By Jenny Kessler

On November 9th, after two long years with very limited community events due to COVID-19, Newbrook Elementary School hosted its first Harvest Dinner since 2019. This was a beautiful event, showcasing student-made art, donations from the community, soups cooked by students, staff, and community members, a shared meal, and a successful fundraising effort for the Farm to School program. It also started with a beautiful land acknowledgment led by students. 

The Harvest Dinner serves as a gathering and celebration of the Newbrook community. Families are invited to view their children’s artwork displayed around the cafeteria. As families entered the cafeteria, apples and Grafton Cheese cheddar were available for snacking.

After a few minutes of mingling, families were ushered outside to witness an amazing lantern installation. Students had worked with artist-in-residence Erin Maile O'Keefe, to make lanterns that lit up the night sky. They had also worked with her in previous weeks to observe the world around them, to “explore how they connect to the land,” even the tiniest details in nature, and then made sculptures of objects and insects based on those observations. There was flatbread, cooked in the woodfired oven, and pesto made by students during their Farm to School lessons (using pesto and garlic they grew, of course). 

Second and third graders then led a land acknowledgment, where they read snippets of words they had written about observations on the land. This was a unique and memorable experience for everyone. As Erin stated, this was an “invitation to come into a deeper relationship with this land.” Listening to students' musings on and gratitude for the land was moving as they shared phrases such as:

“The forest is peaceful.”

“The moon is full and white.”

"The wind is cold, powerful, and full of leaves."

"The river is blue, and it sounds like shhh."

"Birds make nests in the trees, lay eggs and talk to friends."

After this ceremony, families moved back inside and helped themselves to a wide variety of homemade soups, from turkey chili to Thai curry to miso butternut bisque to Principal Scotty Tabachnick’s famous chicken noodle! Local businesses (The Newfane Store and Riverbend Market) donated pots of soup. Each class also cooked a soup for the event as well. One parent, Dani Brown, asked her daughter, “How does this soup taste so good?” “It’s the vegetables!” three 1st graders exclaimed at once. They had all helped prepare the soup, so they knew!

While families shared a meal, there was also a silent auction where people could bid on a wide variety of goods, from gift certificates to local restaurants, gifts from local shops, home decor items, and more. There were also raffle tickets available for a 50/50 raffle.

In the end, over $650 was raised for the Farm to School program! These essential funds will go to purchasing supplies and ingredients, as well as materials for the garden. While organizing an event of this measure was a huge community effort, the results—families smiling and eating homemade soups together as a school and funds raised to support this program—were well worth it. 

Newbrook Farm to School would like to thank all the local businesses who supported this event, including Stratton Resort, Fat Crow, WW Building Supply, Green Mountain Wine Shop, Big Picture Farm, Hannafords, Brattleboro Food Coop, Dutton Farm Stand, Zpots, Grafton Cheese, Stone Arch Apiaries, Turn It Up!, Better Wheel Workshops, and Food Connects.