EDIBLE EDUCATION
“MISS PERKINS, CAN I GET SECONDS? ”
asked the kindergartner, raising her hand.
“Yes, you may.”
Permission granted from her teacher, the student jumped up from the table and got back in the lunch line. Sloppy Joe day at Keene Central School, when the kitchen staff prepares soft bread buns smothered in rich, ground-beef chili, is always popular. The girl didn’t care that the meat was raised locally, or the sauce contained tomato puree the cooks preserved themselves over the summer, and butternut squash grown on a nearby farm. In her words, it just “tasted good.”
The National Farm to School (F2S) Network improves access to local foods in eligible school systems, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s guidelines for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). On the state level, the “No Student Goes Hungry” initiative encourages districts to purchase at least 30 percent of their ingredients and products from New York growers. (These school-supported programs are modeled on pilot projects like Edible Schoolyard, created by chef Alice Waters in 1995.)
The original Adirondack Farm to School Initiative was founded in 2013 by the food service director at the Saranac Lake Central
