Reinvigorating Farm to School at Oak Grove School

Gathering on the shores of Lake Champlain for three glorious days at the end of June, dedicated members of Oak Grove School’s Farm to School (FTS) Team immersed themselves in learning and planning their next steps towards strengthening their FTS program. The Oak Grove team is participating in the Northeast Farm to School Insititute (NEFTSI) this year. The June retreat began a year-long professional learning opportunity to strengthen FTS programming at the school. Now in its 12th year, NEFTSI is a tremendous resource for schools looking to increase the capacity of farm, food, and nutrition education to impact lasting change in classrooms, cafeterias, and the community.

FTS teams comprised of educators, food service professionals, administrators, and community members from 10 different schools and school districts in Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New York, and Nebraska were in attendance at NEFTSI this year. With such a diverse group of participants, there were many opportunities to cross-pollinate ideas among rural and urban schools serving pre-K through 12th-grade students. 

The NEFTSI agenda featured a mix of inspiring speakers, hands-on learning opportunities, and focused work time with the support of a coach to set achievable goals for the upcoming year. Participants were nourished by delicious meals made from recipes in the New School Cuisine Cookbook and featuring local, seasonal produce throughout the institute. Workshop topics ranged from “Bringing the Food System Alive in the Garden and Compost” to “Farm to School in the Classroom Through an Equity Lens,” giving participants multiple opportunities to engage in hands-on learning with topics of their choosing.

Oak Grove School has had an FTS program for over 15 years. Their garden program has taken a big step forward in recent years by adding a part-time garden coordinator, Tara Gordon. Recent changes to the garden include moving the primary garden beds to a more central location and adding several pollinator gardens and other plantings to their Living Schoolyard. 

At NEFTSI, the team began by crafting a values statement to guide their work and explicitly communicate their values to the greater community. After reviewing some sample values statements by other FTS teams and doing some group brainstorming, the team quickly agreed on the following statement:

“ Farm to School at Oak Grove School values growth, nourishment, and empowerment through hands-on experiences with food in the garden, classroom, cafeteria, and community.”

Next, the team moved on to goal-setting. Oak Grove’s FTS program had a few setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of which was that the school-wide harvest dinner was canceled for two years, and it is unknown whether it will return in 2022. This annual harvest celebration allowed the entire school community to engage in gardening and cooking together. The loss of that school-wide activity has impacted full school participation in the FTS program. On the other hand, the pandemic has motivated some classrooms to spend even more time outdoors in the school garden than they did before the pandemic. Currently, about ½ of the faculty at Oak Grove actively engage with their students in FTS activities regularly throughout the school year. One of the goals set by the team at the Institute is to increase classroom participation in FTS back up to 100%. 

With no guarantee that the harvest dinner would come back this year, the team had to think creatively about other ways to encourage classroom participation in FTS activities. The team plans to kick off this goal by hosting a garden party for school staff before the start of the school year to encourage staff who don’t usually visit the garden to step outside and eat a delicious lunch together. A simple garden map will be created before the garden party to help teachers know what is growing in the garden and where to find it. Tara hopes to partner with a classroom to engage students in making a more detailed garden map as a special project this year. 

Plans are also in the works to develop a menu of creative and easy-to-use FTS lessons and activities for teachers who are not inclined to garden or cook with students and to help teachers connect these lessons to things already happening in their curriculum. Tara is available to work with all classrooms, and Principal Mary Kauffman will use the existing system of grade level accountability partners to encourage teachers to check in with a peer once a month about this school-wide goal of engaging with the school’s FTS program at least once during the school year.

That’s just one of the five goals set by the team to work on this year. Here’s a snapshot of the other four goals:

• Increase student participation and reduce food waste in the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program

• Bring back monthly Harvest of the Month taste tests 

• Increase family engagement in FTS throughout the whole year (including summer)

• Increase communication about FTS to families & staff

Freshly inspired, this team is ready to continue transforming their school culture to offer more and more opportunities for hands-on learning with farm, food, and nutrition education, and we can’t wait to see the fruits of their hard work emerge throughout the year!

An Inspiring Year at Central Elementary School

Central Elementary School (CES) recently closed out a phenomenal year of Farm to School (FTS) programming, wrapping up 12 months of work dedicated to advancing food education at the Bellows Falls area school.

Selected as a participant school for the 2021-2022 Shelburne Farms Northeast Farm to School Institute, CES won a $5000 grant to jumpstart their FTS programming. While the school already had a garden and dedicated food service staff, the funding and coaching provided by the Institute helped to formalize the FTS program and integrate it more fully into the school culture and environment.

A thriving Farm to School program usually involves three key components: the classroom, the cafeteria, and the community. Often, it takes years for a school to be active in these areas, but Central’s team has grown its program from the beginning and has a comprehensive program that reaches into each of these areas.

In the classroom, Farm to School came alive in the 2nd-grade classrooms. Teachers Kate Kane and Judy Verespy worked closely with librarian Jody Hauser to devise monthly programming that included everything from art projects and read-alouds to food preparation and tastings.  

In October, students harvested carrots from the garden, painted carrots with watercolors, and made informational posters about carrots before teaching other classrooms what they’d learned. Food Service Director/Garden Coordinator Erica Frank baked delicious carrot muffins for the entire school. In January, students painted with beet juice and made beet hummus in the classroom. Erica, again tying in the cafeteria, made nutritious and delicious beet brownies for the school food program.  

The third “C” of successful FTS programs is community, and Central Elementary was able to connect with its community in impressive and innovative ways. In March, when the Harvest of the Month was maple syrup, the students visited a neighborhood home that ran a sugaring operation!  They also tasted some “sugar on snow” made by a local (teacher’s!) family. In the spring, local farmers John and Teresa Janiszyn of Pete’s Farm Stand in Walpole, NH, visited the classroom. The farmers taught students about soil and composting, and students planted cucumber seeds. Weeks later, they transplanted these same cucumbers into the fields at Pete’s! What an amazing circular connection between students and the farmers in their communities. It has been a mutually beneficial relationship between the community and Central Elementary this school year, with each gaining and giving benefits to the other. The Rotary Club of Bellows Falls came to help with a Garden Volunteer Day and donated garden supplies. Students received gift cards to buy something at Pete’s, funded by the FTS budget.  

Central’s story is one of success, but it’s only the beginning of their journey, and it has been possible through many dedicated staff members and community support. The Institute helped the team shape an action plan for their program. Principal Kerry Kenedy has supported FTS from the beginning and plans to integrate the program more deeply into the school culture over the years. One step in this process is that next year, the third grade will join the second grade in receiving monthly programming. Physical Education teacher Peter Lawry was integral in planning, building, and maintaining the garden. And Erica Frank has worked to connect the summer school program to the FTS activities throughout the summer.

If you’re curious about all the amazing things Central has been up to, please check out the inspiring book Librarian Jody Hauser made with the students. 

Farm and Field Day Returns to NewBrook Elementary School!

After a break forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, NewBrook Elementary School was able to host Farm and Field Day for the first time since 2019. The entire student body took a break from academics to spend an afternoon outdoors learning about food, recycling, and the natural environment.  

A multitude of community volunteers came out to run “stations”—where groups of students rotated through. The Windham County Game Warden, Dave Taddei, had a table full of pelts for students to explore and learn about. Giant Journey Farm brought adult rabbits and kits. Meadows Bee Farm had a faux milking station and taught students about June’s Harvest of the Month dairy. Food Connects made strawberry banana “nice cream” (sweetened only with fruit), and students assembled and ate their own pizzas, cooked by a West River Community Project volunteer. Amy Duffy, the school’s Farm to School Coordinator, made herbal salt scrubs with students. And the team from Windham Solid Waste ran a recycling relay! Art teacher Suzanne Paugh engaged students in making a mural for the garden shed out of recycled plastic!

Parents Elizabeth Erickson and Sara Webb, working with NewBrook’s Farm to School Committee, led the efforts to organize the event. Heather Sperling, the school’s wood-fired pizza expert and Farm to School veteran, and Amy Duffy, the school’s FTS Coordinator, were also central to the effort. Thank you so much to all the community members and families who volunteered to help with this event. Principal Scotty Tabachnick said, “it was just beautiful to see everyone outside, enjoying the day as a community again. We’re so thankful to everyone who supports our school.”

It was a wonderful day for all, and NewBrook Elementary School looks forward to hosting more events for students and families.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Mini-Grants Support FTS Programming in Area Schools

Several area schools, including Academy School, Towsend Elementary, and Newbrook Elementary, were awarded grants by the Windham County Community Advisory Board of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont. This is a volunteer board of dedicated Windham County residents who are local champions of healthy activity and programming of all kinds. Several proposals were submitted for this round of funding to strengthen Farm to School (FTS) programming, and Food Connects is thrilled to celebrate this vital support for FTS-related wellness projects in some of our member schools!

At Academy School, 4th-6th grade classes are excited to receive funding to purchase a grow lab and humidity tent that they will use to grow plants for their garden beds. The grow lab will provide approximately 180 students the opportunity to become more involved in starting seeds in their classrooms. The seedlings grown will stock their school garden beds with vegetables, herbs, and flowers that can be used for cooking activities in their classrooms.

Townshend Elementary School launched a brand new FTS program in March. This grant will provide vital funding for purchasing ingredients and materials for Harvest of the Month taste tests and seed money for starting a small garden at the school. Taste tests are being given in each school classroom, reaching all 110 students. Students enjoyed the first Harvest of the Month activity in March, which focused on maple syrup. Teachers have already utilized funds from the grant to purchase a variety of whole grains for students to see, touch, and make art with, as well as some whole-grain bread and plain, refined flour white bread for April’s taste test. Garden planning is underway!

Just down the road at Newbrook Elementary School, the grant will fund multiple FTS-related projects. A woodfired pizza oven is central to Newbrook’s school culture and FTS program. This grant will fund the purchase of firewood to fuel the oven for six months and ingredients for pizza dough and sauce. The FTS team is also building two new raised beds next to the pizza oven so that students will be able to enjoy or work in the garden during recess time, if they choose, and will be able to harvest herbs and pizza toppings moments before their pie goes in the oven! The remainder of the grant will be used to restock the school’s cooking cart so that Amy Duffy, the school’s Garden Coordinator and FTS Educator, can continue to cook with students during her weekly visits to each classroom.

Many thanks to the Windham County Community Advisory Board of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont for supplying these grants and providing essential funding for activities and green spaces at our local schools.

Food Justice Ideas for Teaching about Dairy, the June Harvest of the Month

Next month’s Harvest of the Month is dairy.  Learning about dairy in Vermont provides an opportunity not only to sample delicious offerings like Vermont cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, to talk about beautiful cows and our pastoral Vermont landscape, but also to engage in rich discussions with students about food justice, economic justice, human rights, and Vermont’s dairy farming industry.

Vermont is fortunate to have strong advocates for our many migrant workers in the dairy industry. Migrant Justice, Vermont’s worker-led farmworker rights organization, leads this effort.  After many years of laying the groundwork, in 2017, Ben & Jerry’s became the first business to join Milk with Dignity, a worker-driven model for social responsibility in the dairy industry.  Currently, Migrant Justice is working hard to encourage Hannafords to be the next large New England-based business to join Milk With Dignity, and local activists participated in a day of action at the Hannafords on Putney Road in Brattleboro earlier this month.

If you would like more information, lesson plans, and resources for working with students to learn about the complex and important issues surrounding dairy farming in our region, here are a few resources to get you started. 

Townshend Elementary School Launches Farm to School Program

This March, Townshend Elementary School launched its Farm to School Program, opening with a maple syrup tasting event to celebrate the Harvest of the Month. 

During the last week of March, physical education teacher Carla West shared facts about the maple syrup harvest in Vermont. On Friday, March 25th, there was a taste test session in each classroom. Teachers Kelsey Taddei and Kathy Gatto-Gurney lead the effort with support from Food Connects staff Jenny Kessler. They asked students to share what they had learned or already knew about maple syrup. Not surprisingly, there were many experts in the house! At least half of each class had either made maple syrup themselves or had visited a friend or family member who makes it. And it was clear that Ms. West’s teaching had stuck—many students in each class told us right away that it takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make just 1 gallon of syrup!

Discussing that fact (and the related time and energy required to make real maple syrup) helped students understand why someone had the idea to make imitation syrup out of corn syrup. But could imitation syrup taste like the real thing? Pre-K through 5th-grade students did a blind taste test of Vermont maple syrup and imitation syrup made with corn syrup. They were asked to choose which syrup they preferred and guess which syrup was “from the tree.”

Not surprisingly, most Townshend students could tell right away which was the real thing. “This one tastes like chemicals,” said 4th grader Seamus Crockett. His classmate Stella Cleveland agreed. “This one tastes buttery and sweeter, and chemically. You can taste it in the aftertaste”. Daniel Sullivan knew it too, “This one tastes like butter. Butter taste comes from store-bought; it doesn’t come from a tree.”

These comments were echoed throughout the school. Students also looked at the ingredients in each product and discussed differences like distance traveled to the store and homes and the reasons for different price points of each syrup.

Students also tasted fresh sap that had been collected that morning. Most students were less familiar with the sap, and it helped them understand the 40:1 ratio a little more concretely.

Both students and teachers are looking forward to monthly taste tests and more Farm to School events in the future. The school would like to thank Ms. West’s family for the generous syrup donations. 

Celebrating the Harvest at Winston Prouty’s Early Learning Center

Vermont’s Harvest of the Month program debuted this year at Winston Prouty’s Early Learning Center. Thanks to a dynamic, newly formed Farm to School team that is currently enrolled in the Northeast Farm to School Institute, it’s been a wonderful success! From kale to sweet potatoes to beets, all students from 6 weeks through 5 years of age are getting repeated exposure to healthy, Vermont grown produce which supports our local farms and encourages students to develop lifelong healthy eating habits.

At Winston Prouty, the snack menu repeats weekly for a month and Harvest of the Month has been incorporated into that monthly menu. This allows students to have repeated exposure to new foods. By the end of the month, they have encountered the food at least four times, likely watching adults and other children eat and enjoy it. Many foods are repeated over several months, further building familiarity. Some creative snacks this year included sweet pepper and kale quesadillas, sweet potato and apple mash, and beet hummus!

Participating in the Vermont Harvest of the Month has been a great opportunity for children to explore locally grown vegetables, not just through the snack program, but in classroom activities as well. Teachers set up stations to explore raw vegetables through their five senses and talk about what they notice about color, shape, smell, size, texture, etc. Students have also helped with cooking projects, strengthening fine motor skills by washing, peeling, chopping, mashing, and mixing. Harvest of the Month also gets featured in literacy through reading aloud and in hands-on art activities where children are encouraged to draw what they see, draw directly on the vegetable, or use the vegetable itself as a paintbrush! 

During all these activities, as children wait their turn, work in close proximity to others, share common tools, and express what they liked and did not like (especially when it comes to particular textures), they practice their social-emotional skills.

Harvest of the Month continues in many of our local elementary schools, so Winston Prouty is building a foundation for their students that will carry forward into elementary school.     

"Sweet" Taste Tests at Academy School

Students at Academy School in Brattleboro enjoyed diverse taste tests of sweet potatoes, the Vermont Harvest of the Month for November, thanks to Academy’s garden coordinator, Kathy Cassin. Taste tests look different this fall because of meal program changes due to COVID-19. 

Currently, Academy’s Food Service Professionals are preparing unitized meals for students at multiple schools in the district and they do not have the capacity to prepare taste tests from the cafeteria for Academy School students as they normally would. Kathy was able to find a creative solution to this problem. Meeting with small groups of students, mostly outside in the school’s gardens and outdoor classrooms, each of which has its own fire pit for cooking, Kathy made roasted sweet potatoes over the fire with several groups of students. She also baked sweet potato cookies at home and brought them in to share with students (a big hit!), and she made sweet potato hummus which she served to students with sweet potato crackers and chips purchased at the Brattleboro Food Coop.

Later this month, she will support the kindergarten class with their annual stone soup celebration, and they plan to add sweet potatoes to the soup. Kathy is spreading the word about sweet potatoes to families via recipes and fun facts in the school newsletter, and sharing photos of her cooking and taste tests with students on the school garden Facebook page.  

Lessons Learned from Two Food Connects Learning Journeys

This past summer, Food Connects accompanied two Farm to School teams to the Northeast Farm to School Institute (NEFTSI) summer retreat. The retreat kicked off a year-long program where teams receive Farm to School program support and professional development as well as year-round coaching. Academy School from WSESD and a joint Grafton Elementary School and Westminster Center School team from WNESU spent three days at Shelburne Farms planning for the school year, learning more about Farm to School programming, and networking with other professionals from across New England and New York. 

As the rush of back to school started to slow down, Food Connects Farm to School coaches, Conor and Sheila, reconnected with their NEFTSI teams, excited to kick off the new school year with a strong Farm to School focus. Still energized by the summer retreat, both teams wanted to make sure they stayed connected with the larger Farm to School community while also working to improve the programs in their own schools. Luckily for everyone, southeastern Vermont and western Massachusetts are home to a number of leaders in the Farm to School movement. At Sheila’s suggestion, Food Connects helped to coordinate personalized learning journeys for both teams to visit two robust Farm to School programs in the area. 

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Hawlemont Regional School

Hawlemont is a public pre-K through 6th-grade school in the rural community of Charlemont, MA. Hawlemont was struggling to stay open after school choice resulted in declining enrollment.  In an effort to save the school, staff and local community members decided to reinvent the school with a “farm-flavored approach to learning.” The HAY (Hawlemont, Agriculture, and YOU) program is now in its fifth year, and during that time the school has doubled its enrollment and now has a waiting list.

Hawlemont received grant funding and leveraged community support to build their program, using grant funds and donated supplies and labor to build a greenhouse, barn, and garden beds, and teachers worked together to create an integrated farm and food curriculum. The result is a complete reimagining of the school, featuring successful collaborations with local farmers and community members where Hawlemont students engage in hands-on learning as they care for animals, nurture gardens, and develop new skills in a real farm setting.

Hawlemont added a new staff position, HAY teacher, and all students have HAY class each week for 30-45 minutes, just like music, art, and PE classes. Each class has daily barn chores and learns cooking, canning, and preserving, as well as beekeeping and running a weekly in-school farmers market where produce from the school garden and value-added products like pesto, canned tomatoes, salsa, jelly, and freshly baked pies all made by students are sold to parents and the community.

Hawlemont is working hard to get more local food into its independently run lunch program. In addition to purchasing from local farms, when budgetary constraints allow, all of the jelly used for PB & J’s for the entire school year comes from jelly students in the HAY program make from either grapes grown on the school property or from fruit picked by students from local farms.

Guilford Central School

For years, Guilford has worked hard at building its Farm to School program and they have been a partner of Food Connects since 2014. In her second year, Sarah Rosow is the school’s Farm to School Coordinator. As both teams saw during their visits, Farm to School programming is strongest when there is a consistent collaboration between a dedicated coordinator and a team of champions from throughout the school. At Guilford, Sarah works with all the teachers to find time to incorporate Farm to School lessons into their existing curriculum as well as additional enrichment activities. She works with Dan, the school’s food service director, to integrate taste tests and Harvest of the Month items into the menu. Through this collaboration, Sarah is able to stay focused on Farm to School and keep projects moving forward, while the team of faculty and staff ensure that there remains a strong culture of Farm to School throughout the building.

So what does Farm to School at Guilford look like for the students? Getting dirty in the gardens, cooking up delicious Harvest of the Month recipes in the Farm to School room, and working in their classrooms to design and make market-ready products for the school gardens. From pre-K all the way to the 6th grade, students engage in Farm to School through classroom learning and extension activities. 

Farm to School also reaches the cafeteria, where Chef Dan is an active member on the Farm to School team and works with Food Connects to increase local purchasing and track trends over time. This past Thanksgiving, Dan put on a feast for the entire community that highlighted many local items. Now, he’s working with Sarah to highlight many of the dishes students make in the Farm to School classroom by incorporating them into his lunch menus. 

The Guilford Farm to School program made a particularly large splash this past month when they hosted their inaugural Holiday Market, where local vendors joined students in selling different crafts. Of the money made by each classroom by selling their items, half is being donated to a charity of their choosing and the other half is going to be reinvested in Farm to School programming for the students. 

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After two inspiring days of learning and sharing, there were definitely some themes the teams walked away with when thinking about program longevity and sustainability. In both schools, there was a balance between team collaboration and a main coordinator. Oftentimes, Farm to School programs grow their roots in a school thanks to the devoted efforts of a single champion. While that helps keep the momentum going, it’s important to quickly build a diverse team of support. Otherwise, when that champion leaves or becomes too busy themselves, all the work they did can get lost in the shuffle. 

The community support both schools have is also one of their greatest strengths. In Hawlemont, community members rallied to save their school, build a barn, and help care for the animals. Guilford partners with local farmers to source beef for lunches, handle their food scraps, and support events like the Holiday Market. In addition to gathering a diverse team of school staff, another first step for a fledgling Farm to School program should be to think about what makes their community special and ways to involve community members as much as possible. 

Lastly, both programs are actively involved in parenting their financial sustainability. Grants and fundraising are inevitably a big part of Farm to School. Having dedicated coordinators to work on larger projects and support from organizations like Food Connects goes a long way in supplementing school budgets. Each program has its own needs, but having a variety of funding sources for staff and materials is key in creating robust programs that carry on for years.

Taste Tests: From Garden to Classroom to Cafeteria

Taste tests are an integral part of Farm to School programming and an easy way for newer schools to jump into FTS while making some “3 C’s” connections (classroom, cafeteria, and community). Guilford Central School has been at it for a while and their FTS Coordinator, Sarah Rosow, works with each grade to make dishes for the rest of the school to sample. Back in October—before there was 2 feet of snow on the ground—I joined Sarah and a group of fourth-graders to harvest some kale for their monthly taste test. 

Sarah and two fourth graders cleaning a bed in preparation for winter.

I met the group in front of the school in their vegetable garden. As it was nearing the end of the season, many of the beds were cleared out. But there was still plenty of kale and this was one of the last harvests of the season. Students collected bunches of curly and dinosaur kale that all went into the salad spinner. Back in the classroom, some students washed the kale while others prepped the other ingredients that would go into the pesto recipe. Guilford is lucky to have a Farm to School classroom (a repurposed science classroom) that gives students more space to work and store their projects, making the preparation of the taste tests a bit easier. But, all that is really needed is a clear working surface and some kitchen utensils for students. 

The Farm to School classroom at Guilford Central School.

The finished product before mixing with pasta for the taste tests.

During the taste test preparations, students were not only learning about growing vegetables but also building culinary skills as they read the recipe and washed and chopped the ingredients. The last step was to combine everything in a food processor and taste the end product themselves before bringing samples to each of the school’s classrooms.  

Ideally—once all the students get a chance to taste the pesto—the next step is to coordinate with the school kitchen to get the new item on the menu. That way, students will already be familiar with the dish and there will be excitement stemming from the student involvement. 

Interested in starting taste tests in your school? Check out these resources to get started:

Food Connects HOM page- links to both VT and NH HOM materials

VT HOM Facebook page

HOM Calendars (contact Conor for a copy)

By Conor Floyd