Fence in the school gardens. Stop the wild hogs!

Hello y’all! My name is Thora Gray. I am the ecowellness teacher at the Austin Discovery school, a k-6 elementary. My program teaches students about ecology, environmental conservation, and wellness. I have a unique outdoor classroom- garden space that we like to think of as our learning laboratory. Here students grow food for classroom use and pollinators. Students learn all about life cycles, where food comes from, what is healthy, nutritious and delicious. Soon they are asking their parents to buy or grow bok choy from a recipe they made in class. My program has encouraged picky eaters to broaden their taste bud landscape.

Our school is idyllically surrounded by woods that we hike in weekly. There are all sorts of wild animals that we share the woods with, one of which has found its way to our gardens and has continuously uprooted and destroyed our hard work. Wild hogs frequent our gardens at night when we are gone. There is no fencing around our gardens making the fresh tender carrots we waited so long to harvest their sweet tender treat, while they plow head first through any of our efforts. All of our greenhouse grown tomatoes have just been uprooted and destroyed. It’s so disheartening to put in loads of effort to have it destroyed and not fully appreciate the fruit of our labor.

We would like to purchase hog pen fencing and posts to fully protect our gardens so that we can successfully fulfill our mission of promoting healthy eaters, allowing the gardens to flourish.

Thank you for supporting our efforts. Please pass this along far and wide!