The Landing

An innovative outdoor learning environment launches on a local farm

 

By Jan Leitschuh

A tiny girl in a charming red, white and blue dress toddles over to a raised vegetable bed, green bucket in hand. There, magically, a ripening tomato spills over the side, conveniently at “wee-one” hand-height. To us, it’s a green tomato with a slight blush.

To her, it’s a moment of wonder.

Other children navigate the nearby obstacle course or balance beams, ask questions about cucumbers or basil, eat green beans off the bush. They shriek and run and play in the tepee village, cook wood-chip “cookies” in the outdoor kitchen, navigate the tires or construct towers in the  “workshop,” plant seeds and smell marigolds planted to keep the deer away.

Welcome to the opening of The Landing, a new outdoor learning environment for children at Eagles Nest Berry Farm in Jackson Springs.

“We’re attempting to get more families out and away from electronics, and enjoying the outdoors, to see how food is grown,” said Elaina Williams, the driving force behind The Landing. “We have raised beds with vegetables. We have a tepee and a noise room. We have outdoor and active things for children to do and use their imagination.”

Situated a dozen or so miles west of Pinehurst, lovely Eagles Nest Berry Farm is a family farm project that began with blueberry bushes. Owned by Williams, Karyn and Todd Ring, Chuck Richardson and Martha Richardson, that simple beginning was plotted by their father, carefully matched to the farm’s soils best suited to a delicious and fruitful blueberry crop.  Though their father died before his thoughtful plan got planted, the children decided to enact his vision. Now, many years later, that legacy of four beautiful acres of pick-your-own blueberries, and an acre of blackberries draws fruit lovers, buckets and appetites in hand.

The farm also grows some vegetable produce, such as basil, tons of tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, okra, kale, Swiss chard and more, after sister Karyn got a grant to implement low tunnels to further lengthen the Sandhills’ long growing season.

All that N.C. growing goodness draws families away from the air conditioning and into the outdoors.

And with them come their children.

“We have kids come out with their parents to pick, all the time,” says Williams. “They usually come back out of the field covered in blackberry and blueberry juice. It is cute.”

But youthful attention spans often wander. Enter The Landing.

“We wanted to get more families outside, and out here on the farm,” says Williams. “To do that, we needed an area for the children, something that would engage them. It’s kind of a no-brainer.” She had an ally in Brittany Martin Mays, a friend from Jackson Springs, who works at Partners for Children and Families. “She does this kind of thing, helps set up playgrounds at child-care centers, that sort of thing. She gave us lots of great ideas, really encouraged us because there isn’t a lot of that right around here.”

Writing up her vision, Williams was awarded a Golden Leaf Tobacco Fund grant last fall, through the University of Mount Olive, to help farmers transition out of tobacco and into something else. 

Another friend, David Shannon, helped set up the master plan, constructing the play elements. “He’s been a big help on setting this up,” says Williams. “He’s going to stay on and help with the farm, especially since we discovered he has a green thumb.”

First came the raised beds. Built from rough-cut, untreated 2x10s, the beds topped out at a low 20-inches tall.  “We wanted to make sure the kids could see everything. We put sand in the bottom for drainage, then we mixed together good compost, garden soil and eggshell compost,” she says.

The rich beds were planted with appealing produce, as well as a drift of marigolds to keep the deer away. 

“The kids especially like the purple bumble bee and chocolate cherry tomatoes. We have customers that eat them like candy,” says Williams. “We also had quite a few children interested in eating the green beans right off the bush.  We planted larger tomatoes and cucumbers too, so one week kids could see the bloom, the next they could come and see the fruit.

“They showed a lot of interest, asking questions. We hope that they keep coming out and checking things out. I think we might have encouraged the next generation of farmers, with the questions they were asking. They wanted to pick everything that was on there. If there was even a little bit of color on it, they wanted to pick it.”

Besides the raised beds, a few pear trees, wild flowers and blueberry bushes were planted just for children.

Next, Shannon built a little obstacle/balance beam course with logs, stumps, tires and sand-filled structures. Big tractor tires, donated by T.H. Blue, stick halfway in the ground for roughhousing and climbing.  Carolina Car Care donated some other tires of the right size. “We stacked and filled them in with pure white sand, for climbing. The kids love it. We put mulch all around it for soft landings. My grandsons tried it out first,” giving it their seal of approval.  A 10×10 hole was dug down a foot for a sandpit. Convenient log stumps surround the build for people to sit on and watch the action.

Shade was another consideration. A neighbor with bamboo in his yard donated some long poles for a tepee. Brittany helped set up a village — three tepees with bamboo poles lashed together with wire. The crew put painters cloth around the poles and during the grand opening on June 20, children dipped their hands in washable paint and made prints on the cloth for decoration. “We will probably try some half-runners up the poles next year,” says Williams.

Other outdoor play spots seeing big action were a play kitchen, an architectural center and a music room.

Full of cookware, the play kitchen is a fenced 10×10 foot area with a tin roof. The floor is a soft wood chip mulch. “We made it kid-sized. David built a little kitchen counter, painted burners on it, put in a little sink and we stocked it with old pots and pans,” says Williams. “They like to cook with those. Wood chip cookies. They pretended really well.  Even the boys were in there.”

An additional kingdom for the imagination, the architectural center, forms another 10×10 foot area, this one with an orange builders fence around it called the TPT Construction Area, in honor of Ty Parker Tindell, a brother who passed away 10 years ago. “It’s stocked with blocks, 2×4 chunks, cylinders, pieces of wood, plywood, a few PVC pieces. They are going to have to use their imagination. And they did. Girls and boys. They built huge structures, towers, other items. No hammers. Just imagination,” says Williams.

Finally, the music room. “We also call it the noise zone,” says Williams with a chuckle.  “We made a xylophone out of bamboo. Then we made a wall and took old aluminum cake pans, pots and pans, and we hung wooden spoons so the kids can beat on them. The kids love that. We did hang them on the side of the wall away from the berry pickers. “Kids can bang away to their hearts’ content, working off their energy and disturbing no one on the spacious farm.

Though only open four days during the harvest weeks, The Landing will offer engaging projects and events.  “We have a cousin that’s a retired science teacher,” says Williams.  “We have several activities she’s going to do, like building a worm farm and an ant farm. She has all kinds of snakeskins and bird nests that she’s going to tell us about. She’s going to do a weather day, and there’s a tornado thing she wants to do.”

Future plans include a larger wildflower patch, more fruit trees and permanent deer fencing. An expanded garden is on the agenda. As a bonus, Mom and Dad get to pick their blueberries and blackberries in peace in the main field while the kids play with new friends nearby.

“We’re trying to give back to the community,” says Williams. “We’ve had such great customers over the years. And we’re hoping to inspire some young farmers. And I think we inspired a few at our opening, especially the girls.”  PS

Want to visit? Call first to check, at (910) 639-3966. Normally open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., same hours as the adjacent Eagles Nest Berry Farm. 

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

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