\u201cMost schools confiscate knives. … At our school we pass them out \u2014 even to the kindergarteners!\u201d is the title Sean Nielson gave his Facebook album of photos from the moose butchering that recently took place at Gustavus School.<\/p>\n
All the kids, K-12, were involved with the butchering and processing and yes, there were knives, kept sharp by community volunteers who also taught the children about knife sharpening and safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great,\u201d said Principal Ann Hilburn. \u201cNo accidents, no one cut themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, there was full day of hands-on learning. The school set up various stations from butchering to grinding to packaging and students found their niche and set to work.<\/p>\n
Local artist Kathy Hocker was there to teach the kids nature journaling, and science teacher Eric Hart led them in dissecting the moose\u2019s heart, brain and eyeballs.<\/p>\n
The event was brought about by Jessie Soder, the school\u2019s 4th and 5th grade teacher, and aide Karen Platt. For the past couple of years, they\u2019ve been leading the charge for local foods. This is the second year of moose butchering. They\u2019ve also added a school garden and taken the kids fishing, and taught them how to prepare and preserve the fish.<\/p>\n
Some of the first crops from the school garden will go toward making moose stew to share with all the community members who helped out with the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like our community really like goes above and beyond,\u201d said Soder. \u201cOur community does everything for the kids. It\u2019s all for the kids and they\u2019re always looking for ways to help the kids. We have a great volunteer force in Gustavus.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s sentiment Hilburn echoed, saying: \u201cSomething on that big of a scale for our students … we couldn\u2019t have done it without the community help.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of the meat will be distributed through other community events and through Gustavus\u2019 Secret Santa program.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinding a way for the kids to give back and give back in a really meaningful appreciated way, like providing this moose for people that need it, I think is my favorite part of the whole thing,\u201d Soder said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMost schools confiscate knives. … At our school we pass them out \u2014 even to the kindergarteners!\u201d is the title Sean Nielson gave his Facebook album of photos from the moose butchering that recently took place at Gustavus School. All the kids, K-12, were involved with the butchering and processing and yes, there were knives, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":11778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11777"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}