Down on the Farm

For most children living in the nation’s capital, life on a farm is a foreign concept.

It’s a good thing, then, that Hard Bargain Farm, located along the Potomac River in Accokeek, Md., is just minutes from the Capital Beltway.

The working farm, which is owned and operated by the Alice Ferguson Foundation and sits just across the river from historic Mount Vernon, has been teaching students from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington about farm life and nature for nearly 29 years. (The farm was named by a previous owner, who purchased it in the 1800s after a great deal of wrangling with the seller.)

It costs about $400,000 a year to run the program, said Katherine Powell, executive director of the Alice Ferguson Foundation, which is located on the farm.

About 14,000 children — mostly elementary- and secondary-school students — visit the 350-acre farm each year, many for overnight stays. Their two-day visits are filled with educational activities, including milking cows, collecting breakfast scraps to feed to the pigs, and planting and harvesting crops. The children explore the riverbanks, swamps, and marshes, and they learn about pollution in the Potomac River.

They also take nature hikes and participate in physical exercises in which they must confront problems and obstacles by working together as a team and planning strategies to overcome the challenges. One such problem, for example, is how to get all the team members over a high wall without leaving the last person stranded. “Problem solving is just as important as some of the other things we teach,” says Eileen Watts, the director of operations.