It’s National Farm to School Month, and our Food Hub is excited to celebrate our partnerships with local schools. Did you know that we deliver regionally grown food to more than 30 schools in our area? Each new school we work with means more students have access to local and nutritious foods.
Since July 2021, K-12 schools have purchased nearly $100,000 in local products from Food Connects—that’s more local dollars going back to our community and farmers! Vermont public schools alone totaled over $70k, $43k of which came from Vermont producers.
The Windham Northeast Supervisory Union’s (WNESU) Farm to School Cafe is a major contributor to this success. Over the summer, Harley Sterling, the School Nutrition Director for WNESU, and his team made weekly food boxes for hundreds of kids, ensuring all students had access to food throughout the summer. Stay tuned for more about this project! Or check out their holiday highlight or Cafeterias Unknown feature.
Other than these great stories, we’ve introduced some new, school-focused products to schools.
The Bread Shed: “Humble Whole Wheat Loaf”
At 54% whole wheat, this product meets USDA regulations for the National School Lunch Program.
We distributed samples to schools and sold over 200 loaves since the start of the school year.
Miller Farm: 8 oz bottles of whole milk
Since late August, Food Connects has already sold more than 600 bottles to school.
The bottles work well in private schools and as a special feature or part of “a la carte” sections in public schools.
If you haven’t heard already, there is a new local food purchasing incentive for schools in Vermont. “Act 67 created a pilot program that would temporarily establish a tiered incentive for public schools to purchase food from Vermont’s farmers: buy 15% local products, receive 15 cents back for every lunch served. The law also creates 20% and 25% tiers.” This means that the more local food purchased and the more students served, the more school nutrition programs benefit. And our Food Hub is ready to help by providing a plethora of quality Vermont products through our wide network.
Since the start of September, Vermont public schools have purchased over $14k food from Food Connects. Between already established purchasing practices and the new local purchasing incentive, $11k of these sales are from Vermont producers—totaling over 75% of purchases. Some of the farms and producers that are seeing sales to local schools include:
Eggs from Maple Meadow Farm in Salisbury, VT
Apples from Dutton Berry Farm in Newfane, VT, and Green Mountain Orchard in Putney, VT
Pears from Champlain Orchards in Shoreham, VT
Yogurt from Green Mountain Creamery in Brattleboro, VT
A variety of veggies from Harlow Farm and Allen Brothers in Westminster, VT, in addition to Milkweed Farm in Guilford, VT
We also have a new partner in Karen Russo, Director of the Child Nutrition Program at Orange Southwest School District. Karen started ordering from Food Connects at the start of the 2021-22 school year, and her passion to feed her students nutritious and local foods has been evident from the start of our partnership. In her first month of deliveries alone, she has purchased a wide variety of fruits and veggies, including local apples, pears, carrots, corn, peppers, tomatoes, and so much more! In partnership with their Farm to School Coordinator, they will be making kale chips to serve over 400 kids across all of their elementary schools.
We’re so excited that the school year is off to a great start. We can’t wait to see where our partnerships and local food purchasing incentive take us this school year!