Arrange a Mobile Garden Classroom Visit!

Vermont Garden Network’s new SNAP-funded mobile garden classroom is ready to hit the road! They are arranging site visits and workshops around the state for the remainder of the 2022 gardening season. Click here to learn more and view their calendar.

Some example workshops include:

• Cooking with Seasonal Vegetables

• Nutritional Benefits of Fresh Produce

• Food Preservation

  • Canning

  • Dehydration

  • Pickling

• Soil Health

  • Home / School Composting

  • Soil Amendments

• Low Impact Pest Control

• Garden Construction

  • Building ADA-accessible garden beds

  • Building Compost Bins

Most workshops are around 1-1.5 hours in length. Leading up to each workshop, they will collect details about your possible participants’ previous experiences with these topics, what areas of focus would be most beneficial for your group, and any accessibility needs from participants. This will allow them to tailor the experience to your group and make it as inclusive and informative as possible.

Contact Cedar Schiewetz at cedar@vtgardens.org to further discuss a workshop for your school or community group!

Getting Ready for Local: VT Workshops Bring Together School Nutrition Professionals and Farmers

Apple orchards, sweet potato fields, and diversified farms. School nutrition professionals gathered on farms across the state this past August; for many, it was the first time seeing their colleagues from other schools since the start of the pandemic.

Jointly hosted by Food Connects, VT FEED, and the School Nutrition Association of Vermont, these workshops were a time for school nutrition professionals to connect with farmers, think about local purchasing, and the opportunities of a new state bill that incentivizes buying Vermont products for their programs. In addition to touring the host farm, participants prepared a menu item that featured local products from the farm and met the school lunch meal pattern guidelines. There was also plenty of time for everyone to share stories from the past year and hear about what’s been working and what hasn’t been. 

“The past 18 months have been especially hard on school nutrition professionals,” says Helen Rortvedt, Farm to School Program Director for NOFA-VT & VT FEED. “Working from home was never an option for them, and the need for healthy meals has only increased. It’s vitally important to have the time to come together, share best practices, and plan for restoring or expanding their local purchasing plans for the coming school year with colleagues.”

Made possible by a 2020 USDA Farm to School Implementation grant, participants got an inside look into the operations and hurdles local farmers contend with and discussed ways to get more of their products into school meals. A common theme throughout each of the workshops was the similarities between both professions in regards to the constant logistical details they had to consider—what’s the best packaging option for food, the constant battle for cold storage space, and how do you get your food to consumers (whether that be customers or students). 

At the forefront of everyone’s minds was the local purchasing incentive recently passed by the Vermont legislature. Schools have incredibly low budgets for food (under $1.50 per meal), making it difficult for them to buy high-quality, locally produced foods. This new grant will help by reimbursing schools that use local ingredients in their meals. Given how new the program is, everyone has questions about what implementation will look like. 

Food Connects is a natural partner for schools looking to increase local purchasing. The Farm to School Program works with school nutrition professionals, educators, and administrators to increase nutrition and farming education in classrooms, building interest in and demand for local foods by students. Once the demand is there, the Food Hub can deliver food from over 150 producers right to the school, providing schools an easy and affordable way to participate in the local food system.

Farm to School Program to Expand Professional Development Offerings

As Farm to School programming continues to grow in local schools, Food Connects’ Farm to School team is gearing up to train and support even more educators. We are excited to connect with new teachers, child nutrition professionals, and community partners to share best practices from schools across Vermont and New England.

We understand that connectedness is essential to the success of farm to school programming in southern Vermont. We know that this kind of education cannot happen in silos and it’s clear that our southern Vermont school partners feel the same way. In an effort to facilitate peer learning, resource sharing, and general connectedness in the farm to school community, Food Connects will kick off our “Let’s Grow Together” series of workshops for farm to school champions this spring. Workshops will be content-specific, including topics such as composting, seed-starting, cooking with kids, school food 101, farm to school curricular connections, and much more!

It is our hope that these workshops will serve as a space for farm to school partners to gather, learn, and inspire one another. By creating these “communities of practice,” we hope to help make farm to school programming easy, sustainable, and fun! Stay tuned for more details.

We are eager to learn more about your professional development needs and interests, so please reach out to our team with any ideas you may have.

Learn more about our Let’s Grow Together series today!