August 24-28, 2026 Blue Skye Farm & Forest Day Camp for ages 8-15 who are ready to cultivate, weed, harvest and sell produce all day for farm stand proceeds, with prerequisite of any prior camp with us. Instruction runs from 9:00-4:00 with drop off between 8:30-9:15, and pick-up between 3:45-4:30. Campers are grouped with others closest to their age within our hallmark 6-1 average student-teacher ratio that’s so critical for safe and profound outdoor experiences
Give your child the gift of the Blue Skye Farm & Forest Camp if they are eager to work with tools, the soil, water, people, plants and animals. This camp is best for kids who love service work and have an entrepreneurial spirit. This camp week is a perfect combination of our passions to teach students practical life skills, while keeping an eye on secrets of nature hidden on the edges of our homes, neighborhoods, and farms. Now more than ever, young people need these connections to nature, as well as skills for resiliency and healthy living to face whatever comes in the future. We feel that the farm and forest camp is perhaps greatest way to help students achieve these goals. Throughout the day, campers will work on our farm and surrounding forest lands, learning the full circle life from seed to market, rain collection to wetland mitigation, and compost to animal care.
Campers will also love the wild and woolly Clark’s Creek Park and its rare artesian springs, old growth trees, massive heron rookery, fish hatchery full of trout and salmon, and an old pioneer trolley route through the forest that connected Puyallup to Tacoma over a century ago. The surrounding neighborhood also includes our sister school Second Star Farm sporting all their animals and a wonderful forest school of their own for ages 3-7. Here at Blue Skye Farm, campers will help cultivate and harvest from our working vegetable gardens, productive heritage orchards, off-grid solar and rain garden systems, as well as the adjacent 10 acre stream restoration site our family helped preserve.
Blue Skye Farm & Forest Camp Itinerary (topics may vary based on instructor experience and camper interest)
- Create a farm stand to sell extra produce that we harvest and process (campers split farm stand proceeds!)
- Tour a neighboring farm to learn about cows, pigs, sheep, goats and more
- Meet and care for the chickens, bunnies and mealworms (the fertilizer producers!) of Blue Skye Farm
- Actively garden – prepare the soil, plant vegetable seeds, identify and remove (or eat!) weeds, water, prepare and apply natural fertilizer
- Harvest veggies, fruit and herbs and use them to make food, medicine and art
- Learn about rain collection
- Build a mini compost bin
- Design and implement a restoration project to enhance salmon, plant and wildlife habitat in the Clark’s Creek watershed
- Scavenger hunt to old growth trees in upper Clark’s Creek Park following the old Tacoma-Puyallup Trolley Route (founded by Ezra Meeker)
- Look at old maps and satellite images to understand the landscape we’re working with
- Identify insects (pollinators, invasives, beneficial predators, etc.) and explore the roles they play in the ecosystem
- Release native leaf-cutter bees and protect developing mason bees from predators
- Prepare a bed for mushrooms
- Create a plot for wetland restoration
- Measure forest canopy cover and learn about the importance of trees – protecting the land from temperature extremes and erosion, carbon sequestration, habitat, etc
- Make a nutrient dense bone broth with mirepoix
- Remove invasive species in an adjacent restoration area (including exploration, animal and bird surveys to see who is living in the area and may interact with the farm)
Daily Camp Schedule, Pick-Up & Drop-Off Directions
Meet at the Clark’s Creek Park – South Shelter, 1710 12th Ave SW, Puyallup WA 98371 located one mile west of the Puyallup Fairgrounds. The best arrival time is 8:45-9:00 am, and the best departure time is 3:45-4:00 pm.
8:30-9:00 Check-Ins & Morning Care (no early check-ins available)
9:00-9:15 Songs, Stories, Stretches & Late Check-Ins
9:15-11:45 Morning Lessons with snack break at 10:30
11:45-1:15 Lunch, Games & Creek Wading
1:15-3:45 Afternoon Lessons with snack break at 2:30
3:45-4:00 Best Pick-Up Time
4:00-4:30 Aftercare & Late Pick-Ups
Camp Leaders
Camp Director Kim Chisholm directs this week with staff instructors at our hallmark 6-1 average student-teacher ratio that’s critical for safe and profound outdoor experiences. Read our FAQ’s for more details and check out camp testimonials dating all the way back to 1997.
Day Camp Tuition in Puyallup/Tacoma
$495 is our full tuition rate in Puyallup including any applicable taxes and fees, and we operate on a sliding scale, turning no one away from being able to attend at least one week of camp due to financial reasons. Just email us and let us know how much you can contribute to the cost of camp, or to apply for financial aid from the Conservation College via the Max Davis Scholarship fund, click here and submit answers to their 8 simple questions. If your camper has physical disabilities that make other camps inaccessible, please call to discuss the accommodations we have available and register over the phone at literally any contribution level. To contribution to the Conservation College – Max Davis Scholarship fund, click here.
You will need to pack a healthy lunch, water and substantial snacks every day. Tuition includes t-shirt at your first camp with us, then in subsequent camps a choice of orienteering compass, recommended field guide, firesteel and other outdoor essentials depending on number of camps attended, age and availability.
Registration Options
STEP 1 – Reserve your spots in camp by making $100 deposit per camper per week (or $50 if requesting scholarship or reduced tuition) via one of the following methods:
• Zelle using our email address with that extra “e” on skye plus try to add a note including camper name/age, camp start date/theme, plus your CONTACT INFORMATION (phone number is fine if system doesn’t allow sharing email) if we don’t already have your info since Zelle doesn’t automatically share that with us;
• Or use Venmo to @Chris-Chisholm-13 or • CashApp to $wolfschool but again, try to add your contact information, camper name, program theme and dates, or follow up right away with that via email;
• Or use Credit Card or Apple Pay by clicking here;
• Or call us between 9am-9pm at 425-248-0253 ex 1 with a credit card to register over the phone;
• Or use PayPal system appearing below….
STEP 2 – If this is your camper’s first year with us, complete our once-in-a-lifetime Registration Form within one week of making your deposit, otherwise we will have to refund you and give your spot(s) to others. We’ll also email you Word/PDF versions of the registration form in case you’re having trouble downloading or making a copy of our Google Doc form which you can send or share back to our email address for review within one week to maintain your reservation. If your camper has attended Wolf Camp in the past, a new registration form is not needed, but we will may email a questionnaire for your camper to submit as application for this year.
STEP 3 – Pay balance before or during your summer camp weeks. We’ll email you an invoice this spring with camp prep info and balance payment options that can be done in advance or during your first camp week. All payments are non-refundable unless we refuse your registration. However, if you cancel (at any time for any reason is fine) we will save your payments as credit for you to use in future years, or you can choose to have us move the funds into our scholarship account if you prefer. The best practice is to make the minimum deposits to register, and then wait to pay the remaining balances during summer.
Refund Policy: Payments are not refundable unless we don’t accept your application. If you cancel for any reason, you may receive a full credit good through the following calendar year on appropriate and available programs listed on our schedule, although an additional deposit may be needed to secure your spot in the future program. If a program you sign up for is canceled and not rescheduled at a time you can attend, you may receive a full refund except in cases of natural (weather, geologic, wildfire, etc) disasters, grid failures, epidemics, government shutdowns, conflicts or curfews, or other unforeseen emergencies making it unsafe for staff and/or attendees to reach or use program locations, in which case all payments made will be held by us without expiration date for your future use in appropriate/available programs of your choice. Reasons include the expenditure of funds (property rentals, advertising, materials, admin staff time, etc.) long before programs take place, i.e. deposits make it feasible for Wolf Camp to schedule programs in the first place, but our mutually understood agreement is that Wolf Camp will run the program at the safest available time in the future. Finally, no refund, nor credit, is given if a participant is a no-show without prior notice, or asked to leave a program for inappropriateness as determined by our kids, youth and adult agreements for participation.
Day Camp Preparation: Agreements, Packing List, Health Protocols and FAQ’s
Day Camp Agreements for Participation
Hygiene protocols will remain the same as last year as long as there’s still little evidence of Covid/Cold/Flu transmission in the outdoors with room to spread out. To start each day, campers must pass our health screening. If there are reports of group participants who came in contact with an infection, we may provide n95 masks to wear when less than 3-6 feet from others. As before the pandemic, we require hand sanitizing when sharing tools and materials, before entering toilets, and we train campers with proper hand washing after campers exit toilet facilities with doors left open between uses to ensure ventilation.
Full vaccinations are strongly encouraged – we follow the scientific consensus – with tetanus shot (usually given as part of the normal Tdap vaccine series) considered the most important in the field of outdoor education. Otherwise, we know that due to our 100% outdoor setting, combined with health screenings, contact tracing, supervised hand washing, bathroom ventilation, mask use when exposure has been reported in a group, and individual/family style tenting at overnight camps, the risk of disease transmission has been negligible at Wolf Camp, so other vaccination records are not required.
Read our FAQ’s for more details and register asap to give yourself or a loved one the gift of camp! Or email us to be put on our our list for this program in the future. We always keep your information absolutely private, and will never share it.