Community Involvement

Assisting students retrieve eggs from under warm hens

The Farm to School Program (F2S) in Eugene Oregon is under the umbrella of the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition (WFFC). WFFC is a non-profit organization that "facilitates and supports the development of a secure and sustainable food system in Lane County, Oregon; one in which our farms and food businesses are ecologically and economically viable, and all members of the community have access to locally grown foods." (WFFC mission statement visible at: WFFC's Website).

In the fall of 2009 (Sept-Dec) I spent 108 hours volunteering with the Farm to School program, and another 109 hours working as a paid intern in the spring/summer of 2010 (May-Aug). The F2S program in Eugene is one of the best of its kind in the nation offering a variety of activities that allow children to discover where food comes from and the joys of participating in the process of food from farm to table. Farm to School in Eugene writes grants to work with the local schools that enroll the greatest percentage of children who qualify for free or reduced school lunch programs. Selecting these schools allows the F2S program to reach children who are likely not getting a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables in their home environments.

Following the farmer through the fields

The activities the F2S program in Eugene offers are: 
1. Farm field trips
2. Harvest meals
3. Tasting tables
4. Nutrition lessons
5. School Gardening

During my 217 hour internship with F2S I participated in each of these activities a number of times with children in grades 2-5 from five different schools in two different school districts.

On the farm cutting up fresh vegetables for students to sample

On the farm field trips it was my responsibility to organize the materials we would need to bring with us before our day began. Once we were on the farm I would supervise groups of children as the farmer gave a farm tour. It was my job to ensure the children were respectful, attentive, engaged, safe and also having fun and tasting as many vegetables as they could. I also led groups of children in various "helping tasks" while we were on the farm including: garlic peeling for seed garlic, bean shelling for bean seeds, potato digging, strawberry picking, onion and potato planting, weeding etc. These activities provided excellent educational opportunities to bring to light the fact that farming is not easy, that all the food we eat comes from farms and that someone somewhere has put a lot of time and energy into growing the food that we eat.

Harvest meals consisted of food procured from the farm we had taken the students to. We would bring the food back from the farm to the classroom. In the classroom we would give a brief knife safety lesson and then supervise the students in cutting and preparing whatever produce we had brought back from the farm. We would prepare in the classroom a meal made with fresh food to be enjoyed before class ended. Some of these meals were lightly fried potatoes, kale, onions and butter or fruit salads, we also made hard boiled egg salads, and fresh tomato salsa. These activities were particularly enriching as we would often have children who didn't think they liked a particular vegetable until they ate it at a harvest meal and then they realized that they did like it (at least when it was farm fresh).

Informal WFFC tasting table at Hope in Action Conference

Tasting tables were one of my favorite events. These events were open to the entire school instead of just one or two classrooms. We would prepare a spread of locally grown produce (bell peppers, tomatoes, green beans, snap peas, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, kohlrabi, radishes etc.) and set it up in the cafeteria. Kids could then come by our table after they had been through the cafeteria line and they'd let us know what foods they wanted to eat or try and we would put those foods on their plate.

The first tasting table I ever did was especially rewarding. As the kids came to our table I noticed the bland, beige, boring color of the trays in their hands and of the processed/frozen/packaged food they had picked up in the cafeteria. As they came through our line their boring, bland trays and plates came to life with the vibrant colors of the food we were offering (red, orange, yellow, green, blue). It was also extremely fun to encourage kids to try new vegetables, or to inform them of the name of a vegetable they did not recognize. We would often hear kids running around after lunch saying things like, "this was the BEST lunch EVER! I wish we had this EVERY day." Also kids would come back at the end when we were packing up and they would be so excited to take home bags of carrots, and radishes and watermelon and other fresh produce.

Leading nutrition lesson at Apple Gate Elementary School

The program director, Megan Kemple, had never given nutrition lessons before I started on as an intern. With her guidance and input from another intern, we created a nutrition lesson which I was able to lead/teach many of during the course of my internship. These lessons included a run through of the food pyramid and the different food groups, the importance of eating the appropriate amounts of fruits and vegetables, and the importance of consuming a variety of colors when choosing fruits and vegetables. We would end these lessons with a game. We had the kids line up at one end of the room, or gym and we put a brown paper bag at the other end with a bunch of colored fruit and vegetable cut outs in between them and the grocery bags. The object of the game was to create a rainbow of colors of vegetables and fruits in the grocery bag. I felt that this game reinforced the idea that there is a rainbow of color available in various fruits and vegetables that grow locally and we need some of each to get proper nutrition.

Garden scavenger hunt

Every school that we worked with either had a small school garden, or had access to a "youth farm." On garden days we would take the kids out to the garden in small groups and do scavenger hunts with them where they would have to find the different plant parts and show them to us, and find decomposing bugs, and fungi, and different types of dirt, sand, and soil. This activity allowed us to educate students about the various parts of plants and how we eat the flowers of some plants, the stems of others, and the leaves of yet other plants. It also provided an opportunity to speak of the importance of certain bugs and how necessary they are for plants to grow and then feed us.

Oregon Country Fair Booth July 2012

Working with the F2S program was incredibly enriching. I believe it is extremely important that we raise awareness about where food comes from. Everyone should know that it comes from farms and not just stores, that without farms we have no food, and that farming is hard work and that those who do it deserve to be recognized for their hard work.

"Traveling Tom and Local Lilly" at Hope in Action Conference (myself and a fellow intern pose in costumes for a performance)

One of the major challenges for me during this experience was when we would have lunch on the farm with the students we had brought there. It was incredibly depressing and shocking for me how much packaging came out of their lunch bags. The number of "Lunchables" and blue colored liquid, Doritos chips and soda shocked me each and every time. Seeing this reality makes me realize more and more how important it is that we influence these kids at a young age to appreciate the taste of fruits and vegetables and the value these foods offer when consumed fresh and whole (and un-packaged). This scene also highlights the importance of educating parents about local and whole foods and the value and importance of them for their children's health and for the health of the greater community.

Fresh Food in Schools Summit 2012
March 8, 2012 I attended the Fresh Food in Schools Summit in Olympia with a peer of mine. It was an incredible experience and learning opportunity.

I was really impressed by the key note speaker, Kate Adamick, author of Lunch Money. She shared slides of cafeterias all across the country that she has visited and she spoke about the items and practices in school cafeterias where money is used unnecessarily. From redundantly placing individual tangerines into individual plastic cups on trays to having on hand a 10 pound box of sprinkles which will be sprinkled onto the unnecessary and bad-habit forming dessert cookies offered every day with lunch. Adamick highlighted the absurdity of serving kids dessert options every day at lunch and the unfortunate and unhealthy habits school lunch options are leading to in our youth. She also touched on the rising childhood obesity epidemic and related risk factors for disease that are associated with school lunch meals.

Adamick is founder of Cook for America which offers "Culinary Boot Camps, which provide school food service directors, kitchen managers, lead cooks, and support staff with concentrated and comprehensive culinary training in such basic competencies as food safety and sanitation, culinary math, time management, knife skills, menu planning, and foundational cooking techniques related to proteins, grains, legumes, vegetables, sauces, and baked items."