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!

Cafeterias Unknown: Academy School

Pictured: Jo Carol (left) and Ali West (right)

On Tuesdays, we each nachos. For lunch. With refried beans and zesty potato wedges. Top it off with a local apple and you’ve got yourself lunch at Academy School in Brattleboro!

A few weeks back, I went to lunch with Jo Carol Ratti, principal of the Dummerston School for the past 20 years, who was keen to see what’s cookin’ in Brattleboro. So, we joined food service director, Ali West, for lunch at Academy School.

You might wonder what fueled Jo Carol’s curiosity. In her final year at Dummerston, she has been part of a movement that’s beginning to take place. A group of passionate parents has come together to support the school in improving food quality and re-envisioning the school lunch menu. School meals are a complicated world of USDA regulations, tight budgets, and particular customers—so Jo Carol decided to visit Brattleboro for some inspiration.

The Brattleboro Town School District has improved food quality over the past 5 years by adopting a set of higher food standards and recruiting a stellar food service director to oversee their implementation. Simply put, Ali West is a Rockstar (with a capital R) and is fully committed to serving good food to her students each and every day. She sources a variety of locally grown products and works hard to ensure the district’s higher food standards are met each week.

Luckily, Ali was able to sneak out of the kitchen for a few minutes to eat lunch and share some wisdom with us. We joined a group of students at the “peanut free” table and set to polishing off our nachos and beans. Academy’s cafeteria is in a shared space with the gymnasium. Students flow through the kitchen to pick up the lunch they ordered earlier in the day and then head next door to grab fruit and a place to sit. Each day, Ali and her staff fill a big bowl with local apples for students to grab as a final addition to their lunch. The menu for Brattleboro Town Schools is similar to other Cafe Services schools, with a few twists. Ali offers local apples and yogurt each day, as well as vegetarian options for students. Her March menu features vegan “Neatballs” and a BBQ tofu sandwich, to replace items featuring animal proteins. The district has eliminated a variety of unhealthy ingredients, including things like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and food dyes.

Ali and her staff connect with Academy students during meal times and have found creative ways to increase participation in school meals. The lunch line is adorned with colorful VT Harvest of the Month posters as well as pictures featuring local farms. To top it all off, the kitchen door boasts its very own “farm to school” sign.

All in all, a fulfilling experience. Until next time Academy!

March 2019 Farm To School Newsletter

March Newsletter

National School Breakfast Week

Spring Garden Planning Workshops

Food Connects us with History

Green Street Herbs in a Main Street Restaurant

Cafeterias Unknown: Dummerston Elementary School

February 8, 2019 - Dummerston Elementary School

Pizza day, oh blessed pizza day! A few weeks back, I got to spend my Friday afternoon lunchtime with a gaggle of first-graders at Dummerston School. What began as a table of 2 quickly turned into a table of 12—those kids sure were eager to tell me stories about their day (and their whole lives)! The majority of my table had school lunch, with a few bringing lunches from home.

From the lunch line, I went with a big slice of pepperoni pizza, a maple-balsamic spinach salad with strawberries, sliced cukes, baby carrots, canned pears, and a carton of 2% milk. Oh! And one scrumptious local apple from Green Mountain Orchards in Putney.

In Dummerston, the kitchen is run by a staff of two—Tracey & Lori of Cafe Services. They cook for about 80 students each day. This year, they are working to decrease waste by switching from plastic to reusable lunch containers. Additionally, they are hoping to eliminate a variety of unhealthy ingredients, increase local purchasing and provide lower sugar content foods whenever possible.

Lunch was super fun. We talked about what it would be like to milk a cow. We talked about what a baked brie and jam birthday cake would taste like. And we took some photos with our eyes closed (just to see what it would look like). Overall, a Friday afternoon well spent.

Eating lunch (or any meal!) with others is always a pleasure—I encourage you to share a meal with friends or colleagues this week!

Breakfast at Elm Hill Elementary

I arrived at Elm Hill School in Springfield, VT early on Wednesday morning. Children and families were beginning to trickle inside, some headed to early morning recess, and others headed to the cafeteria for breakfast. My mission? Learn more about the school’s efforts to increase food access by moving breakfast after the bell!

Elm Hill hosts children from kindergarten through second grade, after which time they head across town to Union Street School for grades three through five. Elm Hill sits at what appears to be the top of Springfield, overlooking the city. The building is full of light and adorned with colorful student art. Principal Dr. Christine Pereira and her staff greet students with a warm welcome as they arrive for the day.

This year, the school has implemented new strategies to support positive student behavior. Classrooms have adopted the practice of being “responsive,” working with students to create and uphold classroom expectations throughout the day. Another aspect of this new programming has been to increase the time period during which students can get breakfast in the morning.

In the past, students chose between recess and breakfast before the start of the school day. When you’re 6 years old, you may deem playing with your friends more important than having breakfast. Fair enough. But, as we know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A student who hasn’t eaten is much more likely to be distracted or distracting to their peers. Christine and her staff understand breakfast to be an essential part of their students’ ability to focus, participate and learn. Christine emphasized, “I didn’t want there to be a barrier for my students to access food.”

So, this school year, breakfast has been extended into the first part of the school day. Teachers may choose to send students to the cafeteria for breakfast or host the meal in the classroom as they give announcements and begin the day. In this way, teachers are able to make the new practice work for their classroom. Christine mentioned that while there was some initial hesitation based on previous challenges with breakfast after the bell, the school is now really embracing the new system. More students are participating in breakfast, and students are connecting with each other in new ways.

My visit finished with a tour of the school, including the cafeteria, which was full of light, hanging plants, and happy students. The food program is managed by Anna Tewksbury, of Cafe Services, with two additional full-time staff supporting her. Kids selected from a variety of breakfast options—including scrambled eggs, muffins, fruit, orange juice, and milk. Many students were eating together at round tables, while others trekked back to the classroom with full trays.

While we can’t necessarily attribute it to changes in breakfast programming, student behavior has generally improved this school year. It’s likely that increased access to breakfast has contributed to that in some way. Elm Hill staff has been proactive in their efforts to support student success and their efforts are paying off.

On my way out of town, I happened to run into a few Elm Hill parents at a coffee shop and we got to talking about school breakfast. They expressed support and gratitude for the extended breakfast period this school year, noting that it “feels much more inclusive!” This program helps to relieve the stress that busy parents feel in the morning and promotes community building within the school. In Springfield, food service has embraced these changes and we hope to see this type of programming continue to expand throughout the district.

By: Kate Venne, Farm to School Manager

Green Street Herbs in a Main Street Restaurant

Green Street School and Yalla VT began an exciting partnership last fall. Thanks to the initiative of Tara Gordon, Green Street School’s new garden coordinator, students in kindergarten, first, and fourth grade are growing fresh cilantro for this locally owned Mediterranean restaurant on Main Street in Brattleboro. The herbs are grown in three indoor classroom grow stands. So far the students have successfully grown, harvested, and supplied Yalla with one flavorful crop of cilantro which Yalla traded for some of their fresh pita bread and cilantro spread that the kids enjoyed as a yummy in school snack.

This project has provided many learning opportunities so far for Tara and her students.  They began by seeding both parsley and cilantro, which make a great duo because they are close relatives—they are part of the same plant family—with some similar overlapping properties, and both are native to the middle east. To launch the project, Tara brought in fresh cilantro, parsley leaves, and cilantro seeds for students to taste test. Just realizing that both the leaves (cilantro) and seeds (cumin) of the same plant have different names was exciting! The classes learned health benefits and interesting plant properties of these herbs, plant morphology and life cycle, germination and growth requirements, and how Yalla may be using them in their menus. The kids loved knowing that they were growing herbs for a real live restaurant! Unfortunately the parsley did not germinate, which was a learning experience in itself, so they decided to focus on growing cilantro.

The second full batch of cilantro is now underway—it germinated and sprouted over February vacation. The students are refining their growing techniques, and this time around, rather than using the 6 cell packs, they decided to plant in larger rectangular plastic flats which will not dry out as quickly. Tara says, “with time and experimentation we would like to increase our growing capacity with alternating seeding for continuous harvesting while speeding up growth. Yalla would certainly like to buy from us, which could work out well once our productivity increases.”

This project encourages students to place value in nurturing plants while they learn ways to make the project more sustainable by developing plant cultivation skills, as well as business and production skills. It really is a community enrichment program where Green Street students are learning how to grow a mutually beneficial relationship with a local business. Yalla’s owner Zohar Arama says, “We’re investing in a new generation at Green Street School and it’s fun to work with them! We’re thrilled to keep this collaboration going with the community.”

Food Connects us with History

Food can connect us in so many ways...to each other when we grow, prepare, and share food together...to the land as we plant, tend, and harvest our gardens...and to our own history.

After listening to Onika Abraham’s inspiring talk at the Massachusetts Farm and Sea to School Conference where she invited us to tell the stories of our agrarian ancestors, I wanted to know more of my own family’s history of farming, so I set out on a hunt. This led me on a tour of US history and brought me face to face with my own white privilege. This journey is causing me to think more deeply about the roots of injustice and challenge myself to work even harder to transform the systems that have benefited me and other white folks and oppressed so many others.

In a FoodCorps blog post on February 14, 2019, Tiffany McClain shares “3 Hard Truths That Will Help Your Organization Undo Racism.” First on the list is “learn and share whose ancestral lands you are privileged to stand on and—if they are no longer there—learn and share why that is...the first step toward undoing oppression is to name it and make it visible—not tiptoeing around it with words that soften the truth.”

So, here goes!

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South Dakota

I grew up hearing about a soybean farm in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where my grandfather and his siblings spent time when they were young, but I never knew the details. My aunt asked my grandfather for a family history before he died, and this history, combined with additional research into the historical events of the time, has helped me to piece together parts of the story.

This farm belonged to my great, great grandfather—a man named Ian Ryan*. It was a 700-acre farm near Sioux Falls, and both soybeans and corn were grown there. Who was Ian Ryan, and how did he get so much land?

Tipperary, Ireland

Ryan was born in 1863, one year before the end of the Civil War. He was born to Irish immigrants, refugees who had been farmers in Ireland and came to America from Tipperary in 1848, during the potato famine. I would love to know the details of their story of farming, struggle, and immigration, but unfortunately, I don’t know their names and their stories have been lost. My aunt traveled to Ireland several years ago and tried to find records of our Irish ancestors, but she was unsuccessful in her search because more than 1,000 years of the Irish records were destroyed when a public records office was bombed during the Irish Civil War of 1922.

Illinois-Michigan Canal

What we do know about my Irish ancestors is that they landed in Boston and immediately headed west to a large Irish immigrant farming community in La Salle, Illinois. This is where Ian Ryan was born. La Salle was a boom town at the time of their arrival. 1848 was the year that the Illinois-Michigan Canal was completed, linking the Illinois River in La Salle to Chicago and Lake Michigan. Much of the work building the canal had been done by Irish immigrants working in extremely difficult conditions who settled in the area when the canal was completed, which explains why there was a large Irish community there. At that time, La Salle was described as a place where northern and southern culture met, as shipments from New Orleans and the Caribbean came up the river by steamship and shipments from Chicago and the east coast arrived via the canal.

When Ian Ryan was in his teens he left Illinois, traveling over 500 miles west to Dakota Territory to work as a land surveyor. Land surveying was big business in the Dakota Territory at that time—the Homestead Act of 1862 stole millions of acres of native land and gave it away in 160-acre parcels to European settlers. All that stolen land had to be surveyed before the allotments were made.

The narrative in America about people like my great, great grandfather, a first-generation American who made it big, is that anyone in our country can achieve this if they have a dream and work hard enough. I don’t doubt that Ryan was a hard worker, however, it is clear to me that his whiteness gave him a huge advantage. If instead, my great, great grandfather had been an extremely hard-working and visionary member of the Dakota Sioux, this would be a very different story.

At some point, Ryan switched from land surveying to banking, and he founded a prominent bank in Sioux Falls. It was through his career at the bank that he bought the 700-acre farm. The farm was purchased in what my cousin thinks was a foreclosure auction in the 1920s during the Farm Crisis brought on by the steep drop in agriculture prices after World War I. Ryan purchased the farm as an investment and, as far as I know, he never lived on the farm or worked that land, in spite of the fact that his parents had been farmers in Ireland and later in Illinois and he had grown up on a farm. That farmland, originally the homeland of the Dakota Sioux that was stolen as part of the Homestead Act, stayed in my family as an investment property until the early 1990s, providing income to all of Ryan’s descendants for several generations. Managing the farm from afar became too difficult for my grandfather and his sister and they finally sold it, investing the proceeds in the stock market so that future generations, including my own, could continue to benefit.

As I pieced together this history, it left me with many more questions, as well as deep discomfort about my family history and the ways that my family up to the present have benefited at the expense first of native people and then poor white farmers who fell on hard times.

Sioux Chiefs

What was this land in Sioux Falls like before it was stolen from the Dakota Sioux and turned into farmland for white immigrants? My heart hurts to think of these peoples forced relocation to reservations, the massacre of their community that took place at Wounded Knee, and the cultural genocide that occurred for over one hundred years as thousands of native families were forced to place their children in Indian boarding schools whose goal was to “kill the Indian, save the man.” These are just a few examples of the deep harm that was caused to the original people of this land.

Who were the poor white farmers that lost the land in the 1920s? How did they recover from their loss of land and livelihood? Who were the tenant farmers that actually worked the land while it was under the ownership of my great grandfather and his descendants? How did they manage during the Dust Bowl era? How were they treated by my family? I would like to know the stories of all the other people who were connected to this land.

How would Ian Ryan’s life and the legacy my family inherited have been different without the Potato Famine, the Louisiana Purchase, the Homestead Act, and the 1920s Farm Crisis? What debt does my family and other owning-class families owe to native people in this country for the land that we stole?

Onika Abraham encouraged us to share the stories of our ancestors and their relationship with the land because these stories would shine a light on the roots of oppression of our current food system, strengthening our resolve to change the system to make it more equitable and just for all people. To be honest, I hesitated about whether to share this story because it made me uncomfortable to admit publicly that my own family has benefitted from the oppression of others. But as a white person in the US, of course, this is a piece of my story...how could it not be? Debby Irving says in her book Waking Up White that, “No one alive today created this mess, but everyone alive today has the power to work on undoing it.” What am I going to do with my power?

Now that I know more of my own history, I plan to use this heightened awareness of my privilege in my work and my life to transform the very system that has benefitted my family and oppressed so many others. My first step has been to become vulnerable and share my history with all of you, rather than following my first instinct to sweep it under the rug because of my feelings of shame about my privilege. To quote again from Waking Up White,

“I can’t give away my privilege. I’ve got it whether I want it or not. What I can do is use my privilege to create change. I can speak up without fear of bringing down my entire race. I can suggest change with less fear of losing my job. If I lose my job, I have a white husband who can support me because he’s a white man who had access to education and now has access to employment...I believe America is rich with white people clamoring to demonstrate their moral courage and be part of a change that creates the kind of world we can feel good about leaving to our children.”

No matter who you are or what your family’s history of farming is, I invite you to share that story with me and with others. Sharing stories is an important step along the path of our collective healing from the ingrained cultural systems of oppression that are so pervasive. To quote one more time from Tiffany McClain’s blog post, “...There are an increasing number of spiritual leaders and trauma specialists who stress the need for white people to examine and heal their own racial wounds. Something has to happen within one’s psyche in order to participate in, look away from, or become numb to the pain of others—especially pain imposed on entire groups of people...The psychic impact has been passed on from generation to generation just as indigenous people and people of color experience inter-generational trauma.”

For me, sharing this story has helped me take a step away from guilt, shame, and avoidance of the painful story of my ancestors and toward an openness to the truth of our history and a willingness to work together to create a better future. I hope that you will join me!

By: Sheila Humphreys, Farm to School Coordinator

*Name changed at the request of a family member.

February 2019 Farm To School Newsletter

February Newsletter

Westminster Library Farm to School

Featured Chef: Melissa Bacon

Let's Grow Together! Food Connects’s Spring Garden Planning Workshops for Schools

Cafeterias Unknown: NewBrook Elementary School

We were lucky to catch NewBrook School during Diversity Week in January. Chef Chris went with a Greek-themed lunch, including Gyros, orzo pasta salad, and fruit. Oh, and a fully stocked salad bar, of course!

This time around, I was lucky to have my partner in crime—Sheila! Sheila Humphreys is my farm to school partner at Food Connects and we decided to treat ourselves to a Friday afternoon out on the town—aka NewBrook Elementary’s cafeteria. We arrived at noon to a cafeteria full of second graders. Lunch was being served by Chef Chris and his assistant for the day, Principal Scotty Tabachnick. We each got a gyro with meatballs, tzatziki sauce, and crisp red onion, pasta salad, green salad, and fresh fruit. Oh, and my fave—cottage cheese.

We were lucky enough to snag a seat with some second-grade boys, James & Nolan. Nolan was having bagged lunch from home, while James munched on a gyro. We chatted about their favorite school lunch items. Nolan loves shepherds’ pie and hot dogs. They also let us know that Chef Chris makes some darn good waffles in the morning. James eats breakfast at school every day.  

NewBrook puts on a “community lunch” each month, typically featuring produce and meats from local farms. The school accepts donations in any amount and encourages families and community members to join students for lunch. Check it out sometime soon! Don’t want to go alone? Give us a call—we are always happy to dig into a good school lunch!

Next up? Dummerston on February 8th for pizza day—I might even treat myself to a carton of milk!

Library Takes the Lead on Farm to School in Westminster

Thanks to one dedicated librarian, students at Westminster Center School were able to spend a large majority of their reading time in the garden this fall. Mandy Walsh, the current librarian in Westminster and former art and library teacher in Grafton, is eager to get her students outside as often as possible. She manages the school’s large teaching garden—using the space to teach her students how to plant, nurture and harvest their own produce.

One favorite activity is the Salsa Scavenger Hunt, in which students harvest tomatoes, peppers, onions, and other salsa ingredients from the garden and then turn them into a big batch of salsa for snacking. In addition to food-growing activities, Mandy reads with students in the “sunflower classroom,” a large space encircled by sunflowers.

“We planted during camp in cups of dirt and added the seeds” - Maci, WCS student

“It was so cool because there are sunflowers everywhere that we read books and talk and play” - Alden, WCS student

It’s not just library classes that benefit from this kind of education—a number of teachers partner with Mandy throughout the school year to take their classes into the garden as well. Westminster Community Schools are more committed than ever to find ways for students to engage with nature. In fact, each Friday, Kindergartners spend the day in the school’s outdoor classroom.

“This is the boundary of our outdoor classroom. From this spot I can see water and different trees. I like to listen to the sound of the running river from this spot” - Elliot, WCS Student

This spring, Westminster students look forward to a number of projects, including a garlic harvest, spring garden clean-up, and a number of fun cooking projects. This year, Mandy is also excited to plant a number of crops to be harvested in time for next fall’s annual Thanksgiving Supper at the school.

“I love planning, with our staff, for our spring planting and fall harvest during the heart of winter.” - Mandy Walsh

Garlic planting in October—they planted over 200 “garlic seeds!”