On February 8th, our Food Hub Institutional Sales Associate, Tom Brewton, visited the Vermont Statehouse to support Farm to School Awareness Day. He testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee and the House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee, requesting support for the Farm to School and Early Childhood Program and the Local Foods Incentive Grant.
Stephanie Gates became the Food Service Director of the Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union (BRSU) in February 2021. She reached out to us in September 2021 with a strong interest in sourcing local foods for her students. We talked to Stephanie to learn more about her work to promote local food through BRSU meal programs in partnership with Food Connects.
At the end of July, we took a road trip to visit some of the Vermont Farms that we’re partnering with to feed Vermont schools this year. While Clare Barboza snapped some amazing photos for us, our Marketing Coordinator, Kristen Thompson, took the opportunity to ask the farmers (and co-op) about their work and why feeding Vermont kids with Vermont food is so important.
Food Connects, a non-profit Food Hub in Brattleboro, VT, is excited to share its newest partnerships with schools across the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
Food Connects is a catalyst for food systems change—centering food consumption, education, and distribution around community-based food systems. The organization delivers source-identified foods to schools throughout the Connecticut River Valley. With a strong foothold in Vermont and New Hampshire, Food Connects has looked towards Massachusetts for ways to provide more value to school nutrition programs through regionally-grown and made foods.
And Massachusetts schools are literally eating it up! In the 2021-2022 school year alone, Food Connects has delivered more than $30,000 in regional products to Massachusetts schools. From beef, pork, and chicken to granola, yogurt, and gelato—the variety of regionally grown and made foods now on students’ plates is tremendous.
Both public and private schools throughout Massachusetts are shifting to regionally sourced food. Food Connects is thrilled to see the diversity of locations and types of schools—ensuring that all students have access to the same great food.
Private Schools
Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) is a private boarding school and one of the leaders in the local food movement. When D.L. Moody founded the girls’ and boys’ schools, the schools’ farms were at their core, feeding the student body. And though the farm isn’t the only source of food for the school, it is still a core part of its culture and heritage.
On Friday, May 6th, 2022, NMH hosted its first Food Systems Teach-In since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a day when the high school curriculum centered on food and food systems. And the classrooms weren’t the only thing full of food systems thinking—the dining hall menu for the day centered on regionally sourced foods.
Food Connects offered many regional products from regional producers, including:
Tom Brewton, Food Connects Institutional Sales Associate, tabled at the event during lunch hours and was able to share with students and faculty about the regional products featured on the menu. Laura Carbonneau, Food Connects Marketing and Outreach Manager and NMH alumnae, joined students in the classroom, speaking about the Farm Bill, climate resiliency, food, and food systems. The response from students in the dining hall and the classroom was enthusiastic and engaged—lots of “yums.”
Deerfield Academy (DA), located in Deerfield, MA, is another boarding school for high school students in the Pioneer Valley. DA is proud to boast a Farm Team, a group of students who help out at two local farms with harvesting and garlic preparation projects. Working with DA for the first time this school year, Food Connects has delivered various products, including strip loins from Big Picture Beef and burger patties from Robie Farm.
Eaglebrook School is a 6th through 9th grade all-boys boarding and day school also located in Deerfield, MA. This year alone, the school has purchased 3,672 pounds of ground beef from both Big Picture Beef and Boyden Beef.
Public Schools
Food Connects has a history of working with public schools throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, providing high-quality, regionally-sourced foods. The Food Connects team takes pride in extending those same products and services to public schools throughout Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley.
Greta Shwachman, Food Service Director for Greenfield Public Schools (GPS), is passionate about integrating local products into her menus. This is no surprise, as she was previously the Farm to School Program Coordinator for the Chicopee Public Schools. Her passion for Farm to School has made adding regionally sourced foods to her menu seamless.
“Institutions like K-12 schools hold a lot of purchasing power,” says Greta. “I prioritize buying regionally-sourced foods to ensure that this power is used to support the local food economy. I enjoy the opportunity to meet farmers and producers, and help local food businesses grow and scale to have more success in the institutional market.”
Food Connects has supplied the GPS, which consists of 6 different schools, with ground beef from Big Picture Beef, bulk yogurt from Narragansett Creamery, and granola from True North Granola Company. And not just food but also promotional marketing materials, so students can connect with their food and the farmers.
“I believe that students should know where their food comes from,” says Greta. “And I enjoy working with Food Connects because they understand the importance of putting a face and a name with a product. I have appreciated the signage they have sent us, which includes background on the producer, and even the number of miles the product traveled to reach our cafeterias.”
Earlier this year, Tom met with Michael Onorato, Food Service Director of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District (PVRSD). Coincidentally, Michael was already familiar with Food Connects—he was previously the Food Service Director for Conval Regional School District, another school district Food Connects serves. To date, Food Connects has supplied the PVRSD with various products, including apples, potatoes, carrots, and eggs.
Food Connects is also working with Massachusetts Farm to School, whose mission is to “strengthen local farms and fisheries and promote healthy communities by increasing local food purchasing and education at schools.” The organization, aligned with both the Vermont and New Hampshire Farm to School programs, serves as a vital lifeline for Massachusetts schools to access support, curriculum, and other resources to develop Farm to School programming.
Food Connects will participate in the Local Food Networking Session on Thursday, June 16, from 3:00 to 4:30 PM in Greenfield at the John Olver Transit Center. This event will be a spring get-together for K-12 school nutrition professionals in Franklin County. The event will include vendor displays, sampling, presentations, and discussions. And while the focus will be on local food procurement, there will be discussions on other topics. The event is being co-organized by the Partnership for Youth at FRCOG (Franklin Regional Council of Governments), Greenfield Public Schools, and Western Mass Food Processing Center at the Franklin County Community Development Corporation. If you are a school nutrition professional and want to learn more, you can register for the event today.
If you are a food service director, work in a school, and would like to integrate more local foods into your menus, Food Connects would love to support you! At this time, their customer routes go from Brattleboro, VT, down I-91 as far south as Northampton, MA. Know that our routes are quickly expanding so we would be happy to hear from you even if you don’t fall within our existing geographic reach in MA. Please reach out to their sales team at sales@foodconnects.org.
When you were in school, did you know where your food was coming from? Was your cafeteria sourcing from a local farm? Were you excited about food and learning more about it? Luckily, the answer to most of these questions for students throughout the Essex Westford School District is a resounding “yes!”
Essex High School, and the district at large, started purchasing local food from Food Connects in late 2021. The school nutrition program started with products like cheese from 5 Generations Creamery (over 80 lbs already!—that’s a lot of cheese!) and sparkling beverages from Samara. As they continue to experiment with more local foods, the students are the ones who will see the real benefits.
To learn more about the program and where they are heading with local foods, we chatted with Meghan Martin, the Child Nutrition Administrative Assistant.
What made you decide to work with Food Connects?
We were looking to expand our local food purchasing. Food Connects has direct connections with farms in Vermont and it makes it easier for us to put a name to the food that we’re serving our students. We have had that direct connection to farms in the past and we are excited to be able to continue highlighting a wider variety of local food producers. Starting slow but hoping to expand the local offerings in the future.
Parfaits made with Narragansett Creamery yogurt.
What products have been successful so far?
We purchased Narragansett yogurt and beef from Boyden Farm. Because the high school is a larger kitchen they can do more cooking with different local products and try out more recipes to see what works best. Those two items worked well!
Right now, the local food we are purchasing is just going to the high school and occasionally gets sent out to other schools. We tested out yogurt at the 3rd through 5th-grade school which was successful. With the larger kitchen size and student body at our high school, we find that it’s easier to start there with our scratch cooking products with the goal of then expanding our offerings into our other schools to the roughly 4,000 students district-wide.
Why are you interested in having regionally-sourced foods in your cafeteria?
The Farm to School movement is so prevalent right now. We have dabbled in it here and there. What we really want is to bring whole fresh foods into the district while supporting the local economy. As much as we are able, we want to close the gap between our students and the local food system and create a lasting connection between the two. It’s exciting that we are able to expand their horizons with their culinary palette and teach them what types of food we have available in our area.
Spaghetti and meat sauce made with Boyden Farm beef.
We saw that this year meals in the Essex Westford School district are free for all students 18 and under. How has this impacted your meal program?
This was through USDA waivers. With the help of these waivers, we have been able to put more focus and resources back into our meal program and we’ve seen that on average 67% more students are choosing school meals. That’s significantly more engagement and more bellies full with high quality and nutritious foods.
Additionally, Scott Fay, Senior Child Nutrition Manager, and Andrew Peet, Child Nutrition Site Manager, really wanted to work with Food Connects because of the Vermont Local Purchasing Incentive. Both this incentive and the USDA waiver put more funds back into the program and the food we provide, which allows us to get higher quality products.
How has this benefitted your students?
The students are able to access more food through the school. The more nutritious food the kids eat, the more they are ready to learn and be active throughout the day. There is already lots of positive feedback about the meals we serve—the students and staff are excited about the fresh, local food they are getting each day.
Anything else that you would like to share?
This year we have tried to revamp the menu, with the hope that it will bring in more participation and therefore revenue for the program. This includes more scratch cooking with fresh, whole produce and ingredients and so far, we are getting lots of positive feedback from changes especially when we can serve foods like Shepherd’s pie using beef from Boyden Farm. It has definitely been a process doing it on a large scale and district-wide but we have an amazing team and we’ve been working out all the details with staff over the years. We’re very excited about all the new menu changes.
Additionally, we have a Farm to School program and have done cooking activities with students and taste tests in the past. Most of that has put that on hold due to COVID-19 but we have started small again by doing more school-wide taste tests with the younger students. Our hope is that we can do these taste tests to gather feedback from students and update our menu with their input. We are also looking forward to the possibility of incorporating more Farm to School and nutrition content into the curriculum.
