Field Trips
Fostering a sense of connection between children, community, and planet through first-hand farm experiences
Our Grown in San Juan field trips serve as a collaborative opportunity to come and safely explore our eco-agricultural oasis. We invite your group for an in-depth, hands-on experience of meaningful work on our 28-acre Regenerative Organic Certified™ farm, and an opportunity to look through our agroecological model which aims at fostering a thriving, healthy, resilient, and interdependent community.
During our field trips, participants walk in the footsteps of our designers, farmers, cultivators, seed savers, and chefs, partaking of the natural beauty and collective labor of a thoughtfully cultivated ecosystem nestled in a rich, fertile watershed only a mile from the Pacific Ocean.
Every field trip is shaped around your group’s goals – which we define together during a brief intake call.
Who We Host
All ages. All stages.
Early Childhood & Elementary
Multi-sensory exploration crafted for small hands and big curiosity. Flower-field rambles, seed stories, smells of herbs, tastes of the orchards, and gentle introductions to the creatures that call the farm home.
Grade School & Middle School
In-depth, hands-on farm experiences aligned with our Grow–Eat–Make–Peace ethos. Students walk alongside our farmers and chefs to plant, harvest, prepare, taste, and steward a living ecosystem.
High School, University, & Mission-Driven Groups
An incubator for systems thinking. We collaborate on service projects, design challenges, and regenerative agriculture studies that connect classroom concepts to real-world abundance.
Homeschool Pods, Clubs & Youth Groups
Curated context and custom pacing for mixed-age cohorts and their supporting adults.
Corporate & Professional Groups
Looking for a team experience? Contact [email protected] for corporate programming.
The Experience
Educational standards through a farm lens
Farm visits are screen-free and center on sensory participation around farming, food traditions, nature-based crafting, wellness, and the roles we all play in a local ecosystem.
Think of the farm as a lens through which any topic can be explored – from food to ecology, culture and relationships, biology, history, social equity, and the systems that bind them together.
The land meets your group exactly where you are, and grows the conversation from there.
A typical Grown in San Juan field trip may include:
- A land acknowledgement and orientation in time and place
- A tour through our village spaces, including our historic Farm House
- A guided farm walk tailored to your group’s age and focus
- Picking a fully ripened and in-season sample of our produce; observing, tasting, and discussing
- Hands-on, meaningful work (planting, harvesting, culinary preparation, composting, seed saving)
- Time for observation, wonder, reflection, and exploration
- A take-home seed activity to extend the conversation past departure
Returning groups scaffold on their experiences, learning and remembering on an ascending spiral. Advanced partners dive deep into conversations connecting agriculture and watershed health, conscious consumerism, ethics, and sustainability versus regeneration.
How It Works
We keep booking simple, but we invest in getting to know you upfront so that the day itself runs seamlessly.
1. Submit a Detailed Inquiry
Our inquiry form takes about 3 minutes to complete. It covers your group size, preferred timing, existing eco-literacy level, and what you hope to experience. This helps us customize your day before we even talk. We’ll reply with additional details and pricing.
2. Pre-Visit Collaboration
Schedule yourself and your stakeholders for a 20–25 minute video call (or in-person visit) so that we can align learning goals, logistics, billing, and answer program questions in one conversation.
3. Prepare for Your Visit
Before your trip you’ll receive reflective prompts, logistical details, and activities to prime your group for the farm.
4. Field Trip Day
Arrive ready to explore, work, taste, and connect.
5. Continue the Journey
Stay connected through invitations to our events, pop-ups and dinners, and special educator-oriented development meetups.
Planning Your Visit
Ages: All ages welcome.
Timing: Field Trips begin no earlier than 9am and end no later than 3pm. Arrival time is flexible.
Duration: 90 minutes to 4 hours, depending on group goals. A typical Grown in San Juan Field Trip runs about 2 hours.
Location: The Ecology Center, San Juan Capistrano, CA
Group Size: We can accommodate groups of 100+ participants, plus chaperones/staff. Groups well over the 100-person mark are split into a multi-day series.
Parking: Free street parking supplements our no cost on-site parking lot for passenger vehicles; our lot can hold multiple buses.
Chaperones: We do not enforce a ratio of chaperones to participants. You know your group needs best and we trust your judgement.
Accessibility: Our site is flat with mixed surfaces: gravel, decomposed granite, and varied soils. It is suitable for walking and wheelchair use, though certain areas of the farm can become muddy or inaccessible depending on weather. We have two single-occupant all-gender restrooms, plus a third which is ADA accessible.
Meal Options:
- Bring Your Own – Picnic in one of our Community Table spaces
- Make Your Own – Elect chaperones to purchase and use ingredients from our Farm Stand to prepare a simple, farm-fresh, zero-waste meal with your group.
- Hosted Meal – Request a quote from our Private Events team for a fully catered experience
Partnership Pathway
The trip is just the beginning
Many of our field trip partners start with a single visit and grow into year-after-year and season-after-season relationships. For groups ready to deepen their impact, we offer pathways beyond the visit:
- Host a staff development day on the farm for your leaders, teachers, and administrators
- Explore campus garden design informed by permaculture principles
- Visit our replication sites and collaborate with us on bringing food production to your site
- Build regenerative supply chains for cafeterias and food programs
