Finicky Food Fondness and Fabulous (local) Frozen Foods

The good news keeps coming for the Fayetteville Public Schools’ (FPS) Seed to Student program! For the last few months we have been working diligently to find a local sweet potato product with a competitive price and good story. I am happy to announce that we are partnering with the local processor Bright Harvest to switch all sweet potato fries to local ones throughout the district, that is, at all middle and junior high schools and the city’s high school. Bright Harvest sources the majority of their sweet potatoes from Central Arkansas (Matthews Ridgeview Farms), some from Mississippi and Louisiana, and as a very last resort, California.  The price is right too, they are cheaper then the product we were using. It’s a win-win for everyone. A local processor and farmers get the school district’s business and we get a lower-cost, local product that happens to be of higher quality as well. The kitchen managers told me they “cook up” and “hold shape” better than the old product, and taste better. The staff says the kids like the new product too. Just today, another order was made for three more pallets (270 cases) of Bright Harvest sweet potato fries. The district has gone through one pallet in the last three weeks. That is 2,700 pounds of local sweet potato fries! I thought to myself, “well, that was easy! I guess I don’t need to do taste testing and promotion of the new product after all. It sounds like these fries are selling themselves”. Yeah, that was a nice thought.

Photo: Bright Harvest 

I stopped by the high school last week to take some photos of the new fries and get a bit more feedback from kitchen staff. The staff was very quick to say that the product was of higher quality than the previous one but every time sweet potato fries are on the menu the participation rate, or number of students buying that meal option, drops noticeably. Not many high schoolers like sweet potato fries, or anything sweet potato for that matter, they said. The kitchen manager asked for suggestions to better promote the fries to increase participation and generate revenue for the school nutrition program. I noticed the fries were closed inside plastic clamshells with a roll and chicken nuggets. The meal was one color, brown, and the condensation had fogged up the clear plastic making it difficult to see the entrée inside. The clamshell would likely make the crispy fries soggy if they sat there long enough. There was a lack of eye-catching promotion to make the students aware of the new product. I took a few notes and headed back to the office to think about how to improve the situation. The other kitchen managers had not mentioned this and clamshells are only used at the high school so maybe the concern was specific to that cafeteria.  

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Really? Sweet potato fries? Aren’t you serving with FoodCorps? Aren’t you a healthy and local food advocate?! Yes, I agree there are healthier vegetable options than sweet potato fries but this is why these fries are still a win for us healthy food advocates, locavores and the students alike. For one, sweet potato fries are already on the menu. It’s easier to improve what you have before moving on to new menu items. Getting new items on the menu requires quite a bit of planning and time. Secondly, sweet potato fries are a healthier alternative to white potato fries and fit into the new USDA meal pattern many food service departments are frantically trying to learn and follow. You could say local sweet potato fries are a gateway food for getting more local and healthy foods to the menu. In addition, sweet potato fries are a frozen product so they can be ordered in large quantities, stored and used as needed. Buying in bulk is cost saving and eliminates the extra time need to coordinate ordering and delivery of fresh product for each school on a weekly basis. Also, establishing a relationship with FPS was a big win for Bright Harvest. Other districts will see that the local product has been successful and be more likely to purchase the product for their schools, especially if it’s cheaper. When our regional distributors see the demand for local product is high, they will be encouraged to work with Bright Harvest and other local entities so more schools can easily purchase and offer local foods to their students.

I learned quite a bit from this project so far and there is still more to do. It is important to observe (in person!) how new products are prepared and offered to students and get kitchen staff feedback to make sure the product is successful in the cafeteria. If there is room for improvement, adapt accordingly. We will be doing some promotion of the new product with some sort of colorful “it’s local” signage and taste testing. We want students to give sweet potato fries another chance. We might also experiment with how the fries are offered; keeping in mind they must be part of a reimbursable meal.

It’s tricky business considering quality, cost, federal regulations and fickle teenage food preferences when figuring out how to get local, nutritious food on the school menu, but it is oh so worth the patience and hard work.

Learn more about

Ridgeview Farms

Bright Harvest

by Ally Mrachek 

Gardening and Coordinated School Health in Yellville, AR

Starting in January, we began to look to the future of the garden program here at Yellville-Summit. We had a meeting with different stakeholders, teachers, parents, administrators, community members, and students. This was an opportunity to discuss the possible scenarios for the garden and how we could make them a reality into the future. That discussion got me thinking about how the garden came to be, and how it will evolve into the future. On that note, I’ve asked Valerie Davenport, the Yellville-Summit Coordinated School Health Coordinator, to write about her experience bringing the Delta Garden Study to the school and her feelings on the program as both a parent and a staff member:

I do not have a formal background in the field of public health, however I do have a passion for many things health related.  I briefly considered entering the medical field when many of my co-workers (while working as a teaching assistant at U of A in Fayetteville) began taking the MCAT! My education background includes 13 years in the classroom as a science instructor as well as a couple of years as an education technician for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and a lifetime as a child of 2 devoted educators.  I was employed at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year as Coordinated School Health Coordinator for Yellville-Summit School District. Early in the school year I heard about the Delta Garden Study at a training meeting for CSH coordinators, but didn’t really think we would be considered a school in the Delta region.  When I learned that Marshall was in the program, I checked it out on the web and began the application process.  

My vision for the garden was to see students outside and learning in a hands-on setting.  My two youngest children are fortunate to be involved in the program this year.  They have both enjoyed having much of their learning taking place out in the garden. Here’s a quote from one of my daughter’s class assignments “If you haven’t worked in a garden at all then you have missed out big time.” My son enjoys the time outside of the confines of the classroom and has encouraged me to try a couple of the garden recipes at home because he loved the samples!

I am extremely excited about the future of the garden at Yellville-Summit, I would love to see the garden in use by all of our educators as a learning tool!  So many concepts from the classroom could be reinforced by experiencing them in the “field”. I also believe that working in the garden and learning in a real life setting could really be a positive turning point in the lives of many of our students.  In addition, I would love to see produce from the garden in our school cafeteria, just imagine the pride the students would feel if they have taken part in providing food for their peers!

Valerie is just one of the many excited, passionate folks we have working on keeping our garden a vital, sustainable program for our community. Without her, I certainly wouldn’t be here to share my experiences. In addition to spearheading the application process to bring the Delta Garden Study to Yellville-Summit, she tirelessly supports the garden with her grant writing expertise, volunteering her and her family’s Saturdays, and keeping up with all our local garden newspaper features. 

by Sara Fulton-Koerbling

FULL SPEED AHEAD

At long last, winter arrived - just in time for teachers to come flocking for garden integration in their classrooms! Despite the frosty weather, we find ways to bring food and nutrition education into the classroom without taking students outside…or at least by bundling everyone up sufficiently!

Despite the flu virus running rampant this season, the fall semester at Holt Middle School has gotten off to a promising start. We continue to move full speed ahead. The Title I budget committee at Holt agreed to allocate a thousand dollars towards garden integration in math classes. Very little curriculum has been created to bring middle school math topics into the garden in a way that meets national curriculum standards. To find inspiration, I use web-based as well as printed resources to compile my list of lesson ideas. Distributing these ideas last week, along with a verbal pitch at a department meeting, yielded results that will keep me busy for months! I’ll be working with at least eight more teachers this semester to bring math and science classes out to the garden, along with bringing food and nutrition lessons into the classroom.

Yesterday, we took 5^th grade science classes out to the garden to do a garden relay race. They’ve been studying simple machines, so using garden tools for chores in the form of a fun relay race was a great application of what they’ve learned. Students used shovels (lever and wedge) and tumblers (axle) to turn the compost, wheelbarrows (lever, wheel and axle, and inclined plane) to transport compost, hand tools (lever and wedge) to weed, and tillers to till the soil. They will also do some data analysis with the times recorded during the races.

More than providing a real world application of their knowledge of simple machines, this activity gave kids who’ve never spent time outside digging in the dirt a chance to connect with nature and where our food comes from. I saw kids approach the soil tentatively and very unsure of themselves. Children should not be afraid of the soil that grew their food, so hopefully activities like these will start to demystify the natural world, while at the same time making it something to ponder and appreciate.

Later this week, I will be administering a taste test in 6^th grade math classes to start a discussion on the utility of surveying a random sample to make inferences about a larger population. I specifically chose food items that might be unfamiliar to the students to use this as an opportunity to expose them to new healthy snack options, for example, pistachios and persimmons. We will tally the students’ preferences to determine a class favorite, then graph the data and discuss its utility in predicting the preferences of a larger population.

NEW YEAR, MORE MEMORIES

In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do in my service and why.  In this, and most aspects of my life, it comes down to food. I love eating and sharing food with others. I see food as a unique way to build and support community. I get to work with a bunch of twelve year olds to grow, harvest, cook, and eat food; that makes me fee pretty lucky.

Throughout elementary school, I ate hot lunch in the cafeteria. My memories of those meals are not particularly fond. When I got to high school, however, the dining services department was spectacular. We had a salad bar that listed the origins of most of our produce. Living in California, we had farmers growing delicious fresh produce year round. Since I read about who grew this food as I loaded up my plate, I really appreciated eating it. That was the first time I experienced awesome school food that wasn’t pizza or tater tots. When I look back at my food memories, that salad bar always surfaces.

The makings of carrot, beet and ginger salad.

I hope that the work I do with kids here, the work they put into growing food, and the times we share eating it, will become a part of their food memories. I think I’m doing a pretty good job of getting some kids excited about the weird food I make them eat*. I teach one group of students on Monday and Tuesday, then the second half of the middle school on Wednesday and Thursday. Mid-day Monday, I already have kids in the Wednesday and Thursday groups asking, “Are we going to eat anything in the garden this week?” When they see me schlepping down the hall with bowls and cutting boards and the last lukewarm sample, I have to constantly remind people that I would never exclude them from a tasting. Not every kid likes everything we try. Secretly, I make them try things I don’t even like.

When the first kid in a class asks tentatively if they can have seconds, then thirds, then commandeers the rest of the bowl, I sit back and appreciate (and hope) that they will remember that day too.

*one of our main garden rules is that you have to try everything at least once. 

GROWING FROM SEED TO STUDENT

Before the holidays, the school district’s Child Nutrition Director and I hosted an interest meeting to present to new and returning producers the benefits of selling their products to schools and the logistics of our expanding Seed to Student Program.

For me, this is what it’s all about. I had chills. Though the group was small, it was truly an honor to sit around a table to discuss the direction of our program with a group of intelligent and motivated producers, community members and leaders in the local food/ food justice movement. It was an honest discussion about the future of Seed to Student programming in Fayetteville, the challenges and successes of local procurement during the summer and fall programs and to get feedback for improvement from everyone involved. Based on grower recommendation, we are making several changes to increase sustainability while expanding the program.

One of our local farmers delivering
squash destined for students' plates.

There was general consensus among returning producers. They appreciated the partnership they had established with the schools, but the primary concern was that prices were too low for the quantity of product purchased. Because the school district’s food budget is tight, spending about $1.00 per plate, pricing is tricky. Schools cannot purchase products for the premium price they are sold at the Farmer’s Market. At the same time, producers need a fair price to continue doing the honest work they do. Fortunately, school meal programs are a consistent market and have large purchasing power that the Farmer’s Market cannot provide.  It’s important that small producers diversify their markets.

Our producers requested that we assign each of them a crop or two to produce for the schools so larger quantities can be purchased from each producer; instead of giving all producers an opportunity to sell a small amount of several products to the schools as we had done this fall. A few producers mentioned that the current process was not financially sustainable for them, and were considering not selling to the schools if larger quantities could not be purchased. Our team was more than willing to make this adjustment to the program, and the change was especially ideal for our fancy ordering system, a.k.a. me. Working through this concern illustrates the importance of soliciting feedback from all parties involved and being open to change to create a sustainable and successful program.

Oh, and FPS Seed to Student has big news! This spring, with the help of a large USDA Farm to School grant and additional funding from a SARE (Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education) grant, we will begin purchasing local foods for a third middle school and the city’s high school. When I think of the impact this will have, I get so excited. Through the school lunch program and other educational programming, we now have the potential to educate and serve local fresh fruits, vegetables and meat to almost 4,000 students daily - incredible!