Fresh flatbread baked in a pizza oven. A banquet of soups and salads created by students, teachers, and families, many with ingredients sourced from school gardens. Turkey dinner with all the fixings. Some Vermont schools have been celebrating Harvest Dinners together for many years; others are just getting started. Each dinner is unique, as particular as the school and the community of which it is a part. Not only do Harvest Dinners bring families together for a delicious home (or school) cooked meal and lots of noise and fun. It is also one of the times during the school year when students welcome their families into their world at school - and this time to feed them! How cool is that?
This year the Farm to School team had the pleasure of participating in Harvest Dinners at schools in Windham Southeast, Windham Central, and Windham Northeast, and at Winston Prouty Early Learning Center. Scenes from the gatherings, as well as the hours of preparations from the students and teachers, are below.
There were over 170 people attending Oak Grove’s dinner this year, which is the largest turnout for this event since 2019. Some of the dishes prepared by Garden Coordinator Katrina Moore and her students with ingredients harvested from the new garden beds this year included: herbed butter, arugula salad, and fresh pasta with garden herbs.
This year Saxtons River celebrated a Harvest Dinner together for the first time, holding the dinner during the school day. Linda Kinney, the School Nutrition Site Manager, cooked up a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings - and Melissa Bacon, BFHS School Nutrition Site Manager, was able to help out, too. Parents joined their kids in the cafeteria, and even learned how to properly dispose of their waste in the compost bins and replace their reusable trays in a stack when they were done.
This year NewBrook Elementary again held a silent auction during their Harvest Dinner, with a table full of local crafts and products. They also included a scavenger hunt bingo game, with a tempting basket of really cool erasers as prizes. Another new addition this year was the team of Leland and Gray High School students serving soup!
This was Central Elementary’s second Harvest Dinner. Since the dinner was held in October and the weather was holding, families came prepared with picnic blankets and stayed a long while. Highlights were the full array of yummy soups prepared by the students and flatbread straight from the pizza oven. A new addition this year was planting daffodils in the school courtyard.
Winston Prouty celebrated their Harvest Dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. When Early Learning Center Director, Honor Woodrow, asked the children what they needed to set the table, one girl exclaimed: “We need spoons and healthy food!” The children helped make the macaroni and cheese from scratch, made wavy-cut vegetables for the stone soup, and set the tables. Everyone enjoyed a delicious meal and finished it off with banana bread.
