Thursday, June 20, 2013

By Terrie MacLaren
Published: March 5, 2009

Noli Taylor is a woman with a mission. Ms. Taylor, the volunteer coordinator for Island Grown Initiative (IGI), wants to see more local produce offered in Island schools, not only to improve the nutritional content of kids' meals and to support local farmers, but also to educate a new generation of farmers who will carry on the Vineyard agricultural tradition.

The Island Grown Schools (IGS) project is the brainchild of a group of farmers, educators, and grocers led by IGI's Executive Director, Ali Berlow. Their initial goal was to help local farmers grow more food and be able to afford to grow it year-round. Supplying food to schools seemed a natural fit.

Terri Mello guides her kindergarten class, (from left) Emily Clay, Stella Napior, Jason Kurth, and Liam Pate, in sampling sweet potatoes grown by West Tisbury students.
Photos courtesy of IGS

"The momentum began building right away," says Ms. Taylor. "I'm surprised how much we have accomplished in one year."

IGS has three major components: bringing agricultural and garden-based learning to the classroom, teaching hands-on skills via school gardens and farm visits, and connecting local farmers with food service personnel in the schools.

The program has developed school gardens in Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury, and the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. By the end of this school year, there will be gardens planted at all Island schools.

It's not a new idea. During World War I, the United States School Garden Army was started to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, improve overall health, and to help support the economy and the war effort. At that time, schoolchildren grew 40 percent of all the fruits and vegetables consumed in the country - a fact that wouldn't surprise Ms. Taylor, who wrote the manual of safe handling guidelines used by over 160 public schools in Massachusetts that purchase locally grown food. "Kids love and connect with agriculture so quickly," she says. "Every subject and grade level can be taught through an agricultural lens."

At West Tisbury School, Carly Uva participates with her class in making cheese.

Maggie Chianese teaches a multi-age class at the West Tisbury School and uses the program in every subject she teaches. In language arts, her students wrote about field trips to the farms. They used their math lessons - measurement, temperature, and time - when making cheese at Mermaid Farm. They studied the job of a dairy farmer in social studies. In art they made posters and they created a slide slow on farming through the seasons for technology class.

Andrew Berry teaches U.S. History to 9th- and 11th-graders at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. Mr. Berry focuses on how the food supply has been shaped by our history. "We look at the fundamental question of what happened to the family farm and what happened to Jefferson's agrarian ideal," he says. "There is a lot to understand."

On a recent trip to the Edgartown School, the IGS program was in evidence throughout the cafeteria. "Ten Good Reasons to Eat Locally Grown Food" and "Locally Grown Food Available Here" posters were hung near the door, and menu boards noted which foods were locally grown.

Melissa Rabbitt DeFeo, IGS's enrichment coordinator, is not surprised to hear fourth graders talking about "nutritious" food. She says, "It's amazing what these fourth graders know." She asked them about possible uses for corn other than food, and they began talking about bio-diesel fuel.

Ms. DeFeo recalls a high school field trip to plant potatoes at The FARM Institute in conjunction with study of the Irish potato famine. "By the time we had to leave, no one wanted to stop," she says. "It was magical."

Gina DeBettencourt, food service director for the Edgartown School, works with Morning Glory Farm, which supplies the majority of the school's fresh produce. "Kids will try things here because they know where it came from," she says.

The students have after-school cooking sessions two days per week, and most of what the make is served for school lunch the next day. One week, they made 600 cookies; another week, they made bread.

Ms. DeBettencourt says children are willing to try new foods like the butternut squash soup and the mini sweet dumpling squash that they "ate up like candy." She has a fresh fruit bowl out all day for students to take for snacks.

Laurel Reddington, parent of Oak Bluffs fourth-grader Tessa Reddington, thinks that the farm to school program is a natural fit with the Vineyard community. "People tend to live more consciously here naturally," she says. "It's why many of us are drawn to Martha's Vineyard." Ms. Reddington also sees many opportunities to teach kids about life through gardening. "Kids learn we don't have to kill all the bugs. We can learn to live with them. There are a whole lot of life lessons to learn from a garden."

With all of its successes, IGS is not without challenges. The economy has affected some private donations that have supported it since inception. Ms. DeBettencourt admits that processing fresh produce is labor intensive for school foodservice workers. Many proponents are concerned that interest in the idea will burn out over time. Ms. Berlow says the goal is to keep the momentum going as the program grows.

In the end, it may be up to Island students to decide the fate of the program, but Ms. DeFeo is optimistic. "Once they get their hands in the earth," she says, "they're hooked."

For more information on Island Grown Schools, visit islandgrown.org.

Terrie MacLaren is a registered dietitian and freelance writer who lives in Oak Bluffs.