News from Ferndale School District

Mountain View to offer Ferndale Fries as pilot farm-to-school program (Bellingham Herald Article)– “Students at Ferndale's Mountain View Elementary School will soon be treated to freshly baked potatoes from northwest Washington as part of their school lunch. On Jan. 27, the french fries and tater tots at the school are being exchanged for locally grown potato wedges, as part of a pilot farm-to-school project. ‘This is something that's good for the students and it's good for the local farmers,’ said Alex Singer, Ferndale School District's Food Program director. ‘We have students who may not have ever had french fries that weren't frozen before.’”

A reason to celebrate - over and over again

Orcas Island has hit on a great idea: the Celebratory Lunch for the Farm to Cafeteria Program. Different island gourmands prepare a special lunch once a month featuring wholesome local food, mostly made from scratch. Professional and amateur local chefs sign up for the month they want and it's practically become a regular feature at the school cafeteria. The students love it! Who wouldn't? It's a great idea that could be adapted by other communities. Read about it in Bullwings

Something to crow about

13-year-old student Jordan Lederman from Pine Lake Middle School in Sammamish entered a video contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) on the importance of getting a good education. Of the 600 entries received, staffers at DOE picked 10 finalists, including Jordan. Her video, that explains how different subjects have helped her learn about chickens, is a how-to for the cross curriculum connotations of Farm-to-School programs. She is also quite sweet and a little silly in a very charming way. Click on Lederman’s video (lower right hand corner) and watch her chicken story. If you get there by December 4th you can vote for the contest winner.

Have you heard about the FoodHub?

What's that? Their site, live November 2nd, defines it as a virtual pantry for Pacific Northwest food buyers and sellers. This is an Ecotrust project made possible in part by funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation, Bullitt Foundation, Newman's Own Foundation, USDA's Rural Business Enhancement Grant (RBEG) program, the Annenberg Foundation, Eugene Water & Electric Board, Farm Aid, Bill Healy Foundation, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Russell Family Foundation, and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. They are holding informative sessions this month to introduce the new system and get feedback from everyone. Here are some of the questions they anticipate being able to answer in these sessions:

• How is FoodHub different from or similar to other resources such as the Puget Sound Food Network, FarmsReach, MarketMaker, or EProduceSales? Where are the synergies between and among these various tools and you?
• Who is the intended audience for FoodHub? What problem was it created to solve? What is its geographic scope? Who are the partners and funders behind FoodHub?
• Who is Ecotrust? Didn’t they used to produce a Guide to Local and Seasonal Products; whatever happened to that?
• How will FoodHub help me serve my constituents? What is its larger vision/mission?
  What role can I play in influencing FoodHub’s features and services so that it best serves me and my constituents? How will it evolve over time?

Everyone is more than welcome to come. Here are the dates and locations for the sessions:
Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 10-11:30 am
Sodo Park by Herban Feast
3200 1st Avenue South, Suite 100
Seattle, WA 98134

Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 2:30-4:00 pm
Skagit Valley Food Co-op
Community Meeting Room, 3rd Floor, Room #309
202 S. 1st St.
Mt. Vernon, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Grand Central Baking (Pioneer Square, business office)
214 1st Ave S
Seattle, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 1:30-3:00 pm
Shorebank Pacific
2720 3rd AveSeattle, WA 98121

As space is limited at all venues, please RSVP to Lola Milholland at lola@ecotrust.org.

Peninsula and South Sound Farm-to-Table Regional Workshop

There's a great event coming up next Monday, May 11th, to bring together farmers with potential buyers for their food. As farm-to-school programs become more popular, I hear from many school nutrition services directors and buyers that they love the idea of supporting local farms and providing more fresh food for their students, but are having trouble finding farms to buy from. This event will provide a friendly, fun and casual venue for meeting with farms and learning about local purchasing.

It's the Peninsula and South Sound Farm-to-Table Regional Workshop at the Little Creek Casino Resort in Shelton, WA from 12:30-5pm, attendance is free.

Light refreshments will be provided by local farms.

We invite you to strengthen our local food system by connecting farmers with buyers and discussing new market opportunities.

Contact Information: Mark McIntyre

Many students getting most of their daily nutrition from school meals

If you saw this article by David Sarasohn in The Oregonian you may have been saddened and surprised to learn that many children are only able to get adequate, nutricious food at school.  This illustrates why we need more funds and more programs to help support good food in our schools. 

"When the kids came back from spring break, they were starving," Shelly Drury says. "They wanted seconds, they wanted thirds. My principal was saying, 'We need to cook more food.' " 

If Shelly Drury is at one end of the school lunch pipeline, Tom Harkin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, is at the other. Reauthorizations -- and budgets -- go past the Iowa Democrat, and he has plans. "We'd love to get it up $1 billion a year," said Harkin in an interview earlier this month. "We could use more money. If we want to get better food for our kids, it costs money."

The enormous impact of buying local

What are the benefits of using local food sources for schools?
We may just be scratching the surface of understanding the potential advantages according to a study being conducted by Ecotrust and Oregon State University. Preliminary results show that money spent on such programs has great implications in the community. In fact, they estimate that every dollar spent in a grant from Kaiser Permanente to two local school districts resulted in $1.87 of economic activity that reverberated throughout most sectors of the economy, not just in the agricultural industries.
That’s because a multiplier effect includes the impact of buying local food as well as the impact of those food suppliers spending the cash on materials and services in turn. When Portland and Gervais school districts were given funds through a grant from Kaiser they were motivated to reallocate those funds to the local economy. Whereas previously they may have been able to buy food a bit more cheaply, they hadn’t always been able to buy local. With the grant they bought local, sometimes paying slightly more, but the result was a huge boost to the local economy. According to the article in Capital Press Agricultural News, the $66,200 grant generated a total of $225,900.

Learning to live healthy

Are the kids in your school talking about salad and raspberry dressing before lunch? That’s what’s happening at Veterans Memorial Elementary in North Naples. This school decided to plant a school garden so the students could plant and grow their own food. The goals, to save money and educate children about healthy food, have been met with enthusiasm on the part of all.
The program was suggested by a mother and seconded by the whole community. The children are proud to raise their own food and are learning good nutrition by living the experience. They get fresh, wholesome food in their cafeteria. The hands-on experience of working in their own garden builds self confidence from achieving through hard work and an understanding of delayed gratification. It is also a godsend economically in times when all school budgets are tight.
According to an article about the school and its program in the Macro Eagle, about 60% of the students chose salad for lunch on the day the reporter visited the school. The school sought advice and partnership in the endeavor from their school district, master gardeners and a local foundation. The children benefit by an increased desire to learn about the science related to growing food, time spent outside working in the garden and healthy food.

Five winners announced in "Kids are Growing"

This year’s winning schools for the “Kids are Growing” contest sponsored by the International Greenhouse Co, Washington State Potato Commission, PCC Natural Markets and King 5 were Concordia Lutheran in Tacoma, Graham Hill Elementary in Seattle, Cedarhurst Elementary in Burien, Rainier Elementary in Rainier and Explorer Community School in Redmond.
Each school had to complete an entry binder that detailed what a greenhouse would do for them: how they would use it and what they could learn from it. They also had to submit an original, healthy potato recipe.
The prizes for each school were an 8’x 8’ EasyGrow greenhouse kit, a $1000 grant from the Washington State Potato Commission, and a $500 grant and garden supplies from PCC Natural Markets.
The winning schools will use these prizes to grow food for school lunches and community food banks and to learn about healthy food choices and how food grows.

Make the connection with Farmers Markets

An article in the Bend Weekly demonstrates how local schools have been able to take advantage of the farmer's market to find new opportunities to establish relationships with local producers. This may be a fantastic way to connect with local farmers and to learn about what products they will have available shortly. (Bend Weekly)

Direct Quote from Seattle PI

The Seattle PI Editorial Board responded to the WA Post article about high food costs and school lunches. Since it's short, I'm posting it in its entirety. Enjoy!

School Lunches: It's still good food
Last updated April 15, 2008 5:24 p.m. PT

Rising food costs, which already have hit home, are going to school, too. But it's important to maintain schools' increasing emphasis on healthy eating.

A Washington Post report says some school districts are cutting costs and even switching back to less-healthy but popular fatty items for snacks. Here is the new reality: Food in general, and healthy food in particular, will cost more. That includes school lunches.

Seattle Public Schools' David Tucker said budget discussions have raised the possibility of increasing prices next year. That may well be the financially responsible course.

Just as important in our view, Tucker said there are no plans for changes in nutrition content for lunches or the exemplary rules on healthy vending products. We hope that becomes the standard across a state where the Legislature has recently approved new efforts to get fresh, local foods into cafeterias. At a time when childhood obesity threatens an explosion of health problems, cutting corners on healthier menus would be a mistake, no matter what the cost pressures.
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

More News on the Home Front

Jennifer Langston of the Seattle P-I continues to report on local food issues and school food improvement with the latest article, Better cafeteria offerings pushed by middle schoolers.

Orca Middle School has been one of the most active in Seattle in work on school gardens and school food options. Tiana Colovos, who you may have met at F2S Connections meetings, is quoted in the article: "We've made inroads with the snacks and nutrition education, but crossing that threshold into the cafeteria is like a brick wall." There are lots of reasons for this, as have been explored in earlier articles, but Orca may be on the right path with students themselves now getting involved in the campaign. They're also in a better position to approach the issue, now that they have an on-site kitchen! Learn more in the article.

King County Schools and Local Foods

A group of King County Child Nutrition Directors recently released a press release about their work providing local foods to students. We applaud them for the work they are doing and hope to support them in overcoming the challenges to increasing local foods on their menus. Here's the press release in pdf form: "King County Schools Seize Opportunities to Serve Local Foods"

Big Local News Story on Farm to School!

Farmed Out, Jennifer Langston's series of articles about Farm to School in the Seattle area, is on the cover of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (yesterday and today)! The series can be found at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/farmtoschool/. Please spread the word about these articles--they are well-researched and examine the specific issues in our region.

Living Food: Link farm, school. It's a big news day for Farm to School! There's also an editorial in the P-I with a reference to current legislative efforts:

"Environmental groups and others say they will push the Legislature to authorize more efforts. Mo McBroom of the Washington Environmental Council noted, "This is something that people care about, that parents care about, that the governor cares about, that farmers care about. Why are we behind on this?"

Come to the Farm to School Connections Team Meeting on Monday, October 22nd, to hear more about Washington Environmental Council's work on legislation for farm to school and institutions!