Students from Mrs. Willsey's 4th grade class
gathered around stacks of steamed squash halves in the
Berne
Elementary School kitchen September 26, taking turns carefully scraping and
plopping dollops of the warm orange pulp into serving trays.
 "Yuuuummmm,"
one student hummed to herself as
Food Service Manager Deb Rosko
explained the students would add butter and brown sugar to the
squash and serve it as part of school lunch on Monday, September
29. Students in the
district have been purchasing locally grown food on BKW lunch
menus for a number of years. They just didn't know it - until
now. The squash, grown locally at
Schoharie Valley Farms, is one
of the first examples of a district initiative to make students
more aware of the health and environmental benefits associated
with eating food grown by local farmers.
All this school year, fruits and vegetables grown on the local
farms dotting the Helderberg Hill Town landscape will be
available for school lunch thanks to the district's partnership
with the Schoharie County Farm to School Project.
This project is in initiative that enables the district to make
foods grown on local farms available to students through the
school food service program. Rosko says locally grown foods will
be on the lunch menu and clearly labeled in the lunch line at
least once per week. The
Farm to School Project is facilitated by
Regina Tillman,
Nutrition Resource Educator of Cornell Cooperative Extension.
With her guidance, schools in the rural towns of Schoharie,
Albany and Schenectady counties have formed a school food
service sub-committee to plan projects that give students the
choice of purchasing locally-grown food at lunch.
In addition to raising
awareness about food sources in their own backyards, the Farm to
School Project also strives to tell students the stories behind
the fruits and vegetables marked "locally grown" in the
lunch line. "Our goal is to
educate students of the complete cycle of food in our lives,
from the field to the table," Rosko says. "We also aim to give
students a greater appreciation of the resources we have right
in our own backyards - not only the land we live on, but the
people who work the land to benefit us all."
Go here to learn more about the Farm to School Project on a
national scale. |
