Venice’s Learning Garden was temporarily transformed into a festival ground for the third annual Earth Day Festival of the Culinary Arts and Sustainable Agriculture Academy (CASAA) on April 19th.  The garden was covered with booths with delicious foods and drinks as well as booths for different farming techniques that CASAA members explained.

One booth in particular, the Vege Juice booth, had students creating mixtures of drinks with apples, peaches, oranges, and carrots in front of everyone. Different combinations produced unique tastes, colors, and smells.           

The Earth Day Festival is a service-learning project for the 120 students in CASAA and took them seven weeks to research the foods and farms. Everything was homemade and some dishes included produce from the garden.           

“I was in the kitchen from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” said Junior Lorraine Sanchez, who worked the veggie juice booth, “and for four hours straight I had to continuously open chick peas. After a while my arms started hurting.”

Students working in the farm booths explained the different ways of growing food and farming, for example aquaponics. Aquaponics is a new farming technique that is being used in the Learning Garden. Aquaponics uses fish, vegetables, and waste from fish to serve as nutrients to feed the plants. This way the plants grow faster, soil isn’t wasted, and the food tastes better, according to Ms. Tina Gruen, who coordinated the event and helped students with the research and building booths.

            Ms. Lisbeth Caiffa, a Culinary Institute of America (CIA) graduate, helped out by cooking the foods. She came two days in advance to begin prepping with the students. One problem the students faced was that one of the seven school kitchen stoves was out of service.              

“The biggest challenge I faced was cooking for 500 people, the lack of refrigeration, and lack of cooking appliances,” said Ms. Caiffa. With not a lot of time, “the students showed their senses of responsibility, that they were prepared, and got everything done within their required time.”

            "It couldn’t have been done without the two chefs Lisbeth Caiffa and Yannick Marshand, as well as volunteers Ari Meyres and Lydia Ponce,” said Ms. Gruen. "After all the hard work the students, chefs, and advisors put in, the event was a great success."