Somerville Farm to School Project

We’ve had a busy Fall season in the gardens! This week will wrap up the final, yet very important, chore of “putting the garden to bed” ! Parent volunteers, students, and educators have been hard at work since the beginning of school, harvesting and tasting a variety of vegetables, saving tomato seeds, and planting garlic! Now it’s time to say goodnight to the gardens, as we learn about the importance of cover crops, mulching, and how some plants survive during the winter. Lower elementary school students have been engaged and directly involved in making sure our gardens stay healthy over the winter until we wake them up in the Spring! We also celebrated our annual Corn Shucking and Local Harvest Day ! With the help of community partner volunteers (Groundwork, Shape Up, UMass), parents, and students we shucked over 3,000 ears of corn before school even started! The children enjoyed the fruits of their labor with a local beef burger for lunch! Corn Shucking is always a favorite day ...

Who likes Fish & Chips?   That's the question we posed to students at the Winter Hill Community Innovation School this past Wednesday.  Technically, we were wondering if they liked Baked Sole with a side of Sweet Potato Fries. It turns out that many of the students LOVED the fish and chips!  Over fifty percent of the students tried it. As they tried it, we gave them stickers to reward their bravery of trying a new food! They were also asked if they liked the fish and would eat it again. Eighty-one percent of the students surveyed would eat the fish again!   They also enjoyed sweet potatoes (not local), apples (sourced regionally from New York) and strawberries (sourced locally from Natick, MA). This special lunch was a Local Harvest Day pilot at the Winter Hill Community Innovation School. It marks the first time that Sea to School was a focus of school lunch here in Somerville. We hope to expand this program into other scho...