Last February, a concerned parent of two Orono students questioned the school district on what she thought was a lack of healthy foods on its lunch menu. Kate Bartel—mother of Samuel, 12, and Rachel, 9—says the food offered was inadequate, low in fruits and vegetables, and high in meats and carbohydrates.
Kris Diller, the district’s child nutrition supervisor, was quick to reply with Orono’s recent efforts to introduce more local fruits and vegetables to the lunch trays of its students. She cited Orono’s involvement in the Farm2School program, a statewide initiative to foster partnerships between local farmers and nearby school districts.
It’s an easy accomplishment to get parents, school nutritionists and growers to agree that children should eat more vegetables. It’s a daunting task, however, to get the little ones to willingly and routinely consume them. One suggestion, based on some research, was if kids are involved in planting vegetables, they are more likely to choose and consume them for lunch.
“My belief is the kids will be more inclined to eat the carrot if they grow it themselves,” Diller says. Hence, the first figurative seeds of the Schumann Elementary School garden were sowed.
For the garden to grow, it first needed to get off the ground. Orono schools teamed up with Easy Growin’, a Wayzata start-up company which created Little Acres, self-contained compartments in which to grow plants. “It enables people to set up a garden quickly, easily and affordably so they can grow food right out their backdoor,” says Cindy McDonnell, who co-owns the business with Jenni Brekken.
McDonnell’s eagerness to bring her year-old product to Orono schools was two-fold. As a businesswoman, she was looking for ways to expand her fledgling business. As a mother, she wants her children in the district to eat well. “I was excited about a community garden and the children being able to learn what the food cycle is,” McDonnell says. “And they got to learn it first-hand.”
Last May, Schumann’s third-grade class of more than 200 students went on a mini field trip—right outside the school’s doors. At the first station, the students learned that soil was broken-down organic waste from their previous lunches. (Orono is a progressive school district in establishing an on-site composting system, McDonnell says.)
Next up, the kids did an art project in decorating row markers that labeled the varying veggies. Then the kids got dirty by planting eight Little Acres “plots” with carrots, pumpkins, beets, tomatoes, onions, squash, lettuce and herbs.
“I think it will help,” Bartel says. “If we continue to bring them down to the garden, it will help them make better choices.” She admits that Samuel’s and Rachel’s food choices “are not so great, but they are getting better.”
In July, Bartel said the gardens were bursting with vegetables, and Samuel went along to help weed. He didn’t look at it as a chore. “I think it’s really cool,” he says. “We can learn where food comes from. A lot of kids don’t know where food comes from.”
Samuel’s knowledge—that tomatoes aren’t ready in May, for instance—would make his mother, as well as Diller, proud. He says two nuggets of information he’s gleaned are the existence of a thing called beets are that lettuce grows “so fast.”
Orono’s approach isn’t limited to the garden—and they aren’t alone. The district has had educational visits from farmers, added menu items such as heirloom tomatoes from nearby farms, and started many other outreach efforts. Wayzata, Minnetonka and other school districts in the Lake Minnetonka community also partake in the Farm2School initiative.
“A lot of school districts are doing more,” Diller says,” and I hope it continues to grow. I really feel like it’s making an impact and a difference.”
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Visit the Minnesota’s Farm2School program's website for more info.
