Locally healthier food

FERRISBURGH CENTRAL SCHOOL students dig into their hot lunches Tuesday afternoon. The school is working with Vergennes Union High School Walden Project students to bring more local food into school lunches and raise the younger children’s awareness of local farming.

Independent photo/Trent Campbell

By ANDY KIRKALDY

FERRISBURGH — A Farm-to-School Grant recently awarded to Ferrisburgh Central School and Vergennes Union High School will not only improve the links between those schools and local farmers and between elementary and high school students, but also, school officials said, bring healthier food to FCS students. 

The Vermont departments of agriculture and education last week jointly awarded $12,500 to FCS and the Walden Project, the VUHS alternative education program. It is one of a dozen such grants around Vermont. In Addison County, elementary schools in Cornwall and Salisbury earned smaller grants.

FCS Principal Donn Marcus said the grant will bring Walden and FCS students together in mentoring relationships, bring healthier food into the school cafeteria, add to the school curriculum, and put his school’s students in touch with their town’s farming heritage.

“Especially in these times of dwindling agricultural base, they drive by farms and fields and for many of them it’s what their families do, but for others it’s just another blur in the landscape,” Marcus said. “What this allows to happen is (students will) move through those barn doors and get into those fields and develop a sense of ‘This is what happens here and this is what my community is about, and this is how it relates to what I can learn in school.’”

The grant was written by Americorps/VISTA member Emily Watson-Blagden, who is working with the Walden Project and the Willowell Foundation, which owns the Monkton land that Walden calls home. Others involved in the effort include Walden Project director Matt Schlein; FCS teachers Judy Elson, Lydia Hibbard, Alana Lilly and Donna Rusik; and FCS food service manager Kathy Alexander.

FCS and Walden, each of which already have gardens that they use to grow food for students, will use the money to:

• Buy seeds and seedlings for those gardens.

• Buy produce from local farmers.

• Support an existing FCS “Producers Fair,” in which Lilly’s 3rd-grade students research local food producers, who then set up booths at the school at a special annual event. Alexander called the fair “one of the best things that happens in the school. The kids do amazing research. They make fantastic connections.”

• Develop FCS classroom materials related to nutrition and local farming.

• Bring local farmers into the school, and take students to local farms.

• Bring Walden students to FCS as mentors. For example, Walden students will help younger pupils interview farmers and do their research for the producers’ fair.

Much of what the grant will create is built on an existing foundation. In addition to the fair and the gardens, Walden and FCS students have worked together on a previous project: FCS students visited the Walden garden, and Walden students took cabbage to Elson’s 5th-grade classroom, where they made sauerkraut. Alexander’s kitchen and Walden also had existing relationships with local farmers.

Alexander supported the grant as a way to enhance those connections, for any number of reasons.

“My thing is all about the kids eating the best food they can possibly eat, but also learning about the importance of food, the importance of good food, and the importance of fresh food,” she said. “And this grant gives us an opportunity to get this big jump start on developing this relationship with farmers so we can get fresh food here more often than we have before, which is actually a lot.”

Like Marcus, Alexander also wants Ferrisburgh students to understand the value and history of farming in their town.

“Believe it or not we have kids who are losing touch with that,” she said. “The kids are really at risk of losing that heritage … and we actually have to teach it, and we have to teach it before it’s too late, before it’s gone. That’s a big component of this grant, the educational piece.”

Walden project director Matt Schlein, like the others involved in obtaining and setting the grant in motion, sees multiple benefits. Starting the Walden garden four years ago was just a first step, he said: The grant will advance an educational and nutritional cause both at Walden and at FCS.

“The relationship with the natural world changes when what you’re eating isn’t an abstraction. You’re going into the garden and grabbing your lunch,” Schlein said. “There have been more green leafy vegetables in the bellies of Walden students over the years. It’s starting some good healthy habits. And with the national focus on obesity, this is sort of on a micro level a good solution to that problem. It’s getting the kids directly involved in what they’re eating.”

Walden students will also benefit from working with younger pupils, he said.

“It’s one thing to know what to do, but it’s another thing to know and then to go and be in the role of mentor explaining it to the younger kids,” Schlein said. “I think there’s a real great symbiosis that happens for the Walden student when they’re able to go to the Ferrisburgh school and talk about what they want to do and share the knowledge.”

IN SALISBURY AND CORNWALL

Plans for the smaller Farm-to-School grants received by Salisbury Community School and Cornwall’s Brigham Elementary School have a similar ring to some of the activities planned in Ferrisburgh, though in a more limited scope.

Salisbury Community School will use its $5,050 grant to develop educational relationships between students and farmers in the community. The arrangement will include school/farm visits and the purchase of locally grown products to incorporate into the school lunch program.

Bingham Elementary will use its $7,700 grant to purchase a freezer and local products for the student lunch program. Peg Powers, food service manager at Bingham, said the freezer will provide valuable long-term storage space for local products like beef, tomatoes, onions and green beans. Those items will then be tapped for school lunches during throughout the year.

Schlein hopes the idea of Addison Northwest Supervisory Union schools producing their own food and connecting with local schools does not end with Walden and FCS.

“Yes, it will impact the quality of lunches out at Walden and allow us to grow the garden significantly,” Schlein said. “But the goal and the hope has always been that the garden isn’t always just simply a Walden project, but it could become a larger Vergennes high school project or maybe even part of a larger Addison Northwest Supervisory Union project.”

John Flowers contributed to this story.

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