MARCH-ing INTO SPRING

It’s just about time to start planting our spring garden. Unfortunately for me, weeds have proliferated to such an extent that I’m afraid to even lift the frost cloth to see really just how much needs to be done. “One step at a time” is the mantra that saves me from hiding in my closet of an office all spring…

Nitrogen fixing cover crop at Holt.

Garden Club was slow this winter, but I have high hopes that students will be scrambling to get involved once it gets warm enough to go outside again. It’s amazing what a 10-year-old boy will accomplish when you give him a hoe and a pile of dirt. Students have been starting seeds indoors and learning to prune blueberry bushes, blackberry bushes, and apple trees. We’ve been trying wild new things like tofu, eggplant, and sweet potato fries with the skins on! This week, we’ll create an enlarged map of the garden to plan out where we will transplant all of our seedlings in the coming months. Soon, our pile of weeds, cover crop, and old lettuce will be transformed into the productive garden we’ve been dreaming about.

In the classroom, I’ve worked with math classes to map the garden to practice proportions, ratios, and scale. In science classes, we’ve discovered the caloric content of Cheetos and walnuts by burning them using a homemade calorimeter. The calorimeter lesson was part of the 6^th grade energy unit and gave the students a better understanding of what calories are and how they act as an energy source for our bodies. Students were able to observe that a walnut burns for about four times as long as a Cheeto, and connect that observation with the understanding that eating a walnut will give you energy for longer than eating a Cheeto. We then had an economics debate, coming up with arguments for why one might prefer to buy Cheetos over walnuts as a snack and vice versa.

Teaching this lesson made it obvious how little most students know about energy balance and nutrition. Many students were surprised to learn that our bodies are burning calories constantly, not only when we “exercise.” Although many 6^th graders maintained their loyalty to junk food on the grounds of taste, there were several students who showed a level of curiosity about nutrition and health that should be nurtured. Unfortunately, these topics are not given their due in schools these days when there’s not even enough time to fit in the number of minutes of physical activity mandated by the federal government each week, so the more we can sneak them into core subjects, the better.

Last but not least, our very own Arkansas Fellow, Rachel Spencer, was head chef at my last hands-on cooking class for Holt Families. Thank you Rachel for showing our lovely families that Southerners can eat vegetarian, and without giving up the BBQ sauce!

- by Sophia Gill

Garden Club Beginnings @ Cloverdale Middle

Lately, lots of things have been going on in Little Rock. My service plan has been revisited and revised, I’m spending more time in the classroom, and my salads have been getting fewer lip snarls. The biggest thing, however, is garden club!

In January, I almost lost the club sponsor I tirelessly pursued during the first semester. Without a faculty sponsor, I couldn’t have a club at the school. I was discouraged because without garden club, students from outside of the research study would not be able to enjoy this slice of paradise! Fortunately, my sponsor was able to stay on and commit to at least this semester. We met at the end of January to discuss what we envisioned for the club, what time and date worked best for both us and the students, and how we would divide responsibilities. All went well.

I solicited the help of my friends to help me make posters for garden club. We spent a few nights with card stock, pencils, markers, and crayons creating these advertisements. A week before the club’s first meeting I put them up around the school. That whole week announcements were made in the morning and the evening to remind students about the fun they could have after school in the garden.

On February 4, I waited for the students to roll in. 4:15 came and went, and one student was sitting in the room. At 4:25, two more rolled in. I was overjoyed! My sponsor and I sat down with the students, butcher paper, and pens. We told them what our ideas were, and then they shared theirs. Then we went outside. The weather was not lovely. Our perpetually flooded garden was wet. Normally, walking outside with a class would mean talking through sighs and moans about clean shoes. Not this group. These guys were prepared. Armed with the digging forks I gave them, they stood around the bed I had selected.

I asked them if they knew what plant we were looking at. No one answered. Silences never make me comfortable, but I waited it out. Finally, one girl noticed a bare shoulder. She correctly identified the bed as being filled with carrots. Then harvesting began. I showed them how to pick up tons of carrots at once with a fork, and then how to really get dirty by picking out the carrots by hand. This group liked mud under their nails.

Together we filled a five-gallon container to the top with carrots. Then the rain came. We hurried to the greenhouse where I had water ready to rinse the carrots. I eyeballed the portions out to give each student the same amount to take home, and then I remembered that we needed to weigh everything that left the garden. The students weighed their bag individually, tared it out, and weighed their carrots. The last bag weighed had almost double the weight of the others.

Without even thinking, the boy holding this bag took handfuls of his bounty and gave them to the other students. We weighed them again and everyone went home with almost three pounds of carrots. We ended our first meeting armed with a list of expectations and goals and each student went home with carrots to share with their families.

The next day, I walked into the media center and I saw the boy who shared his harvest during garden club. He pulled a container from his backpack and it was full of carrots! He told me that he helped his mom rinse, scrub, and cut the carrots when he got home. This morning, he took a tub to school and she took one to work. He can't wait to bring home more!

by Jade Salzman

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