Did you know that October was Farm to School Month? This very special occasion marks a time for students across the country to learn more about their food through hands-on learning. Schools and community organizations in all 50 states are getting into the act – organizing events like taste tests in the cafeteria; nutrition education activities in the classroom; farm visits; and school garden harvest parties. We were excited to join in as well. Last week, Chef Anna visited our friends at Nixon Elementary for a cooking class. Lucky for you, you can read all about it in her note in this week’s newsletter.
At Frog Hollow, we have a real soft spot for educators and a passion for teaching the next generation about organic agriculture. This spawns from Farmer Al’s experience as a social studies teacher. In fact, it was partly his discussions with students about global issues that inspired him to pursue farming, almost over 40 years ago. As such, we’re always excited to find ways to utilize the farm and our fruit as an educational opportunity. One way we do that is through our CSA’s school partnerships. We partner with nine schools across the bay area that each act as a community pick up location. As part of the exchange, we make ourselves available as a resource, and we’re happy to report that many schools are taking advantage! We’ve had students out for field trips to the farm, and Farmer Al and Chef Anna have both gone out to visit some of our partner schools for hands on farming and cooking lessons.
In addition to offering these opportunities for learning, we donate our fruit or CSA proceeds to each school. Many schools opt in for what we call the 5% Back Program, through which we donate 5% of the proceeds from CSA box deliveries to the participating school. As of June 2015, we’d given over $3,500 to our school partners!
We’re so glad to see a movement to teach kids about healthy, sustainable foods emerging through programs like Farm to School Month as well as grassroots food programs like ours. As we seek to build a food system that offers everyone nourishing, sustainable food, educating our kids and getting them off to the right start is critical. If you’re interested in helping out, please contact us to find out how your school might get involved!
