Another unique item has already shown up on cafeteria trays at Maconaquah Middle: tomatoes the students grew themselves. The kids don’t just raise cows. They also grow gardens in raised beds that they built. A teacher installed a beehive too. The kids are learning to harvest honey. In the future, they plan to build a greenhouse so they can grow even more food.

It sounds like the kids are getting the big picture of farming. God designed a variety of seemingly unrelated species to live and work together well in a farm ecosystem. (Ecosystems are communities of living things like animals and plants and nonliving things like water and dirt.) A farmer is a student who is always learning. He or she studies the complicated relationships that make food happen.

Imagine starting your own farm. You could start very small—with a few seeds. You plant your seeds in cups on the windowsill in the winter. Soon shoots poke up. By spring, your healthy seedlings are ready for the ground. But don’t you want to put them into the best ground possible—soil with the nutrients plants need? A healthy heap of nitrogen-rich animal manure would help a lot! Of course, to have manure, you need to have animals—say, a couple chickens, sheep, or cows.

To keep your animals safe from predators, you might want to get a guard dog too. And while you’re building your farm, you might add some honeybees to pollinate your vegetables. Some vegetable scraps you don’t use can go into the compost—a stockpile of decaying material that will help feed next year’s garden. Other scraps can feed your chickens.

Meanwhile, your dinner plate is piling up with steak, eggs, and salad, with honey-sweetened ice cream for dessert. Good thing. More species on a farm means more time and elbow grease from you. After all that work, you’re going to be seriously hungry!