Thanks to a $10,000 grant the school received this month, it will have a year-round habitat for the important insects to live in, and will help spread monarch programs to other schools in the region.

“We hope to distribute our eggs to the north-central and northwest part of state to different schools,” said teacher Kelsey Wigans, manager of the school Seed to Table garden. “And based on the numbers we had from this year and last year, it could be upwards of 160 schools we give eggs to.”

The school’s former locker room was turned into a learning kitchen last year. Now with the “America’s Farmers Grow Education” grant, the shower room will become the monarch area.

A new door with a large window will be added to the entry. A heater and humidifier will keep the room “like a warm, mid-July day,” Wigans said, using the shower room’s water supply. The butterflies will be confined to boxes, and caterpillars will be fed milkweed — the only food they’ll eat — which will be grown in the school’s greenhouse.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter
Kelsey Wigans explains how these milkweeds were completely eaten up by caterpillars in the school’s pilot monarch project this year. If these don’t survive, new milkweeds will be grown from seed here in the greenhouse, thanks to new tables and grow lights added after the school received a $10,000 grant.

The school began a monarch egg pilot project last fall with the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium of Iowa State University.

“They handed out eggs to different classrooms, that way they could see the monarch life cycle and take care of the caterpillars, and then get to release the butterflies after they tag them,” Wigans said. “We had good survival rates, so they said let’s use you to get monarch eggs to the northwest part of the state.”

The students will get a batch of eggs from ISU sometime after Christmas, Wigans said, and live in the habitat eating greenhouse-grown milkweed till spring. Then they’ll be put outside in 6-foot tall “monarch bio-tents” with milkweed in the bottom.

“You save back about 10 percent of them, depending on how many survive. You want to keep about 60 in each tent. Then they’ll mate, they’ll lay eggs on the milkweed, and the cycle will continue again,” Wigans said.

Monarch numbers are still low. Wigans said the species suffered a setback when millions were killed during a frost in Mexico where the bright orange butterflies migrate for winter.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter
Kelsye Wigans shows off the kale, turnips and peppers grown by students in the Seed to Table Garden. Students boil the turnips and add them to mashed potatos, Wigans said.

The Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium says the monarch population has decreased by 80 percent over the past two decades. Causes for the decline include loss of milkweed habitat in the spring and summer breeding ranges of the United States, and the consortium is working to rebuild habitat.

“That’s another part of that grant; we wrote in part about reaching out to farmers and growing that milkweed, and trying to get some butterfly gardens and natural habitat established,” Wigans said.

People could also take milkweed seeds from the greenhouse to establish in their own gardens, or in a place in town, she said.

“We have a ton of seed too,” she said. “You know those pods. They have the strings on them, and they float around. You can have the kids pull the fluff off and put them in a bag, and then they like to play with it. It’s a good sensory activity too.”

The school’s greenhouse is also getting an upgrade thanks to the grant, which will make it easier to grow milkweed and other plants.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter
The school chickens have free range of the whole garden during the colder months at Gilmore City-Bradgate Elementary School. Kids of all ages help to grow produce here, learning about farms and nutrition, and adding home-grown greens to the school’s lunch menu.

New tables and grow lights have already been installed to supplement the weaker winter sun.

“This will be a nice addition, to grow with grow lights,” Wigans said.

The whole garden project began two years ago when Wigans came to the school, and has been a big success, she said. One year ago they remodeled the former locker room adjacent to the butterfly habitat to be their learning kitchen.

“I’m a registered dietitian, so I combine agriculture and nutrition to elementary school students,” she said. “It’s all student-led, so different grades want to learn about different things.

“We’ve done taste testing, we’ve done soil composition, composting. We’ve talked about how to prepare foods, easy snack ideas for kids. We do a variety of things. Plant identification, insect identification.”

This week the refrigerator is filled with kale, peppers and turnips harvested from the one-third acre garden by the students. And the students seem eager to try what they’ve grown themselves.

“We like to boil the turnips and put them in mashed potatoes. The kids love it,” she said. “Between 2016-2017 we saw about a 70 percent increase in people taking and eating the salad bar. Before, it was two or three kids taking it; we had over half the kids taking it last year.”

The school also gets eggs from the four chickens who live next to the garden.

Across the street a one-third acre orchard holds apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, aronia berry bushes and grape vines. Students have already gotten to eat the grapes.

“So we’re seeing a direct impact of the gardening program in the kids’ nutrition. Them just trying a variety of fruits and vegetables. It’s amazing to see, especially as a dietician seeing that change the minds of our youth at a young age,” Wigans said.

Once the trees grow, the green isles of the orchard will provide a place for restless kids to come and study in nature, she said. In the same field, a natural playscape is being built.