Food Projects

5th Annual Harvest Dinner –     A 100 Mile Local Foods Dinner

Just as students are enjoying the waning weeks of summer soaking in the Willits sun, the crops of Brookside School Farm are relishing the rays and showing their first signs of ripening. Bursts of red tomatoes poke through thick green rows at the one acre farm, tucked behind Brookside Elementary School, awaiting the arrival of the new school year because this year Brookside Farm’s produce has a special destination: the school cafeteria.

The Willits School District, in a partnership with The Gardens Project of North Coast Opportunities, and Little Lake Grange are committed to getting healthier food into schools through a farm to school program. Recent years have seen a boom in farm to school programs nationwide as a means to provide an alternative to the subsidized commodity, high-calorie, low-nutrition food typically found in school cafeterias. The goal is to make fresh, nutritious food available to students at an affordable price, while concurrently supporting local farmers and the local economy.

“The whole farm to school program in Willits is new and we’re just figuring it out,” says Antonia Partridge, manager of Brookside Farm, “the goal during the school year is that the majority of the food will go to the cafeteria.”

Established four years ago by Jason Bradford, the farm was initially funded by a grant from the Post Carbon Society to find the best method for producing food in this region in a post peak oil society. In the fall of 2009 Bradford transitioned out as farm manager and Partridge, then assistant farm manager, stepped in to the position. With funds drying up and not enough hands on the farm she describes that time as “very challenging.” People invested as Community Supported Agriculture members wanted to see the farm go in various directions but after several meetings, Partridge said, they decided to go with the farm to school model, made possible through a grant from North Coast Opportunities using American Recovery and Reinvestment Fund.

“I think everyone has their heart in the right place, but the school just doesn’t have the budget to make nutritious food available,” Partridge says. “There are so many links between the quality of nutrition and academic performance.”

Research collected by the non-profit Action for Healthy Kids has shown that students who eat healthy, nutritious meals learn better and perform better in school. With childhood diabetes and obesity on the rise it may seem obvious that better nutrition supports better health and learning, but with the corn dogs and pizza pockets of a typical school lunch, farm to school programs are a huge step towards reconnecting children with healthy food while supporting local production and distribution networks. These Stiff budget restraints and limited spending money leave the school district with many difficult financial decisions and virtually no option for purchasing affordable, nutritious food. Currently Brookside Elementary has only two part time staff members working to feed the students. Partridge has worked closely with the food staff to coordinate crops with items used most frequently in the cafeteria.

“I planted a Roma type tomato of the heirloom variety that grows great in the Willits climate,” Partridge said, referring to the Amish Paste tomatoes beginning to ripen at Brookside. “It is a more complex and robust tomato with higher solids and lower water.” This type of tomato is ideal for paste and sauce that can be used in pizza and pastas, two dishes served often in the school cafeteria. In addition to tomatoes, several hundred heads of garlic have been harvested from the farm, and potatoes, which can provide healthy alternatives to sides like tater tots, are beginning to be harvested.

Brookside Farm has growing crops and a staff eager to implement the farm to school program but what it needs now is helping hands, and that is where the community of Willits comes in to play.

“What we need is help,” says Partridge, “farming is a very time consuming activity . . .we have activities for people of all skill levels and there are a dozen different ways that people can plug in and help the farm.”

Partridge estimates pulling in around 100 pounds of tomatoes between now and late October-depending on the first frost. Since tomatoes cannot be stored for long, they will need to be processed at the brand new certified commercial kitchen at the Little Lake Grange, just a few blocks away from Brookside Elementary. Ursula Parch will be leading canning classes, open to the public, in which participants will gain real-time experience by canning the tomatoes from Brookside Farm for future use in the school cafeteria. Classes will be held Tuesday mornings from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. For more information on the canning classes, or to participate, contact Alison Petro at 707-456-9005 or apetro18@gmail.com. The Farm to school project will also need canning jars for this program. If you have any gently used jars to donate, please contact Alison.

If you interested in learning about ways you can lend a hand to help get nutritious, certified organic food into our local school system please contact Mason Giem at 707-841-0464 or Antonia Partridge at antoniap@mcn.org for information on volunteering at Brookside School Farm.

John Jeavons and Ecology Action are featured in the March ODE magazine. Link to article on-line

“… I made the pilgrimage up from San Francisco to sit at the feet of John Jeavons, who has probably spent as much of his life thinking about building soil as anyone who has ever lived. Jeavons started his career in the 1960s as a systems analyst at Stanford University. When the spirit moved him to pursue agriculture as a vocation, he brought that kind of analytical thinking with him. These are the questions that drove him: How many calories does a person need to survive? What is the smallest plot of land needed to grow those calories for one person for one year? How much land do we need to feed all the people on the planet?

Jeavons has devoted his career to answering these questions and spreading that information around the globe. A small but significant chunk of that learning can be found in his book How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, first published in 1974, which has sold half a million copies and gone through multiple editions. “

Also if you are interested there is a nice interview with John Jeavons in the March/April 1980 edition of Mother Earth News

Would you like to feed your family for less ? You can, with tasty Soup & One Pot Meals
Learn about simple winter meals for busy people; Cooking with garden fresh produce & GRANARY Staple Foods
~ A series of 3 classes ~ includes a lunch that we will cook & eat together ~

January 23rd:    STAPLES: Grain & Bean storage & cooking
Unattended cooking – How to use tools & equipment
January 30th:     Using whole, cracked & ground grains
Hot breakfast cereal, simple rice puddings!
February 6th:    Beans…are good protein & easy to prepare!
Crock Pot cooking  – Soup & One Pot meals

~Each lesson includes basic cooking with seasonal fresh veggies:  steaming, stir fry, crock pot roasting~
~ $20/class ( sliding scale & scholarships available) ~ each class lasts from 10:00am – 12:30

Taught in Willits by Nutritionist & Natural Cook -  Ann Waters B.S

Sign up by calling 459-6362

Sponsored by North Coast Opportunities

Local Food Abundance

There are many thing that need to be accomplished for our town to be self sustaining, but none are so vital as feeding ourselves. In 2009 we are focusing our efforts on Local Food Abundance. To accomplish this we are doing a number of things:
Our events are all focusing on food, and most include eating it!
We are encouraging gardening on an individual basis as well as involvement in the several community gardens through our newsletter, our speakers, and every other means we can find. We have even started bringing edible landscapes to home gardens in Willits through the Little Red Wagon planting project.
We are partnering with Willits Action Group (WAG, a project of North Coast Opportunities) in Mendo Food Futures. This project has many aspects including the development of local grain and dried bean storage through the sale of bulk dried grains and beans.
The Now and Then Film Series is featuring interesting and topical films about food and the processes for growing it and getting it to our plates.