The Need
In 2022, our team conducted a West Main Regional Farm-to-School Assessment.
This process helped strengthen our partnerships with the four school districts and identified needs, gaps, and best practices for school meals and gardens. This assessment laid the foundation to enhance the school food system and created a unique opportunity to take a regional approach to food procurement and crop planning. As a result, the Regional School Wellness Leadership Team was created, which consists of the superintendents, principals, and chief business officers of all four school districts in West Marin. The group identified key strategies to implement a regional farm to school program by leveraging state and federal grants to improve the infrastructure and efficiencies related to the federal school meal program. Our support has been key to the district’s ability to respond and secure grant funding to have the necessary resources to implement regional activities.
What We Did
Our group has worked to address these gaps by employing various strategies. The partnership with Conscious Kitchen has allowed us to co-host and provide six regional staff development trainings for school food service teams. Conscious Kitchen collaborated with the Alice Waters Institute, providing our school food service team with a unique peer-to-peer learning opportunity and professional development.
We have worked collaboratively to help regional partners secure key funding sources that have helped the local school food system through healthier school meals and school garden initiatives. Together we attained two California Department of Food and Agriculture grants, helped the schools opt in for California Department of Education funding for purchasing local produce, changes to food systems and kitchen equipment.
• Four school districts collaborating
• Local procurement expanded
• Students eating more fresh food
• School gardens
• Taste tests
• Student leadership
• Garden classroom for in school and after school programming
• Family engagement
• Nutrition education
• Garden stewardship
• Garden kitchens
Success Story
In partnership with Marin Childcare Council, Papermill Creek Children’s Corner in Point Reyes Station and West Marin Climate Action, the Garden Steward program was formed. Papermill Creek Children’s Corner has a large outdoor learning space that includes room for growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs, and West Marin Climate Action volunteers are helping steward the edibles garden. The preschool kids love to get their hands in the soil and help plant seeds, hill potatoes, and look for bugs. They are always eager to “browse the garden” and taste whatever is growing.
The Garden Stewards not only tend to the garden but also provide garden lessons for the kids. They cover topics on seeds; rice, pumpkin, peppercorns, acorns, sunflowers, and more. During one of the Fall lessons, the children eagerly cracked open dry bean pods, revealing colorful beans in many shapes and sizes. Another day, they pried rainbow kernels from dried corncobs destined for the popcorn popper. Other lessons throughout the year have explored herbs and flowers that support pollinators. When the kids were learning about insects with their teachers, the Stewards brought in butterfly larvae and chrysalises. A visit from a family of baby chicks and their mama accompanied by a lesson on eggs was a huge hit. It’s rewarding to work in the beautiful Papermill Creek garden and to learn with young kids about where their food comes from!
“We are extremely grateful to have Kathy and Michele support our little but mighty school garden; learning how to grow, harvest, and care for it is key to supporting children’s nutritional practices.”