Friday, March 21, 2014

What's for lunch?


Take a moment and think about what you are having for lunch today. Picture each ingredient. Now picture each of those ingredients in it’s rawest form. How many steps do you have to count backwards to turn today’s lunch into a plant or animal? Into a seed? Now think about what your kids are eating for lunch today.  If your kids are eating a school-prepared lunch, let’s follow that little meal back to it’s origins. From lunch tray to service line to kitchen. Stop. Look around the kitchen. Is it equipped for cooking and preparing raw foods? Or are the foods from this kitchen simply thawed-out and warmed-up? Do the mashed potatoes start their day in this kitchen as potatoes or as a box of powder? Is there any fruit or fresh veggies in the walk-in fridge? Depending on where your child goes to school, this virtual tour varies. Many of today’s school kitchens are ill-equipped for cooking. Budgets, time, skilled labor, and nutritional education have greatly influenced the landscape of school kitchens, not to mention tastes. Kids aren’t necessarily getting whole (minimally processed) foods at home, either. So even if it were offered at school, they would likely turn up a nose at the unfamiliar sweet potato or bell pepper. The Farm to School initiative, through Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day), along with a growing number of schools in the state, are working to change all of that; to develop food knowledge in the cafeteria, in the classroom, in the garden and at home.

In order for students to make informed decisions about what they eat, they need exposure. That means exposure to the heat and scent of decaying organic matter into compost; to the fields and barns filled with animals for meat and milk; to the warmth of greenhouses that protect over-wintered crops; to the rows upon rows of foods in their natural habitat - tomatoes on vines, beans in bushes, carrots hidden in the dirt like treasure. In order for our children to fully grasps what they are eating, they need to spend time on the farm, whether that farm requires a bus ride or a walk to the recess fields.

The Lothrop School in Pittsford is one school exposing students to food, in the cafeteria and out. Last year, with help from a Bowes grant, Laura MacLachlan started a composting system to reduce the amount of food in the school’s waste stream and a small garden to increase the amount of fresh food in the digestive stream. Now gearing up for a second season, we chatted about some of the great things happening at Lothrop around good food.

Laura is quick to point out that she has a lot of support, making integrating fresh food and gardening into education a little easier. The kitchen staff are into it; managed by the Abby Group, Lothrop’s chefs offer up taste tests of different veggie-rich recipes, allow students to take over the kitchen when it’s time to peel or chop or bake something from the garden, and are working to make meals guided by the New School Cuisine cookbook.  Teachers are into it; when a bounty of sweet potatoes were harvested last fall, lessons were developed around it - weighing, chopping, counting, graphing, and writing recipes. Even Phys Ed is into it; there are talks of creating an ‘edible track’ on campus, allowing students to snack on berries, carrots, kale, etc. while walking along the track as a pre-class warm-up.

RAFFL is currently working with Lothrop and other schools to develop a model of small buying clubs wherein community members can purchase fresh local produce at schools. Last fall, Lothrop set up a “farm store” distribution center for a number of local farms. Produce was dropped off, then counted, sorted, weighed, and readied for pick-up by faculty and families. 

Another off-campus asset for Laura is Foxcroft Farm Harvest Program. Through different programs, students develop life skills while exploring a working farm. Younger students spend time learning on the farm through the “Growing to Know” project and older students find opportunities with the “Growing to Work” project. One such opportunity presented itself when Laura needed raised beds built at Lothrop. Some “Growing to Work students built the beds, filled them with compost from the farm, and prepped them for planting. With these new beds, this year’s sweet potato harvest could be even greater.

As the growing season approaches, there are a couple of Farm to School events that I encourage any farmers, gardeners, and eaters big and small to attend:

ACORNs fifth annual Stone Soup Summit at Middlebury College Thursday, March 27. There will be TED-style talks, lots of interesting workshops, and a local food lunch. For more information, contact Lea Calderon-Guthe at  HYPERLINK "mailto:acftsn@acornvt.org" acftsn@acornvt.org

Lothrop School is hosting a Honeybee High Tea, which is a farm and field day celebrating the little pollinators the students have been studying all year, May 30th. Any farmers or gardeners interested in sharing their skills, please contact Laura MacLachlan at  HYPERLINK "mailto:lmaclachlan@rnesu.org" lmaclachlan@rnesu.org

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