Food Day: An educational feast!

Posted on October 31, 2013 by kidsingardens

The following article will appear in next week’s Julian News. Great photos follow after the story!

Joining with individuals, schools and cities across America, Julian Elementary School celebrated its first National Food Day on October 24^th. From 9:00 to 2:00, K-5 students were treated to eight different workshops spread across campus focusing on food, agriculture, cooking and nutrition. Simply put, students and staff ate it up.

All sessions were experiential, interactive and expertly taught by a team of volunteers. Representing the Julian Apple Growers Association, Mary Prentice and Teak Nichols related the history of the apple while having the students press their own cider. Josh Rasmussen, from Down the Road Farm, led students in a planting activity as well as brought farm animals for the kids to enjoy. Farm Smart, a program of the UC Desert Research and Extension Center, lent us Stephanie Collins for a wonderful program that included churning butter, comparing animal feed, and milking Bessie, a wooden cow equipped with an inner stainless steel container filled with real milk. Camp Stevens staff Ryan Wannamaker and Correen Walsh captivated kids in the garden with pollinator games, honey tastings and dressing up as beekeepers. Led by Tricia Elisara and Gina VanderKam, students played vocabulary-rich “Garden Bingo” and interacted with the outstanding documentary film “Nourish” about global food issues.

Cooking was another key ingredient of the day. Chef Greg from Healthy Adventures Foundation enlisted students to help make lettuce wraps and flavorful tostadas. Across campus, Chef Jeremy Manley and Carie Quick talked with students about the new school lunch program (catered by Jeremy’s on the Campus) and had the students brainstorm new menu items. To tie it all together, Carmen Macias led a game in classifying edible plant parts, decorating a “My Plate” diagram with healthy choices and ending with a fitness activity. Many parents, Garden Beneficials and other dedicated community members generously gave their day to assisting at each workshop.

To add to this educational banquet, the campus was decorated with posters made by students in the weeks prior, promoting good food and healthy habits. At 11:00, students gathered on the playground for a scheduled exercise break led by Coach Dobby from the Julian Fitness Center. Just before starting, however, music came on the load speaker and Principal/Superintendent Kevin Ogden moved to the center of the campus, dancing. Teachers joined him from all directions, and the first ever flash mob at Julian Elementary was performed, appropriately enough to the song “We can change the world” on a day dedicated to making a healthier world for all of us!

Celebrating Food Day was an idea generated by the school’s Farm to School Team as part of the year-long USDA planting grant awarded to the district and spearheaded by Pathways Executive Director Susi Jones. To learn more about National Food Day, or to begin planning activities for next year, please visit www.foodday.org and/or contact the Farm to School Coordinator Tricia Elisara for more information.

Students made these posters in University of Wednesday

Cranking the cider press (Photo courtesy of Karen Alexander)

Wait a minute….is that Gina VanderKam playing Garden Bingo? (On a visit from Washington, she was my right hand woman all day!) She is still trying to get the crayon off her fingers….

How adorable is this?

An activity to classify the edible parts of the plant

Working on a “My Plate” activity

After this class, the girl pictured told me “Best day ever!”

Harvest of the Month: Tomatoes

Posted on August 28, 2013 by kidsingardens

It’s official–it’s on the marquee.

Planted in June, these tomatoes will be ripening right on time. For the month of September, we will be harvesting and eating all of our garden-grown beauties.

Arranged by school board member Mrs. Tellam, the Farm Stand in Escondido donated a box of Carolina Golds and Caro Rich that we took out to recess…….

…so that the Garden Ambassadors could run a taste test. Our principal/superintendent Mr. Ogden is interacting with the kids, encouraging them to have a taste and exclaiming how delicious the tomatoes are!

The ambassadors always take a poll: thumbs up or thumbs down. (Only one reported thumbs down.) They also asked the “tomato challenge”: letting kids know tomatoes don’t come from Italy (a common guess!) but from Central and South America.

We had some left over, so we put them in the front office so that kids, parents and staff could take one or two home.

Our brand new lunch menu has been featuring gorgeous local heirloom tomatoes so the hope is that all of this education will ultimately make kids more receptive to/excited about them when they see them on the salad bar. Yum!

From the “hill” to the “campus”

Posted on August 24, 2013 by kidsingardens

For many years, the school lunch program has been serviced by a food service company headquartered out of the Midwest. Weekly, frozen entrées were trucked in from somewhere in southern California, stored and then “heated and served.” It worked for many reasons: the price, the pre-packaged portions, and the availability of this company to deliver to our remote mountain town. The quality of the food? Well, it was frozen, fairly processed and far from local. As part of our USDA Farm to School grant, Susi and I began to research other possibilities.

And a possibility began to emerge—so big and so wonderful—it was hard to believe it might actually happen. But it did, thanks to many meetings, the support of our administration and the work of our nutrition program director. Our school lunch program at our public elementary, junior high and high school, is now (as of two weeks ago) catered exclusively by a local Farm to Table restaurant, Jeremy’s on the Hill. Allow me to list the many levels of wonderfulness:

-Jeremy’s on the Hill is run by chef Jeremy Manly who attended Julian schools, went away to culinary school and came back home to establish a restaurant with his family.

-Jeremy’s on the Hill is a Farm to Table restaurant, sourcing as much local food as possible.

-Jeremy’s has a reputation for being one of the best places to eat in our town, and now the kids at our school get the benefit of their good food every day.

-Through this new contract, we were able to invest our school lunch program money into our own town, and it has created jobs.

-No longer frozen, all meals are cooked each morning and driven a few miles down the road.

-I was at the high school when the new program rolled out. The cafeteria smelled wonderful, I heard a kid exclaim about the “real food,” and many of the staff even bought lunch—perhaps for the first time. A mom wrote to me saying how thrilled she is that her son is taking advantage of the local, fresh salad bar. I’ve heard reports of kids trying new things—like the heirloom tomatoes last week–and being won over. One kid said the “Baja Bowl” with brown rice, cabbage, tomatoes, olives and fish didn’t look appetizing, but it was the best things he’s eaten in a long time. Sure, there a kinks to iron out as with any overhaul of any major program, but things are off to a great start thanks to the vision of our administration, the flexibility and commitment of our nutrition staff and Jeremy’s dedication to making sure that the school meal that many kids have—and many kids depend on—is the kind that will prepare their minds and bodies for learning. So celebrate with me:

What I did on my summer vacation

Posted on August 21, 2013 by kidsingardens

I’m back, with stories to tell.

In fact, one of my first stories is one I’ve been keeping close since May, and now I can finally let it out to all of you good readers. IT IS SO EXCITING I WILL HAVE TO REFRAIN FROM WRITING THE ENTIRE POST IN ALL CAPS, but I will try.

But first….what I did on my summer vacation, garden-wise.

In July the school garden committee of Master Gardeners was treated to a tour of the garden at Paul Ecke Elementary in Encinitas, with Mr. Hank as tour guide.

“School as garden”—an idea that the whole campus is a garden with different sites where all subjects can be taught.

Their outdoor “cooking lab” has an underground drain which waters the baby citrus tree to the left.

Water plants, not friends—apparently a school garden universal.

A neat application of the painted rock concept.

I like seeing other garden educator’s tricks of the trade. Here Mr. Hank has made a device in which he can arrange the tools needed that day and kids can quickly choose from that limited supply instead of sorting through the shed.

A rain chain adds a grace note to this rainwater cistern.

Pallets set on their sides create the stage for a lesson on vertical gardens.

In the boxes below, veggies are planted by color to emphasize the principle above.

School as garden—here citrus plants, herbs and ornamentals enhance another building’s facade across campus.

Even little flower gardens enliven a school campus as they create habitat.

The same day I visited the ambitious 1-acre farm project on the campus of Ocean Knoll in Encinitas, a vision steered by two women/parents who lead the non-profit organization Healthy Day Partners. They are building raised beds, compost bins, and tool sheds with a view to supplying the salad bars in the district’s nine elementary schools. As a food justice project, fruit trees are being planted along the street side of the property, purposely planted to hang over the fence so that fruit is available to any neighbor passing by.

As part of their school’s international focus, the upper elementary students built this greenhouse with “eco-bricks”—discarded plastic bottles filled with inorganic trash. Schools in Latin America have been built with this simple technology, and the Encinitas kids worked through the organization Hug it Forward to help fundraise for one such project in Guatemela, later skyping with the Central American students about their shared experiences.

A beautiful multi-purpose stage for activities from yoga to outdoor meals stretches along one side of the garden. Stumps arranged around the platform create a perfect performance area as well.

Good reminder that rural, suburban, urban—we all got our critters to exclude.

This is a team, and a district, with a lot of vision, and I look forward to following–and celebrating–their progress!

Another Big (and Yummy) Idea

Posted on June 5, 2013 by kidsingardens

Although we have used our Whole Foods-funded cooking station for simple food prep, we recently used it for one of our Big Ideas—full-fledged cooking classes in the garden. Chef Greg from Healthy Adventures, through California School’s VEBA program, provided an afternoon of cooking instruction as part of our staff wellness program. He made white bean hummus, Greek salad with swiss chard and kale, and spring peas with dates and walnuts.

Best part? We harvested many of the ingredients on the spot!

And look! Harvest of the Month! Thanks Chef Greg for an awesome afternoon.

Farm to School and gardening in San Diego

Posted on May 17, 2013 by kidsingardens

I should have just pitched a tent at the San Diego County operations center last week because I was there for two different events, three days in a row. Both make me glad I live in San Diego County where good things are happening in the farm/gardening world.

The first: Let’s Go Local! Showcase. This was a “meet and greet” between school district food service staff and local farms and distributors. As I’ve discussed before, creating a Farm to School program is challenging because there are so many disconnected pieces to connect. This innovative, model event sought to make the process easier by bringing the two sides of the conversation together—buyers and sellers in the transaction over school food. Or as the Union Tribute* put it:

San Diego County has more than 6,000 small farms, including one-third that cultivate produce. But with no single broker between the growers and schools, the first step can be a logistical maze for districts. The San Diego County Farm to School Taskforce, a subcommittee of the Childhood Obesity Initiative, helped bridge that gap on Thursday with a showcase at the county operations center in Kearny Mesa. Representatives from about 30 school districts met with distributors and growers who set up booths that overflowed with produce in a farmers market-like setting on an upstairs patio.

Then on Saturday, I was a plant schlepper for the San Diego Master Gardeners Spring Seminar. This is a full-day of workshops, lectures, cooking lessons (there was a singing chef!) and a marketplace of plants, gardening tools and garden art. It was incredible, and I was proud to be a small part of it as an MG.

Master Gardeners are known for their birdhouse gourds

Master Gardeners also has a committee that makes birdhouses from recycled bits and pieces that they sell at events

Official t-shirt? Check. Name badge? Check. Broad-brimmed gardening hat? Check.

Union Tribune article

Harvest of the month: peas

Posted on May 11, 2013 by kidsingardens

Next year I will be leading the effort to introduce a Harvest of the Month program at our school. To get it started, we’re doing a pilot this month.

The backbone of this program is a set of excellent resources provided by a Network for a Healthy California (http://www.harvestofthemonth.cdph.ca.gov). For each fruit or vegetable, they provide an educator guide, a parent newsletter, a community handout and a menu template on which you can print your school lunch calendar.

I attended the all-district staff meeting at the beginning of the month to introduce the program and pass out information to the teachers. These multi-page guides have lots of information about the selected fruit or vegetable: nutrition, history, botany, recipes, science, literature links, etc.

During a University of Wednesday class, the children rotated to three stations related to peas. Here’s a craft template I created for an indoor station. (It was windy that day!)

Tip: Michaels has a single pack of cardstock greens in all different shades.

At another station, the students did a set of drawings of peas, which were planted in succession so that they could observe them at different stages of growth—also, to stretch out the harvest.

At my station we sampled sweet pea hummus, and we talked about all of the ingredients. We also did a fennel taste test because I had some to use from our donated produce box.

I’m going to teach more pea-themed lessons this month so I’ve been checking out every children’s book I can find with the word”pea” in the title and creating a working annotated bibliography. I’d love to find a grant to eventually purchase every title on the list.

We also made some decorations for the garden to announce the monthly harvest. Here our 8th grade PLUS leadership kids are finishing up a banner started by the fourth grade.

This is a banner I had printed locally.

And finally, a taste test! Snap peas were in our Be Wise Box this week, and I supplemented them with 2 lbs. from the Warner Springs Farmers Market I visited last night. An ambassador took data (“”Do you like it?”), and once again, the peas have it!

Why do we forget food can be simple?

Posted on May 3, 2013 by kidsingardens

And by we I mean me. Do you forget this too? I sometimes think a meal or a packed lunch has to be more involved than it needs to be, when simple foods are often whole/raw/minimally prepared and really the best for you.

A compelling example follows.

A couple weeks ago I picked up our first box of donated organic fruits and vegetables from Be Wise Ranch. For the first activity I decided to teach the Garden Ambassadors to sauté zucchini and run a taste test for their fifth grade class. The recipe I found called for garlic, ginger, and soy sauce, and after I gathered these extra ingredients I thought….nope, change of plans. We’re going to cook these zucchini with a little bit of safflower oil and salt. By isolating the variable, we’d know whether or not they like zuc, without the ginger or garlic confusing their “yum” or “yuck” vote.

The maiden voyage of our outdoor food prep station!

My lesson plan got simpler too. Nonetheless, there was so much to teach:

-the importance of weighing our yield, how to read a scale, how to subtract a tare (oh my goodness, high school chemistry coming from some deep recess of my brain), the different smoke points for different cooking oils, food safety, how a wok works, how to spell wok, how to spell sauté, why it’s important to cut veggies in similar sizes, and on and on and on……

The kids took turns stirring, rotating around the island

And here are three incredible outcomes:

1) 26 kids voted “yum.” Only one recorded a “yuck.” Remember this is unadorned, lightly stir-fried zucchini, and kids “hate” vegetables.

2) I had three zucchini left over, and each of ambassadors was begging to take them home. I offered one to the first kid who remembered how to spell sauté. Then we drew slips of paper for the other two. (One read–“Yay, you get the zucchini!” The other: “Sorry, maybe zucchini next time.) It bears repeating: WE DREW CARDS FOR ZUCCHINI.

3) I spoke with the mom of one of the ambassadors later that day. She said her daughter not only asked to stop at the store that afternoon to buy zucchini so she could show her family how to cook it, but she had also called her grandmother to make sure she put a few zucchini plants in her spring garden this year.

This is the hope, and in our garden, the reality: that these little lessons learned at school in gardening, nutrition, and science get transferred home.

Something’s fishy with the strawberries

Posted on April 30, 2013 by kidsingardens

On Science Day, the upper grade students did a scavenger hunt. (The questions are copied below for those garden coordinators among you.) The prize? Lunch in the garden, with treats.

A week later, the dozen students with the most correct answers joined me for lunch at the garden table, and I laid out organic strawberries and oranges from our Be Wise Box.

Interestingly enough, one of the students had a box of store-bought, non-local strawberries with her, and as she shared them, the kids started an impromptu comparison taste test. And as you can guess—it was no contest. The kids said the local, organic strawberry on the left was intensely flavorful and juicy–the one on the right had virtually no taste at all.

Photo courtesy of Marisa McFedries

So wonderful to see kids connecting the dots themselves….It’s like the girl on the right is saying “Hmmmm, something ain’t right here!” (You never know what teachable moments will present themselves in the garden.)

Science has a lot to do with….

asking good questions

and being observant

Read the questions below. The answers are somewhere in the garden. If you are observant, you will find the answers! The kids with the most correct answers found will be have lunch in the garden after Spring Break, with garden treats!

We can measure the temperature of the air, of water and of soil. Soil usually has to be a certain temperature in the spring before it’s wise to put plants in the ground. Find a soil thermometer in the garden and report the current soil temperature:

There is more variety in vegetables, flowers, herbs and fruit that you’d expect. Find the seed catalogue and write down the number of different kinds of peas you can order (add the snow peas, snap peas and shelling peas together.)

How much rainwater is currently in the tanks? (The gauge is at the top)

Seeds usually look and feel smooth. What are their surfaces generally like when viewed under a microscope? Why do you think this is so?

Name one poisnous plant.

Notice how some of the fruit trees are flowering. Why is this not necessarily a good sign in Julian in late March? What could happen to these flowers? What would happen to the fruit?

Beds #2, #3, #4 and #6 are planted out with peas. Which bed was probably planted first? Which was planted last?

How much rain did we get during our last storm?

Look at bed #1. How many DIFFERENT varieities of daffodils are in this bed? (There are 2600 different named hybrids of daffodils in the world.)

Take a look at the bucket of finished compost in the wheelbarrow. What did this soil used to be?

Name three herbs we are growing in the garden.

What are the four things that are necessary for habitat?

Find the seed packets. Which plant will be the last to harvest?

A trellis is a fence-like structure planted in a garden bed for plants to grow up. How many of our garden beds have some type of trellis?

There is one small tree in the only round garden bed in the garden. What is it called? Is it dead?

To the USDA and back again

Posted on April 22, 2013 by kidsingardens

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that we are in the middle of a USDA Farm to School planning grant. As part of this grant, representatives from each of the funded districts went to D.C. for a two-day conference last week.

Ashley, our consultant, me and Susi, Pathways Director in front of the US Department of Agriculture where our meeting was held

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan addressed our group at the Whitten Building. In her remarks, she said three things I will remember. One, everyone believes in the Farm to School concept: kids get healthy food, and local economies are stimulated. Two, despite the simplicity of the concept, the implementation is very difficult. (I just wrote about that here!) Three, Farm to School is one of the things the USDA is truly excited about, having invested 4.5 million in this project this year alone. They told us repeatedly that as the first cohort of grant recipients, we are the ones pushing this movement forward, and they are looking forward to seeing what we do and how we do it. We are grateful for their vision and support.

To equip us with tools, we had presentations on subjects such as promoting food safety, procuring local food, and marketing our programs. It was great stuff—kudos to all of the staff who made this possible.

Our group is incredibly diverse. A district with 200 students in South Dakota was represented (smaller than us!) as well as districts with dozens of schools and 50,000+ students . We heard about efforts in sourcing local bison for burgers, introducing salad bars in a state that has never featured them before, and partnering with hometown NFL teams to promote good nutrition on campus. Some of our most valuable moments were chatting with our fellow grant recipients: What are you doing? How are you doing it? For example, we struck up a conversation with a group of folks during a break about school lunch vendors—turns out one of them is the star of the new documentary film “Cafeteria Man.” (http://cafeteriaman.com)

We also got to do a few fun things like dine out at the ah-mazing “farm to table” restaurant Founding Farmers and have a private tour of the Food 1950-2000 exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

The exhibit, which includes Julia Child’s kitchen, has a long dining table in the middle of the room. On “Lazy Susans” running down the middle of the table, discussion questions and information was presented on the topic of “food pyramids” over time and across cultures. These topics will change, and next up is “school lunch.”

Our White House garden tour was cancelled (sequester!), and so I didn’t get the chance to ask Michelle out to coffee to talk about gardening, parenting, the challenge of being married to busy men, etc. The upside was that I had some extra time to tack on a breakfast, stroll to the Mall and connect with dear D.C. friends. Coming up next: the childrens’ garden at the National Botanic Gardens.