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 ...

That's right! Somerville Food and Nutrition Services joined a CSA . A few weeks ago we piloted a Farm Fresh Salad Bar partnership with Drumlin Farm, Lincoln, MA . What is a CSA? CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. According to the USDA , CSA philosophically refers to a "community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes...the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production." It can also imply an economic relationship between farmer and consumer, often called subscription farming. In other words, a subscriber agrees to buy a minimum amount of produce at a fixed price, often paying in advance for the subscription. While we haven't paid in advance, we have committed to buying a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 shares (or veggie boxes) each week. This commitment creates a guaranteed market for the farm's produce.  ...

As our National Nutrition Month Event, we held kale chip taste tests in all our K-8 school cafeterias. For the full story visit the post . If you would like to try the kale chips at home, use this yummy recipe. Bunches of curly kale Ingredients 8 cups kale, ripped into 3 inch pieces (~1 bunch) 1 tbsp   vegetable oil 1/8 – 1/4 tsp salt Preparation 1.   Preheat oven to 350 o 2.   Wash and pat dry kale. For best results, kale must be very dry. 3.   Remove kale from center stem and rip into 3 inch pieces. 4.   Add oil and salt. Massage the oil and salt into the kale until the kale pieces are evenly coated. 5.   Lay kale pieces in a single layer on a baking sheet; ideally the pieces are not touching. 6. Bake for 3-5 minutes. Checking regularly to make sure chips aren't burning. Make sure to dry your kale well! Gentle massage the oil and salt into the kale.   Do not overlap your kale pieces. Check them regular...

Back at the beginning of March, we gave you a sneak peek about how Somerville planned on celebrating National Nutrition month. We focused on 5, which is 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day. This year, one of our goals for National Nutrition Month was to expose students to healthy and delicious ways to eat their veggies. We accomplished this goal by taste testing kale chips in 6 different cafeterias. The kale chips are a great snack because they are crunchy and a little bit salty, just like regular potato chips, but with a lot more nutritional value. Kale has tons of vitamin A, vitamin K and some calcium too! Some students compared the taste of kale chips to the taste of other vegetables they are more familiar with, including broccoli, spinach, and lettuce. Students were able to vote on whether they would try the kale chips again. Giving students the chance to decide whether or not they liked the chips encourages them to continue to try new foods: no one l...

March is National Nutrition Month! This year's theme is focus on 5 - that's 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. National Nutrition Month bulletin board, Winter Hill School It's a no brainer that most kids love fruit, but some might find vegetables harder to like, especially those dark leafy greens, like kale. We took on this challenge by introducing the students to kale chips. When baked with a little salt, kale becomes crunchy with a slight umami flavor. Check back with us for the full recipe. Bunches of curly kale Kale chips  David Heidkamp, Framingham Nutrition Intern, and Meghan Bodo, Food Literacy Educator, washed, ripped, massaged and baked the kale for our first tasting in the Winter Hill School cafeteria. After eating their lunch, students stopped by the tasting table for a sample. David and Meghan are ready to serve kale chips! Taste, then vote! What did the students think? This delicious and healthy sna...

The Somerville Family Learning Collaborative hosted their Childhood Literacy Fair on Saturday, November 20. This year the theme was healthy eating through literacy. A welcome area in the center of the room displayed unique, edible pumpkins. Pumpkins, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Staff from local preschools and organizations that focus on healthy living provided activities to Somerville families. Most activities centered around food based children's books. The Cambridge Health Alliance chose The Carrot Seed while Shape Up Somerville picked Planting a Rainbow. The Treehouse Academy featured Blueberries for Sal and the Community Action Agency of Somerville acted out Dragons love tacos. Children could watch worms turn healthy food scraps into compost at the Groundwork Somerville table and cook pretend food at the play kitchen provided by Cambridge Somerville Early Intervention.   The Somerville Farm to School Project conducted a par...

In Ms. Diana Taremi’s Art Club it’s all about line, form, color and composition. More than a dozen middle school students started on several projects on Monday afternoons; creating art both for themselves and making projects to beautify the school. Their first assignment: Georgia O’Keefe-style painting on large canvases for the first floor hallway. The bright, lush flower canvasses are still works in progress.   The students are also creating flower tile mosaics that will be set in cement and used as stepping stones in the school’s kitchen garden. Ms.Emily Bhargava, a mosaic artist from Somerville, donated her time and bags and boxes of materials; tiles from large to small to the art club for the project. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Bhargava spent an afternoon at Art Club teaching Ms. Taremi and the students how to assemble the mosaics. First the students painted large pictures of flowers. They covered these with plastic wrap to protect them; then layered mesh on...

It's October and that means Farm to School Month! We have a busy month of real food activities planned from Salad Bar Day coming up on Thursday, October 8 to School Garden week. We kicked off our celebration with our annual Corn Shucking event. Three thousand ears of corn were shucked during an intense 30 minute time frame. Corn was sourced through our produce vendor, Russo's and grown at Taveres Farm in South Dartmouth, MA. With hands and husks flying, students, staff, community partners and parents all helped to get the job done quickly. At the Capuano Early Childhood Center, our youngest students took their jobs very seriously. Some peeling on piece at a time. Over at the Brown School, the chilly weather didn't deter the volunteers and students from shucking outside.   Even our leaders, Superintendent Mary Skipper and Assistant Superintendent Vince McKay lent a hand at the East Somerville Community School. At ...

Our fall gardening season is off and running! The Brown School had a fantastic harvest party during the first week back.  Eighty students participated in the event (two 3rd grade classes, one 4th grade class, and one 5th grade class).     The students picked carrots, cucumbers, arugula, basil, and tomatoes and got to taste them straight from the garden (after some washing of course).  They loved it and had lots of greats answers when we talked about seeds, the plant lifecycle, and what vegetables need to grow.   Content provided by Shawn Szturma, Brown School Garden Steward and Parent.