Curious City Launches Ypsi Urban Farm School!

EDIT TO ADD: Oh my goodness we are FLOORED with the support we are receiving. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now that we see the community we have helping us get back on our feet, we have increased our goal. These donations are helping us keep registration costs low and a sliding scale for the homeschool families, hire the most amazing mom to help us with UFS, and support Omar and me as we regroup after a few months of underemployment (as self-employed people, we were under-employed in exchange for being able to do work on our own house in preparation to sell -- this would have been a better return on investment had things gone as planned. Unfortunately, they did not, and left us in a state of depleting our small savings.).

So thank you for being here, for reading, caring, and supporting us. Either with a donation or by sharing our gofundme, you are making all the difference to all the Curious City families!!

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Hello from Monica, Omar, Naomi, and Quinn!

We are the family behind Curious City, our little homestead, and we are launching Urban Farm School right here on our 1/4 yard in the city of Ypsilanti!

We are unschoolers, which means we let a lot of curiosity be the guide and driving force behind what we pursue and learn as a homeschool family. That makes our little corner up the hill from Depot Town what we affectionately call Curious City!

In 2022 we opened "Farm School" at The Community Farm in Chelsea, Michigan. It was a huge success! Kids dragged their parents to the farm from Grass Lake, Pinckney, Tecumseh, Ypsi, Ann Arbor and Detroit. We gathered, planted, munched, fed the goats, gathered seeds, sang songs, and so much more!

Our family had been commuting from Ypsilanti to Chelsea because we had been offered a 2 acre plot adjacent to the farm to purchase. We were building Farm School in anticipation of moving to the neighboring land in 2023 where we could continue to put our hearts and sweat into the farm and share it with all the homeschool families that wanted to join.

Unfortunately, in December 2022, after months of planning with the previous owner of the land for our move there, including her official acceptance of our offer to purchase it, we were called with the news that she sold it to someone else for cash instead. We were devastated to say the least.

We grieved the broken trust. We grieved the neighor horses we wouldn't be able to visit. We grieved the evergreen grove where the kids would have made forts. We grieved Farm School.

And then one day we woke up from the grief and something seemed suddenly clear. Here we sat in our cute little Ypsi house, on a quarter acre, with a big garden Monica had dreamed of doubling or tripling in size. With medicinals, perennials, fruit trees, and herbs waiting for spring to share with us again. With incredible neighbors we loved to spend time with outdoors.

Farm School was going urban, we were relaunching it right here in Ypsilanti!

We will tap maple trees and boil syrup.

We will build a hutch and adopt bunnies!

We will build a green house!!

We will restart our worm composting,

We will fill a verticle tower with strawberries yummmm,

We will make pizza dough, tomato sauce, salsas and pies,

We will plant, hammer, build, paint, pick, sing, animal rear, and farm school right here!

We announced Urban Farm School in early January, and have kids and their families already signing up!! Our family is getting that excited spring tingle in our ribs.

But when the kids arrive, will we be ready?

We hope with your help we will be!

We created a list of things we need to set the kids up for success. Your donations help us keep registration costs sliding scale and affordable, especially for big families. We need:

Maple tapping spiles and buckets

Sap boiling restaurant trays or steam trays

Cinder blocks for the boiling set up

Top soil and manure for the extension of our big garden

Small saws

Hammers and hardware for small hands doing big projects

Hinges for the bunny hutch and green house

Cement to make a slab for the greenhouse

Hardware cloth to keep the bunnies safe

Hay and pellets for the bunnies (who's poo will feed our garden!)

Red wiggler worms for our vermi-compost

Straw to keep our soil covered

Wood for the greenhouse so the kids can start our own seeds!

Drip line irrigation (there is a lot of watering to do, and farm school is currently scheduled just 2 of the 7 days a week :)

Garden spades in abundance for all the little hands

Extra shovels, rakes, and pitch forks

Bamboo stakes and jute for trellising climbing plants

Garden hoops and agrifabric for growing season extension

Shelving, hooks, and storage containers to organize the shed to fit all this stuff!

Kids playing signs for the road

A berkey water filter to increase the available clean water to the big group

This supply list will probably be ever growing, but the above is a heck of a good start. Each penny of your donation will go towards these items, as much from the thrift store as possible!

Thank you so much for helping our Curious City homesteading family make Urban Farm School a glorious curious unschool homeschool dream come true. Like parenting, farming, and all things in life, we can not do this alone!!

Hugs and curiousity,

Monica, Omar, Naomi, and Quinn