June 2011: NJ Farm To School Network News

Dorothy Mullen, Founder
Riverside School Gardens

"May I please have another bag?"

"You haven't filled the one I gave you."

"I know. I want to pick a bag of peas to give my dad for Father's Day".

I gave the child the bag. When I was a young mother, I would have paid money to have a child so excited about peas that they were worth gifting.

One of the nice things about having a really big school garden is that it gives so much more than what we need for our own use. While I get dejected about the brick wall between the garden and the cafeteria, I have to admit we have no trouble finding uses for the produce during classes and garden club. The children are simply eating vegetables because we and the vegetables are out there together.

This year we decided to add a community service component at Riverside. The fifth grade would plant and harvest the produce and bag it up for the Crisis Ministry food pantry. Since June we've sent 40 bags stuffed with Swiss chard, kale, broccoli, collard greens, and herbs. The fifth grade teachers connived (in the nicest possible way) to designate this year's "Read-a-Thon" money to the food pantry too.

The 5th Grade Read-A-Thon is an annual event that raises money for a different charity each year. After the children planted the early spring vegetables, the classes discussed the possibility of donating this year's Read-a-Thon money to the Crisis Ministry to go along with the food. The students voted to give the money to the organization. They raised money by getting their families to sponsor them for reading by the page or by the book, and during a two-week period, they collectively read over 14,000 pages.

Of course, the kale, chard and collard greens don't know that school lets out for the summer, they just keep producing. So now I'm harvesting for my non-profit organization too, the Suppers Program. Suppers teaches people with food-related problems like type 2 diabetes how to prepare delicious meals from single, whole, fresh ingredients.

The longer the school garden is in place, the more its presence is assumed. We have a core of volunteers to keep it all going in the summer, and we also have a second tier of garden dabblers, people who show up a few times a year for work days. Theoretically, they'll catch the bug too and move into the core.

As I'm typing my report on summer garden activity, I'm receiving an email from a Riverside mom, "My children are fighting over which tastes better, the onions or the peppermint." Wouldn't you pay money to hear that argument?

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