Food Connects Brings Regional Food to MA Schools

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:

• Deep Root Organics

• Frisky Cow Gelato

• Hurricane Flats

• Maine Grains

• Red's Best

• Big Picture Beef

• Boyden Beef

• Vermont Bean Crafters

• Czajkowski Farm

• Old Friends Farm

• The Bread Shed

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.

Crafting a Local Lunch: How Windsor High School is Shifting School Meals

“90% of the cooking we do in our kitchen is from scratch,” Craig Locarno, Director of Food Services for the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) told us. “I am lucky to have a great team. I’ve been in school food service for almost 19 years, and I have the strongest team that I’ve ever had.” 

Food Connects began delivering to Windsor High School at the start of this school year. While Food Connects delivers to the high school, Craig distributes the product across all his schools. And you might be surprised to hear the impetus of this partnership was… bread.

With the closure of the Vermont Bread Company, Craig Locarno was looking for a way to continue providing the students in the WSESU with locally made bread. Although the food service program is independently run and does a lot of scratch cooking, baking bread isn’t part of their daily routine. Luckily, Food Connects already has a partnership with a great local bakery that makes delicious sliced bread—The Bread Shed, located in Keene, NH.

Since our partnership with the WSESU began, we have delivered more than 1,000 loaves of bread from The Bread Shed. Food Connects and The Bread Shed worked together to develop and offer an affordable, child-friendly bread loaf that meets the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) nutrition requirements for school lunches. Craig was one of the first school districts to jump on this opportunity. In the past few weeks, he has increased his standing bread order from 45 to 75 loaves per week as part of their new soup and sandwich day on Thursdays—which has been a hit!

Craig is always open to new products that could be integrated into his menus, so he didn’t just stop with bread. Throughout the school year, he has purchased eggs from Maple Meadow Farm located in Salisbury, VT, and potatoes from Szawlowski Potato Farms located in Hatfield, MA, among other producers (read the interview below to hear about more). We are also connecting Craig with Carissa Brewton, from Grateful Greens, to introduce him to their Food Access program—an initiative to make sunflower greens more accessible and affordable for schools.

We had the opportunity to talk to Craig about the WSESU nutrition program to learn more about what has been a success in schools and why increasing the students’ access to local food is important to him. Check out the interview!

Can you tell us more about WSESU's independently run food service?

I think what makes us different is that we emphasize supporting local and making that a priority. We’re creating a program around what we can purchase locally. Of course, we are still a public school, so we have to follow the rules of USDA, consider cost restraints when buying from food contractors—but making education and supporting local farmers a priority. And I think there are a lot more directors doing that. A lot of directors believe in the same story and the same mission. It’s still pretty new, so I think we need to push the envelope, show this story, and show what’s possible. I think it starts with the administration and board. Thankfully I’m in a school district that cares about Farm to School. 

What made you decide to work with Food Connects?

You’re the closest to me in the Upper Valley. It is important that I connect with the biggest liaison between farmers and schools. And Food Connects can help me to continue to build and grow a quality program.

What products have been successful so far?

So, I think The Bread Shed bread is a big hit. It’s the only bread we offer! Our vision and mission are to support local producers. If we continue to always give them the local and the commercial options, they’ll probably choose the commercial because it’s familiar. But we’re here to educate kids and expose them to farmers and food producers in our larger community. We make maybe 600 sandwiches a week on The Bread Shed bread. And the kids are enjoying it and come back the next week and get the same sandwich.

The fish sticks from Red’s Best were a huge hit. We haven’t served fish sticks in a while since COVID-19 hit. It’s really good to hear the positive feedback about them compared to some of the more processed fish stick options. We also served Vermont Salumi’s sausage, and the kids really enjoyed it!

We hear you have an upcoming pilot of Grateful Greens. What interests you about this product for the kids?

Sprouts are a tough sell in school, but my schools are small enough that I think it will be a good fit for the two programs we’re testing it out in.

We’re going to have Carissa from Grateful Greens come up and do a sampling in April. We’ll probably introduce it that day when she comes in, and then we’ll probably run it in the fruit and veggie bar to get the kids used to it before working it into salads like our soup and salad days for our spring menu.

Why are you interested in having regionally-sourced foods in your cafeteria?

I think it’s a combination of supporting local agriculture and educating kids. They are our future, and we need to educate them about what sprouts from a local farm taste like, what fresh asparagus, and what green beans taste like and look like. I’m in school food service to show kids what local Vermont food tastes like.

It’s nice to be able to support the good things in the communities, and it’s important for kids to understand the importance of eating good local food. We still have a lot of work to do on educating kids. We’re looking for more promotional materials for the local farmers and producers for students to help them learn more.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

We do Harvest of the Month taste tests, and we do a lot of other Harvest of the Month work. Plus, we’re in the middle of trying to get school compost up and running.

Producer Spotlight: The Bread Shed

With International Women’s Day right around the corner, we are featuring a women-owned business as our Producer Spotlight this month.

From sliced bread to mini loaves to cookies., the Bread Shed in Keene, NH has a delicious array of baked goods to satisfies your whole family. Brittany Migneault, owner and founder of the Bread Shed, has baking in her blood—she grew up learning from her aunt and uncle who owned a traditional Italian Bakery. In 2011 Brittany opened the doors of her own bakery.

Their products are handcrafted and all-natural. They use only ingredients that can be recognized and that belong in real food. They offer a wide variety of shapes and sizes of products so that each customer can find the right size product to suit their needs. It is a product that you can feel good about serving.

It is hard to choose our favorite Bread Shed product (well maybe not for our Marketing Manager), but Brittany knows what she loves: “My favorite product of ours is the Toscano, hands down,” says Brittany. “It always has been and always will be. The Toscano is one of the first breads that I learned to bake from my uncle, but it isn’t my favorite just because of the nostalgia. I absolutely love the interior texture and the flavor of the wheat. The Toscano has a thin outer crust with a soft chewy interior. We offer it as our Rustic Baguette or our Toscano Deli loaves (which are spin-offs our traditional Italian Toscano loaf) and are more geared toward restaurants and cafes.”

You can find the Bread Shed in many grocery stores and schools in the area. And selling locally is important to Brittany. “I believe selling locally and the local food movement are important for many reasons. To start with, the food is cleaner. When you are buying from your local farmers and neighbors, the food is fresh and there aren’t any added preservatives. It’s also important that we put good food into our bodies. Also, I think the food is just so much more delicious! I also love seeing small businesses and my neighbors thrive. Great local food is becoming so much more accessible and it’s helping us build a stable foundation in our communities. It’s important that we can offer healthy, wholesome breads to our community and that we’re able to make it more accessible for everyone. I love being a part of the local food movement as a producer and a consumer.”

”Food Connects helps us reach territories that we currently do not distribute to. We do all of our own deliveries with exception to Food Connects, so we do not deliver very far beyond Southern NH and VT. Food Connects offers us an opportunity to share our products with more people which we love!” And we love working with them!

This incredibly delicious woman-owned business currently has 10 team members. “Our crew is extremely dedicated, and I couldn’t be luckier to have the team I do. We have been in business for about 9 years now and will be celebrating our 10th year next Spring.”

And if you are looking for something new from the Bread Shed, you’re in luck! “We have a newer product that has been exciting and popular. We make pretzels from spent brewers’ grains from local breweries. It’s a great way to reuse a product that otherwise will go to waste and they are amazing! We sell them to restaurants and breweries that freeze them and then bake them off and salt them as needed. They have been very popular and a fun recipe to develop!”