(Courtesy of Camp Grow Torah) Imagine your child frolicking through a field of tomatoes on their way to daven Shacharit. Imagine them caring for chickens and collecting eggs while they learn about tza’ar baalei chaim, causing pain to animals. Imagine your child picking fresh flowers, crushing them up and boiling them to make a natural tie dye while practically learning about the melachot of Shabbat. These are some of the daily activities that campers enjoy at Camp GrowTorah, an immersive Torah farming experience.

For one week in August, GrowTorah runs a day camp at Cropsey Community Farm, where campers explore, play, create and learn on the farm’s 25 acres of land. Campers connect with the Torah in experiential lessons from the weekly parsha through farm chores, artistic expression and nature crafts. The educational mission of GrowTorah is anchored in four core values, around which all activities revolve: incubating emuna, environmental stewardship, compassion for creatures and tzedakah.

During the school year, GrowTorah manages educational Torah garden programs at many area day schools, including Barkai Yeshivah, Ben Porat Yosef, The Frisch School, Yeshivah of Flatbush, Gan Henel Early Learning Center, The Idea School, The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School, The Moriah School, SAR Academy, SAR High School, Yavneh Academy and Temple Sinai of Bergen County. For one week of the summer, the GrowTorah team shifts its focus to bring farming through Torah to the summer camp experience.

At camp, GrowTorah educators and counselors lead children, ages 5-10, through farming workshops, planting and harvesting, crop-sampling, tea-making, besamim-bundle-making, bug hunts, raw cooking activities, nature walks, arts and crafts and interactive organic agriculture education. Torah lessons are integrated into many of these activities, highlighting both inspiring halachic scenarios unique to the farm as well as everyday considerations.

At the end of the week, each junior farmer takes home their field journal, recipes, farming knowledge and a deeper understanding of where food comes from and how it gets to tables. The camp provides two healthy kosher snacks per day, one of which is made of fresh ingredients that campers harvest from the farm and prepare together. Campers leave with their own freshly harvested bouquet of flowers for Shabbat as well as a deep knowledge of the Jewish responsibility to care for Hashem’s earth.

Camp GrowTorah runs from August 19-23, at Cropsey Community Farm, in New City, New York. For more information, visit www.GrowTorah.org/Camp.