Youth go down on the farm for weekend learning experience

photo by Meredith Anderson

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Jack's Wood Fired-Oven provided organic ingredients for all of the pizzas like fresh mozzarella, sausage, and basil.

By Meredith Anderson

LOGAN - Adult and youth participants from all over Utah came to Logan for the annual Diocesan Youth Leadership Weekend (DYLW) June 25-27.

"The overall goal of the weekend is to help young Catholics gain an understanding of how their faith can be applied to the many different areas of their lives," said Matthew Boerke, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries for the diocese. "One of these areas is in terms of sustainable living and concern for the other."

The weekend focused on environmental concerns, and Saturday's activities were concentrated on a Farmer's Market as well as a visit to an organic farm.

"My hope was the youth participants would gain an understanding of where food comes from and a little bit more insight into conventional versus organic farming," Boerke said.

Though the season was too early to purchase tomatoes and peppers for the night's plans, participants traveled in groups on a Scavenger hunt with questions about the market, vendors products, and farming.

After Mass at Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish, participants traveled to Appenzell Farm. Jesse Corbridge led the tour and explained the process of raising chickens as well as how the farm processes its own chickens once a month. The farm held a variety of animals such as chickens, turkeys, rabbits, goats and two cows.

Bernie Pacheco, a frequent chaperone for the DYLW, said the farm was a "chance for kids to learn how fertilization works by moving the animals around and using the land to feed the animals."

"A lot of our youth aren't used to seeing farms and more open spaces, like those that live in the city," said Boerke. "Coming to Logan, one of the things they have a lot of is open space and farms."

When it came time for dinner, employees from Jack's Wood Fired Oven, who had been at the Farmer's Market, visited Appenzell Farm and made dinner for the participants in a mobile brick oven.

All ingredients for the pizzas were local - flour from the largest organic mill in the country in Logan and sausage from Tooele. Participants were able to pick all of the ingredients - tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, basil, etc. - and watch as their individual pizzas were cooked in the oven using local apple wood as fuel.

Nick Brown, a first time participant at DYLW, said both the farm and the pizza business were "insane. Both of them have built and built little by little and made something awesome." Especially with Jack's Wood Fired Oven, Brown was impressed by how it began. "It was a hobby turned into a business."

"It was amazing for those who have never seen a brick oven," Pacheco said. "Other cultures use them all the time. It was a culture education to them."