FARM FRESH: CHILDREN LEARN TO GROW, COOK AND EAT SEASONAL FOODS FROM THEIR OWN SCHOOL GARDEN

Published on November 10, 2004

© 2004- The Press Democrat

BYLINE:    DIANE PETERSON

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

PAGE: D1

Fresh salad greens with heirloom tomatoes, roasted beets and sauteed chard, butternut squash risotto and fresh strawberries.

Sound like the typical menu at a Wine Country bistro? Guess again. Those farm-fresh dishes were recently served as part of a weekly salad bar at Petaluma's Valley Vista Elementary School, where kindergartners through sixth-graders are learning to love their veggies through one of Sonoma County's most ambitious school garden programs.

While the students helped themselves to more than a dozen cold items at the free salad bar, the school's garden coordinator, Vanessa Passarelli, dished out two hot entrees -- homemade hash browns and a butternut squash risotto.

``Try it and come back if you want more,'' she said to a young boy, who took one bite of the risotto and exclaimed, ``Dude, it's so good!''

``Nobody believes me that the kids are lining up for the salad bar,'' Passarelli said. ``The fruit gets them here, but then they walk away with cucumbers or broccoli too.''

At the end of lunch, the picked-over salad bar supported her theory: All of the fresh strawberries, melons, apples and pears were gone, but so were the broccoli, zucchini, cucumbers and hash browns.

``It's the best food I've ever eaten,'' said sixth-grader Amanda Fisher. ``My mom doesn't really cook.''

At Valley Vista and other campuses across Sonoma County, school garden programs are introducing young palates to fresh, seasonal foods and integrating cooking, composting and planting lessons into the academic curriculum.

It's a complete, seed-to-table approach, where kids not only plant the garden and cook from it, they also return nutrients to the soil through composting. Along the way, they learn lessons about weather and insects, plant structure and germination, soil and recycling.

``It's science, but most importantly, it's life,'' Passarelli said: ``not only how to grow it, but how to sustain it, for yourself and everything else.''

In the Bay Area, the model for school garden programs is Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. In an ambitious move, that program is expanding districtwide to 10,000 Berkeley students as part of the School Lunch Initiative launched by Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation.

``We're raising $5 million for the initiative,'' said the foundation's Carolyn Federman. ``Kids would study corn in the garden, go into the kitchen classroom and prepare corn, then into the cafeteria and eat corn for lunch. The food would all be sustainably grown, organic fresh produce.''

While school gardeners here in Sonoma County are still struggling to raise money for occasional salad bars and part-time garden coordinators, there have been some breakthroughs.

Last September, Passarelli helped launch the School Garden Network of Sonoma County, which strives to grow the grass-roots movement into a sustainable entity with an academic component.

``What I hope to bring to the network is to explain how the (academic) standards can be covered and connected to what we're doing,'' Passarelli said. ``People think of school gardens as playtime, but we're trying to make it a valid, experiential learning opportunity.''

School Garden Network coordinator Kirsten Miller said the network was inspired by the school garden teacher training classes offered at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center each summer.

``It's a place to meet, network, share ideas and let each other know about resources and grants,'' Miller said of the network, which boasts a membership base of 22 Sonoma County schools in six cities.

The network helps the county's school garden coordinators -- 12 are paid, the rest are volunteers -- build on each other's successes without having to reinvent the wheel.

Launched by a $5,000 grant from Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, the network offers free, monthly workshops on such topics as fund raising, effective garden committees and curriculum development.

Fresh lessons

Valley Vista Elementary School in Petaluma planted its school garden four years ago on an unused strip of lawn that was once off-limits to kids.

Now, the bountiful garden boasts deer-proofed garden beds, a bird bath, ``cob'' benches made from clay and straw, a greenhouse, an outdoor classroom with hay-bale seating and a couple of compost piles.

``We had over 15 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes this year,'' said Passarelli, who stocks the salad bar with the garden's bounty but supplements it with fresh produce from Mountain Lion Farms in Occidental and Canvas Ranch in Petaluma.

``The salad bar is a really good idea, because when the kids are eating something that fresh, they get an idea of what it's really supposed to taste like,'' said Canvas Ranch's Deborah Walton. ``If kids are getting those vegetables once a week, we can change the way people eat.''

During a recent cooking class at Valley Vista, Passarelli sent 10 fifth-graders to the garden with a notebook to observe the pumpkins and squash growing there. ``I actually planted it!'' exclaimed fifth-grader Alex Arengo, pointing to a butternut squash shaped like a peanut.

While making a chocolate chip squash cake together, the class worked together to scrape the precooked squash from the skin, read recipe directions and add ingredients.

``It's warm and it smells like wet dog,'' one student said of the cooked squash. ``It has a texture like baby food,'' said another.

Along the way, Passarelli wove in math and language lessons, asking the kids to measure their own ingredients and figure out the serving size of sugar in the recipe. As they stirred, they counted to 10 in both Spanish and French.

In the cooking classes, Passarelli usually has the students prepare savory dishes that reappear a week later at the salad bar.

``I try to have at least one class cook the week before what I have as the hot entree,'' she said. ``That way, they're not as afraid to try it.''

Compost champions

Having won three $10,000 grants from the Chez Panisse Foundation to help fund its salad bar and garden coordinator, Valley Vista Elementary serves as a model for many fledgling programs throughout the county.

``We have a paid person and phenomenal parent participation,'' Passarelli said. ``That's the perfect package.''

But Valley Vista modeled its school lunch recycling program on Oak Grove School's in Graton, where former custodian Fred Hall left a legacy of sustainability that has put the 450-student school on the international map.

Hall started an intensive recycling and composting program that has helped reduce the school's trash output from 10 to 12 cubic yards a week to just two.

The school now generates 4 to 10 yards of finished compost a year, which goes right back into some 20-odd garden beds and tree boxes Hall built around the campus.

``We utilize all of our waste in the compost,'' said Oak Grove garden coordinator Stacia Fields. ``It's really beyond any other program.''

With produce from the school garden and help from Andy's Market, Oak Grove also serves a salad bar every three weeks that is prepared by students, who are given certificates in knife skills and kitchen safety. Recently, the students harvested basil from the garden and served pesto pasta to the entire school.

``The kids really take pride in the salad bar -- they are fascinated with the fact that they grow it, harvest it and eat it,'' said Oak Grove parent volunteer Misty Fiddler. ``My daughter would never eat a salad before, but now she'll eat lettuce ... and at least try the lemon cucumbers.''

Here is the Butternut Squash Risotto recipe recently served at Valley Vista Elementary School's salad bar.

Butternut Squash Risotto

Makes 6 servings

5 to 6 cups homemade chicken stock or canned chicken broth

1 pound butternut squash, peeled and cut into 3/4 -inch dice (about 2 cups)

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 1/2 cups Arborio rice

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

-- Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, combine stock and squash; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low; keep at a simmer (squash will not cook completely).

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until it is soft and translucent, about 8 minutes. Add rice and raise heat to high; continue stirring until rice is just beginning to turn translucent around the edges, for 3 to 4 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium-high. Using a ladle, add 1 cup hot stock and some squash. Cook, stirring, until almost all stock is absorbed. Continue adding stock and squash, about 3/4 cup at a time, letting each be nearly absorbed before adding the next, until mixture is creamy but rice is still a bit firm in the center, 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in butter and cheese and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

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You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or dpeterson@pressdemocrat.com.

PHOTO: 4 by SCOTT MANCHESTER / The Press Democrat
1 by JOHN BURGESS / The Press Democrat

1: A salad made at the salad bar with vegetables from the garden at Valley Vista Elementary School in Petaluma.
2: Valley Vista Elementary School students make a chocolate pumpkin cake under the direction of Vanessa Passarelli, top right, using produce from the school garden. Students are , from left: Jasmine Carrera, Karina Hernandez, Erin Gors, Maria Calderon and Deysi Altamirano.
3: Valley Vista students, front to back, Erin Gors, Hollie Schaefer, Hailey Olivares and Melissa Morales take notes on the pumpkins growing in the school garden.
4: Oak Grove Elementary School fifth-grader Roman Tomayo, 10, rinses basil while parent volunteer Cindy Meyerson helps Amed Aguilar, 10, and Davis Fox, 10, right, grate cheese for the pesto pasta they'll make for lunch.
5: Vanessa Passarelli, right, serves up a hot potato dish and squash risotto as part of the free lunchtime salad bar with veggies from the school garden at Valley Vista Elementary School in Petaluma.

Infobox:
County schools start programs
The School Garden Network is always looking for volunteers to help with cooking, gardening, construction, teaching and other related activities. For information on getting involved, go to www.schoolgardens.org.

Here are some of the other Sonoma County schools that are also starting their own garden program:

* Lehman Elementary in Santa Rosa has a teaching garden, with a focus on nutrition and cooking. Through a USDA Local Incentive Award, the school offers after-school cooking and nutrition classes for parents and students. There is a daily salad bar, with the goal of supplementing it from the garden.

* Mary Collins School at Cherry Valley, a K-8 charter school in Petaluma, boasts a teaching garden focused on worm composting and culinary ties to the garden. The students prepare salad for a weekly salad bar.

* Matanzas Elementary, grade K-6, has a production garden and classes are given on a volunteer basis.

* Monte Rio Union School, grades K-8, has a teaching garden that focuses on cooking and habitat. A USDA Local Incentive Award helps support the garden coordinator and cooking program.

* Proctor Terrace School in Santa Rosa, grades K-6, has a garden and a garden club run by a parent volunteer. The goal is to harvest year-round, and club members can snack or take produce home with them.

* Salmon Creek School in Occidental, a K-8 school, has a $10,000 Chez Panisse grant to help with supplies for cooking classes, food for the salad bar and two part-time garden coordinators. The school's new teaching garden includes a mixture of theme and food production beds and a greenhouse with hay-bale insulation.

* Sonoma Country Day School in Santa Rosa, grades K-8, has a teaching garden with a paid coordinator and regular cooking classes.

* Willowside Charter School in Santa Rosa, grades 6-8, has its own nursery where students propagate plants and sell them to the public.

* Windsor Creek Elementary, grades 2-3, has a teaching garden that is run by teachers and parent volunteers. The focus is on hands-on learning and seed-to-harvest outdoor science.

Keywords: EDUCATION FOOD NUTRITION ENVIRONMENT LIST GARDENING

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