Guilford Farm to School Thrives on Community Partnership

What does it take to make a successful Farm to School program? At Guilford Central School (GCS), a big part of the answer is community partners. 

Kindergarteners Jared and Jimmy plant a peach tree near the K/1 outdoor classroom.

“The community support that we see at Guilford Central School is amazing. From the dedicated parents on the Leadership Council to parents who donate mulch for our blueberry plants and excavator time to site a shed, it’s really inspiring to see. Our families and community members clearly value the outdoor experiences that our students are having, and they give a lot to support our programming. Our Farm to School and Nature-Based Education programs are thriving and couldn’t have gotten to this point without community involvement,” said Sarah Rosow, the Farm to School Program Coordinator at GCS.

School principal, John Gagnon, agrees, “the success that we have experienced at GCS is due to the remarkable contributions and efforts of our community partners.” He also points to the deeper connection the community has, “capital improvements to our campus and professional development for our staff in best practices in nature-based learning demonstrate the direct result  of the support that our parents, community and local non-profit organizations have provided.”

Guilford Central School is a regional leader in Farm to School—its over 7-year-old program is a shining example of how Farm to School can grow well-grounded students and connect communities. Before the pandemic, students used school-grown vegetables for taste tests highlighting local dishes for the school to try before adding them to the cafeteria's menu. GCS hosted the Holiday Market, where each grade made garden-based crafts and food items to sell to the community. The staff’s gardening and nutrition education experience meant that they were ready to move learning outdoors and get creative about cooking lessons when the pandemic hit.

Fourth grader Arabella chops rhubarb harvested from the school garden for rhubarb muffins.

“We love to cook in Pre-K and try to do at least one cooking project every week. In pre-COVID times we would prep our ingredients inside and then bring them outside to cook over the fire,” reflects Pre-K teacher Emma Hallowell. “This year, we found that preparing food outside was challenging during the cold winter months—those little fingers! But now that it’s spring, we simply set up a cooking station in our outdoor classroom and are having a great time cooking over the fire again.”

The past year has brought communities together in mutual aid and collaboration. This is no exception at Guilford, where countless community partnerships help elevate and grow the gardens, classroom lessons, and nutrition education. 

The gardens continue to grow throughout the school campus, creating new learning spaces for classes and more produce for students to try. The Guilford FTS Program purchased two new raised beds built by Three Trees. Soil donated by Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD) and D&E Tree Company filled the beds. Apple trees donated by Scott Farm and plants from Walker Farm and Lilac Ridge Farm will help fill all this new growing space. More trees, berries, and crops also require more maintenance! A rotating cast of parent volunteers supports the Farm to School Coordinator, Sarah Rosow, by weeding the beds, fertilizing the blueberry bushes on weekends, or stopping in with a skid steer to move soil and mulch. Guilford also participates in Food Connects’ Summer Garden Program, which keeps families involved and ensures that the gardens are weeded and watered throughout the summer months. Valuing the importance of the program, the Guilford Country Store has donated additional funds to support the summer garden program. 

A grant from RiseVT allowed the school to install a StoryWalk to encourage classes and community members to get outdoors, take a walk, and enjoy a story. The school purchases books at a discount from Everyone’s Books for the storywalk, on themes ranging from diversity to nature to food and farming.

Food Connects sent sprouting kits to interested classes at the start of spring, getting students excited about the growing season and enabling them to try sunflower and pea sprout taste tests. All the students’ cooking endeavors, from bread on a stick to sweet potato tots, are chronicled in a community cookbook. With more help from Food Connects and printing from C&S Print Shop, every family will be able to take home a cookbook plus a cooking kit thanks to funding from VT Fresh. The hands-on curriculum has proved invaluable during the pandemic, encouraging student engagement and helping build excitement about returning to school after a year of remote and hybrid learning. 

Thirty pounds of salad greens from Milkweed Farm, ready to be bagged up and distributed to families along with salad dressing recipes for the May Harvest of the Month kit.

The school has highlighted local food in meals for students. Recipe kits were sent home with students that featured local ingredients such as salad greens from Milkweed Farm and maple syrup donated by Franklin Farm. Students get to enjoy Franklin Farm beef year-round in the cafeteria, thanks to their partnership with the school. 

Each contribution from the community helps build up the robust Farm to School program students currently enjoy. As Guilford looks towards the future, there’s excitement for more to come. “As COVID restrictions are lifted,” says Sarah Rosow, “we’ll be looking to get families even more involved in the gardens, to generate more community involvement around our new sugaring program, and to re-establish our Winter Market.”

John Gagnon only sees growth in the future for the program, “we are very grateful and excited to continue this journey with our community partners in an elementary school that nurtures a love and respect for our natural environment.”

Guilford Central School is a small elementary school in Southern Vermont serving 120 children from Pre-K - sixth grade. The Guilford Farm to School program enables students to regularly spend time working in the school gardens, cooking, composting, and visiting local farms. From monthly taste tests of healthy, locally sourced foods that are prepared and served by students in every grade, to tapping trees and boiling sap, GCS students are connected with Guilford's farming heritage. 

Addressing Food Waste in our Schools

Food Connects begins a two-year project aimed at reducing food waste and increasing food access in local schools.

Food Connects has worked with schools for over 10 years to support Farm to School programs that bring together the cafeteria, classroom, and community. Oftentimes, when working with Food Service Directors, we focus on the procurement and preparation of local food in school cafeterias. Until now, less attention was given to food waste and food recovery, despite it being an essential part of Vermont’s food system. Thanks to the support of a two-year $55,550 grant from the Claneil Foundation, we now have the capacity to greatly build upon our current efforts to address food waste and better support our partners.

As a community, our awareness of the urgency and magnitude of climate change has grown. Farm to School programming is already linked to sustainability education in the classroom and carbon reduction in the cafeteria through local food procurement. We want to strengthen our commitment to these efforts and our work in cafeterias is the prime location for this increased focus. Reducing food waste and increasing food access are two sides of the same problem—this project supports the work we’ve done around trauma-informed approaches to Farm to School. All of which led us to the Claneil Foundation, whose Critical Issue Fund is currently focused on food waste.

Share Cooler at Academy School.

We’re excited to work with Food Service Directors to tap into the captive audience each cafeteria presents. Some schools we work with have already taken big steps to reduce food waste, notably Seed2Tray—Windham Central Supervisory Union’s nutrition program—and the Windham Southeast School District. At Seed2Tray, Chris Parker and his staff repackage leftover food to give students the option of taking an additional meal home with them. In the WSESD, share coolers are a common sight in cafeterias and Putney Central School replaced milk cartons with reusable cups and a milk dispenser.

Despite the promising progress, we anticipate obstacles along the way. The biggest of which is that change is often slow to happen and difficult to enact. This is especially true in middle and high schools. With fewer daily routines and more student autonomy, it becomes crucial to reach students with positive messaging and clear steps they can take to be a part of the solution. We anticipate student environmental groups in secondary schools to be our partners in implementing some of these changes. Research indicates that the longest-lasting interventions are those focused on teachers and staff in the school (as opposed to students). As the main implementers of new systems and the setters of culture in schools, co-opting school staff will be essential. We’ll need to ensure that our best practices are streamlined and easy for busy staff to incorporate into their daily routines.

With these potential challenges in mind, over the next year, we will work closely with schools to refine their current practices and pilot new ones. By the end of this stage of the project, we will engage with at least ten schools in southeast Vermont and the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. The list of potential interventions includes share coolers, repackaging meals, composting systems, school-based food shelves, improving cafeteria environments, and continuing to improve meal quality. We’re also excited to discover new interventions along the way!

In the second phase of the project, we’ll refine this list and highlight the three best practices which have the largest impact relative to their ease of implementation. We will collaborate with state agencies to make sure the practices are aligned with relevant regulations and interview staff from pilot schools to better understand their perspectives. Finally, we’ll take all this information and create a toolkit and workshop to be shared with stakeholders throughout New England.

What I’m most excited about regarding this new project is how it connects strongly with the work we already do in schools and approaches that work through a new lens. I’m sure that in addition to new food waste reduction strategies, new interventions and practices will be uncovered that support other aspects of Farm to School programming. Collaboration is an integral part of this project. I’m looking forward to deepening the relationships we already have with our partners and beginning work with new stakeholders as well.

By Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager

We would like to work with you!

• Are you a teacher, administrator, school nutrition staff, or parent in southeast Vermont or the Monadnock Region and would like to see your school take up this work with Food Connects?

• Does your school have innovative practices in food waste reduction and increasing food access?

Email our Farm to School team today to be part of our work: farmtoschool@foodconnects.org.

Food Connects Hosts Trauma and Nutrition Training for WSESD

In late August, Food Connects hosted a Trauma and Nutrition training for 31 Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) wellness leaders, including school nurses, counselors, behavior specialists, and food service directors. This training, funded by a grant from the Thompson Trust, educated wellness leaders on the connection between trauma and nutrition with the expectation that participants bring the information back to their school communities.

Professional development for schools focused on trauma and resilience is increasing. Schools that are more trauma-sensitive increase the chances of all students to succeed. On the heels of WSESD’s trauma-informed training for educators earlier this summer, Food Connects hosted their training specifically for school wellness leaders. Food and trauma are uniquely intertwined—food traditions can establish a strong sense of community but food can also be a point of stress and anxiety, especially in a loud and overwhelming cafeteria environment, and for students experiencing food insecurity at home. A central question participants were asked to consider when making choices about how students interact with food was “how do we raise awareness about food and trauma and how do we understand how our actions impact others so that we aren’t unintentionally creating stress for our students?”

Joelle van Lent, a licensed psychologist, and Sheila Humphreys, Food Connects Farm to School Coordinator, led the training. The group of school professionals listened with eager ears to their words—learning the foundations of trauma and how to create trauma-sensitive environments. The group took time to consider their implicit biases around food by recording their initial reactions to images food like salads, Cheetos, and chocolate cake. This activity dug into how being trauma sensitive includes being neutral and curious as opposed to judgemental. “I think this was the most impactful part of the day,” said Ali West, Food Service Director for the Brattleboro Town Schools. “It was insightful to see that while I thought YUCK at the boxed macaroni and cheese others felt nostalgic towards it. It reminded me of what one third grader said to me when he asked for ketchup for his toast and I went YUCK, and his response was ‘Don't yuck my yum.’ This has become a mantra of mine whenever I work in one of my cafeterias.”

Another focal point was to exemplify that we, as adults, make assumptions about how students view school food based on our personal experience. The group read aloud quotations from Vermont students about their cafeteria experiences—“No snacks at home equals no snacks at school. I just pretended I didn’t want one.” “It is noticeable that I receive free lunch.” “Too many people crammed in one place. I will probably just not eat.” It is clear that cafeteria spaces are not always safe spaces for all students. “Kids might not know if food will be present at home. This creates a traumatic association with food that can carry over to the cafeteria,” says Joelle. “The question becomes, how can we make getting food easy, calm, and predictable for all students?”

As part of the training, school wellness leaders were asked to create action plans for the school year focused on improving school meals and farm and food education through a trauma sensitive lens. Goals created by wellness teams included:

• Train all school staff on the material presented

• Change school culture regarding the use of food as a reward

• Increase staff awareness about implicit bias regarding foods students eat at home

• Teach social skills during lunch

• Decrease the chaos at lunchtime

• Have staff sit with students at lunchtime in the cafeteria

Food Connects will provide ongoing coaching and support to wellness teams throughout the school year to make progress on these goals, which will help to create a healthy school food culture for all students in WSESD schools. By strengthening the school community and making school meals feel calm, predictable, and a place for positive connections with peers and staff, schools can play an important role in preventing the development of eating disorders and lifelong struggles with food for our students. Co-facilitator Sheila Humphreys says, “I am looking forward to coaching wellness leaders as they work together to create strong school communities to support our most vulnerable students, because research shows that children can withstand a considerable amount of adversity when they are connected to a strong community and have predictable calm routines.”

This training was immensely impactful. In the training pre-assessment 65% of the participants reported that they had an understanding of the connection between trauma and nutrition but no participants felt that their knowledge was strong enough to teach the material to others. “I really took so much away from the training,” said West, “at first I was completely overwhelmed and thought ‘what on earth am I doing here. This is all behavior stuff not food and then it all clicked and I realized yup, glad I'm here.’” In the post assessment, there was a 70% increase in the number of participants who felt like they could train others on the material. The ability to bring this information back to schools to share with their colleagues empowers wellness leaders to critically look at their programs and enact change.

“My experience with the Trauma and Nutrition Training was very useful,” said Jody Mattulke, Family Engagement & Education Coordinator at Academy School. “Trauma and the infinite connections and associations with food fostered greater awareness of how students may struggle. Students may struggle with memories stimulated by olfactory senses, have  strong emotions evoked by inconsistencies in quality and availability of food and lack the skills to navigate these emotions as well as have difficulty with social settings and the systems around food in the schools. The module on resiliency was invaluable—relationships are the great protective factors to support students as they improve their confidence & competency to feel they belong in the community.” 

In the words of participant Matt Bristol, Physical Education Teacher and Athletic Director for the Putney Central School, "My big takeaway was learning suggested practices and policies to put in place school wide to ensure food security and a positive culture around food.” Schools are uniquely positioned to improve and change students’ experiences with food. Taking these skills back to the schools is essential for creating trauma-sensitive spaces. Students need a place where curiosity and acceptance are the standard, leaving judgement at the door.

In other words, “Don’t yuck my yum.”