michael Borg," Mrs Eyb said.

As part of the boxed lamb project, students were involved in a product labelling competition which allowed them to draw on their design and marketing skills to establish an ACE product logo for the label.

Two labels were selected with year 10 student Elli Wilson designing an indigenous inspired label and year 9 student Nate Lee coming up with a more stylistic logo.

"It is all about getting our label out there on our range of products," she said.

Mrs Eyb said initially the lamb, and other products, has been marketed within the school community but as they expand the program they aim to attend farmers markets to sell into the larger community.

"We are deliberately targeting the high-end market, looking for quality over volume," she said. "The first thing is to make the school more sufficient in terms of our own meat supply."

Vegetables, herbs and fish are grown mutually in a cooperative aquaponics system the school is currently in the process of evolving.

"Right now the Agrestic Grocer are busy smoking our pilot run of trout which have been grown out from fingerlings," Mrs Eyb said.

"They arrive in March which is the earliest we can take them here with the heat, then they have to really leave before it gets too hot... we have them for eight months."

Students grow meat birds which are processed at Canowindra before they return to the school for the students to design food products using the poultry they have grown, Mrs Eyb said.

"Our free-range eggs also go through the canteen and the food technology rooms."

Pullets raised by the students are also being sold to raise money to go back into the ACE program.

OAGS food technology teacher Amanda Jewell said there is integration and collaboration between different faculties of the school.

There is no waste from paddock to plate, with Ms Jewell designing her classes around the produce being supplied from the school's farm and then the science faculty using other parts for their learning experiences.

"The farm also works in with the PE curriculum when we are doing nutrition work," she said.

Students are learning to grow, pick and cook quality food - they are experiencing it all, and it is drawing interest from prospective students and their families.

ALSO IN NEWS:

Love agricultural news? Sign up for The Land's free daily newsletter.