Homegrown Lunch
Farm Foods Fuel Snacks, Fundraisers, Learning

Author: Eve Pranis

Farm to school programs are win-win: kids learn about the source of their food and farmers get a local outlet for their produce!

“Trying to get the food service to incorporate new and healthier foods can be daunting – especially in a big district like ours,” says Clare Seguin, elementary science teacher at Lincoln School in Madison, WI. “They seem to think that they have to somehow trick students into eating the vegetables. But people underestimate kids’ culinary savvy.” She contends that when vegetables are really fresh, kids love them, and that it’s worth pushing the envelope. And Clare would know. It’s hard not to notice when your students devour raw daikon radishes and sweet potatoes!

Clare’s school is a pilot site in the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch (WHL) program. Started in 2001by a parent, WHL is now a collaboration between a local foods group (REAP) and the University of Wisconsin Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. Its goal is to links classrooms and school cafeterias with nearby farms and restaurants. This translates into opportunities for students to learn about the local food system and nutrition, and opportunities to create new markets for farmers.

Simple Farm Snacks
One of the projects “seemed too simple and obvious,” says Project Coordinator Doug Wubben. Once a week, all classrooms in one school would get locally grown carrots for snack. Still, took some finagling to make it happen because lunchroom staff didn’t have time to prepare the snacks. So a local food coop offered to cut and bag carrot “coins” for 20 classes, and a teacher agreed to pick them up. Says Clare, “The kids love it and never seem to get tired of them.” But Doug set his sites on getting a different snack each week and involving more schools. Now, farmers delivery organic cherry tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, and more to the district foodservice or to the coop for preparation. Once a week the items go out with the regular foodservice deliveries to four schools. Educators receive a newsletter called Snack Bites that highlights the featured snack and the farm it came from along with related activities and lessons.

The snack food costs are covered by a small grant and PTA funds, but Doug continues to look for ways to keep the farm-fresh snacks coming. This includes asking parents to contribute a small amount of money in lieu of sending in their own snacks. (The PTA could help cover the cost for low-income families.)

Local Farms Rule
“Our fourth graders have the dairy message reinforced often, but they should know that local farms produce much more,” says Doug. To that end, he has worked with farmers to develop on-farm activity stations that engage visiting students. Clare's class rotated through a series of such stations. They shucked beans, separated and planted garlic, spread cover crop seeds, dug and tasted carrots, and "fed" compost piles. They even went to the spring, where the farmer talked about preserving safe groundwater by using organic growing techniques. “One time, we actually prepared lunch using foods that had been raised on the farm,” says Clare. “Those experiences really stuck with the kids.”

Classroom Activities Reinforce Fresh Local Food Mantra
Some Wisconsin farmers also go into the schools and work with students on simple interactive activities they developed. One memory games uses a set of cards for each season that depicts vegetables kids can eat at that time. A “harvest vegetable” activity invites students to feel and observe cards with real vegetable seeds and images of the full-grown produce. “Someone always wonders why one of the cards has chunks of potatoes in place of seeds,” says Doug.

Clare’s students took on related activities: tasting and comparing heirloom tomatoes or different apple varieties, and making vegetable wraps in preparation for a pilot “homegrown lunch.” Every spring, each student gets a cherry tomato seedling to nurture. He or she works to keep it thriving at home over the summer and returns in the fall “with great stories and bowls full of cherry tomatoes to share,” says Clare.

After each classroom activity, a letter goes home with students explaining what they did in class. Accompanying worksheets get parents and kids working together as scientists; they might compare food tastes, textures, and other qualities. When they reach middle school, some students in the district get to dig even deeper by opting for a “healthy snacking” class or chef-in-the-classroom program.

Farm to Cafeteria: Tackling Challenges
Doug and his colleagues have encountered plenty of bumps along the way as they’ve tried to bring their vision to reality. Important steps in the process, he advises, are building relationships and understanding what barriers exist. “Initially, we sat down with school foodservice people in the district and shared some of the current statistics on childhood nutrition and obesity,” says Doug. “We explained that we’re aware of the issues and have explored successes of other farm-to-school programs. Then we shared some of the kinds of things we’d like to get going.”

He describes one of the biggest hurdles his group is working to overcome: “Our school district has a central kitchen that prepares and packs up to 15,000 meals a day for 47 schools. And they don’t have time for a lot of food preparation.” With that in mind, he’s sought ways to get local food to the kitchen in forms that are easier to use.The food coop partnership has been the most fruitful one. When the food service agreed to test some new menu items, such as chili and sweet potato/carrot muffins, the coop kitchen shredded, cut, and mashed the vegetables. Doug "brokered" that venture, but the foodservice and coop now negotiate directly with each other.

“We need to feed kids’ bodies well in order to effectively feed their minds,” says Doug. “Schools are well aware of this as evidenced by the healthy snacks offered to students on testing days. Everyone’s aware of the problem, and solutions exist; our job is to help create the local and political will to work on making changes.”

Locally Flavored Fundraisers
According to Doug, it’s important to work on more than one school food front. After all, the lunchroom is just one of the places where children and food meet. To that end, he joined with a parent group to offer a fresh take on an entrenched ritual: school fundraisers. “Our ‘homegrown holiday’ fundraiser was a refreshing alternative to those that are outlets for unhealthy foods and other items parents feel pressured to buy.” The gift items included a winter vegetable box; a "bee box" featuring honey, candles, and honey sticks; cheeses; chocolate-covered cranberries; dried cherries; popcorn; and other products from local farms and businesses. After paying wholesale prices to the farmers and craftspeople, the school cleared a whopping $2,400 from this pre-holiday sale. Other schools in the system have followed suit, investing part of the proceeds in farm to school projects.

To learn more about Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch, visit the REAP Web site.

 

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