Columbia Parents Push Farm-to-School Movement to Get Moving

The newly formed Farm-to-School Advisory Group for the Bellingham School District will meet for the first time Thursday, June 10 to discuss plans for the upcoming school year. The meeting will be held at Central Services, 1306 Dupont Street at 5:30p.m.

Starting next fall the group will meet monthly, working to develop a feasible, structured, district-wide Farm-to-School plan. The group is aiming for a 5 percent increase of local fresh food in school lunches next year and an additional 5 percent increase in subsequent years.

At the forefront of the Advisory Group, as initiators and serving as members, are Columbia Elementary School Parents Rachel Akins, Jessica Sankey and Mardi Solomon. With enthusiasm for Farm-to-School, Columbia Elementary School parents met to come up with a way to get the district moving toward change. In February, they submitted a proposal for the Advisory Group, to establish the communication of Farm-to-School ideas between schools and individuals interested in the program.

“We live in a community that is rich with agriculture and it’s silly to not be buying locally and feeding our kids local, more fresh food,” Sankey said.

The idea of Farm-to-School is to improve student health, the income of local farmers, and in a broader sense the state of the environment. With an emphasis on nutritional, economic, and environmental benefits, Farm-to-School efforts have gained local, regional, and national recognition, including legislative attention on state and federal levels.

“It’s a win-win; it helps our local farmers and helps our kids and there is a dramatic reduction in the amount of fuel and energy put into transporting food,” Columbia Parents Association President Erin McEachern said, “so to me that just makes perfect sense.”

However, there are challenges on the local level such as cost, building working business relationships with local farmers, and finding enough local resources to provide for the 5,000 school lunches served in the district per day. It’s complicated to feed all these kids with the strict rules and tight budget the Food Service works under, Sankey said.

The Advisory Group hopes to aid the district in overcoming these various challenges. Working closely with Food Service Manager Mark Dalton, the group will research, promote, and facilitate local Farm-to-School options.

Evaluating the success of past projects will be a key factor in the planning process. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel, we want to look at what has and hasn’t worked so far, Sankey said, to learn about what’s happening nationally and locally, learn how the Food Service works, and work with the Food Service Manager to come up with a plan.

“The district doesn’t have a lot of staff in place to do this kind of ground work,” Dalton said, “it’s a worthy cause and people are willing to contribute their time towards it.”


Evaluating past projects,
present challenges,
and future benefits


With the mission of funding innovative ideas to move the local Farm-to-School Program forward, the Whatcom Community Foundation’s Sustainable Whatcom Fund provided $66,490 of start-up support for15 pilot projects throughout the county this school year.

Four of these pilot projects were run in the Bellingham School District at Parkview Elementary School, Wade King Elementary School, Fairhaven Middle School and Sehome High School. However, a total of five schools in the district have participated in Farm-to-School efforts, Columbia Elementary School being the fifth with its unique support of the program.

On a school-by-school basis, the pilot projects have varied significantly. At Sehome for example, local salads were offered for $1, whereas at Fairhaven free locally produced snacks were offered on Wednesdays. In comparison, the purpose of the Advisory Group is to organize a plan that will make program changes equal throughout the district.

“The goal is that somebody in the district gets what everybody in the district gets,” Sankey said.

This district-wide consistency is modeled by the district’s successfully developed business relationship with BelleWood Acres. With BelleWood Acres, each school in the district receives fresh, local apples September through January.

“We pay a little more of a price-point for them, but the fact that they are local and organic and fresh is worth the price,” Dalton said.

The additional cost of fresh food like BelleWood Acres apples is an expense managed by the Food Service. Unlike the operations of a grocery store, where fluctuations in the cost of a product result in fluctuations of the price offered to customers, the amount of money spent on school lunches is set for the year and the price offered to families cannot change.

“It’s a balancing act,” Dalton said, “you have to make sure you still run a break-even program by making offsets with savings in other areas.”

However, the price of school lunches can and does change every few years.

“It continues to go up, but it’s less than $3 a meal, which I think is less than a happy meal,” McEachern said, “as far as our children’s health and well being I don’t think that you can put a price tag on that.”

It’s anticipated that Farm-to-School changes will make school lunches more valuable and preferable to parents and students alike. Yet both cost and nutrition play roles in whether or not kids are sent to school with packed lunches.

For McEachern, it’s a 40 percent cost and 60 percent nutrition consideration. Currently, I can pack lunches for cheaper, but I would probably be more likely to pay for school lunches if they consisted of healthy, local organic food, McEachern said.

With access in Whatcom County to produce such as apples, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers and potatoes the first initiative for local is the fruits and veggies portion of school lunches. In addition to fruits and veggies each school lunch is required to provide milk, meat, and bread. The Food Service plans to eventually localize all of these components.

“Ideally kids will have these beautiful, fresh, local lunches and parents will value them so much that they will not pack lunch for their kids but will send them to school to eat these healthy lunches,” Sankey said.

Although the current focus of the district is on the food side of the movement, educating kids about the value of eating locally and healthfully and instilling positive life-long eating habits is also an important component of the Farm-to-School program. To raise awareness of the program, the district will host an Eat Local Day in September, bringing in as much local food as possible for that school lunch.

“I expect to see a lot of things happen, we’re just trying to move everything ahead,” Solomon said.



Additional Blurbs

•You can get involved

The Advisory Group is intended to be representative of a variety of stakeholders as well as the variety of school zones in the county. Parents, school staff, community members involved in agriculture, and high school students were encouraged to apply. Although 15 members were selected from 43 applicants, the group is not intended to be exclusive, the planning is a collaborative process and if non-members would like to get involved they can contact the group, Dalton said.

•Farm Challenges

The four major challenges of the Farm-to-School program are quality, quantity, convenience and cost, Dalton said, and the Advisory Group will tackle all four of these challenges. Locally and organically grown produce does not look like grocery store produce and the district serves 5,000 meals per day, which is a lot of food to provide using local sources.

Convenience and cost are the most difficult challenges, however, because they strain the ability to build business relationships between farms and schools.

Food received by schools is required to be covered by insurance and be in a ready-to-serve form. These requirements complicate the ability of some farmers to sell their products to schools. With BelleWood Acres, the farm was able to get insurance and a production facility in order to build a direct relationship with the schools.

However this is not feasible for all farms. Fortunately there are organizations such as the local non-profit, Growing Washington who serves as a middle man to farms that need it, alleviating some of these challenging responsibilities.

Improving the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project

The Bellingham Food Bank hopes to improve the efficiency and sustainability of its Small Potatoes Gleaning Project this year. In an effort to de-centralize the gleaning process, volunteers have been assigned to specific Bellingham neighborhoods as gleaning captains. In response to an increasing need for the distribution of fresh food throughout Whatcom County, the food bank also hopes to get a cargo van for transporting gleaned produce.

The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project collects produce from local farms, farmer’s markets, and individual homes. Surplus produce and tree fruit that would otherwise go to waste is collected by volunteers with the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project when individuals call the Bellingham Food Bank and request volunteer harvesters. Perishable, unsold produce is also collected from farmer’s markets.

This produce is a valuable source of food for the 8,000 people serviced by the food bank per month. “For clients, fresh fruits and vegetables can be really expensive in the store, so when they are able to take as many ears of corn as they like or a bunch of apples home, they get really excited about it,” Small Potatoes Gleaning Project VISTA Dorothy Mitchell said.

Other, smaller food banks and meal programs throughout the county also benefit from gleaned produce that is distributed by the Bellingham Food Bank. “A lot of the sites we distribute to have very small budgets and can’t buy fresh foods, so this is their only source of high quality food,” Mitchell said.


De-centralizing Gleans

In 2009 the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project gleaned more than 135,000 pounds of fresh food from locations throughout Whatcom County. The idea for de-centralizing gleaning efforts came from the observation that while three-fourths of gleans occurred in backyards, three-fourths of the produce gleaned came from farms, Mitchell said.

In April, seven Gleaning Captains were assigned to territories throughout Bellingham that include the neighborhood they live in and two adjacent neighborhoods. Greg Hope, a resident in the Columbia neighborhood, is the Gleaning Captain for Columbia, Birchwood, and Cornwall Park with Co-captain Andrea Fenwick.

“I am proud to say that I have gleaned fruit trees at several locations in the Columbia neighborhood for Small Potatoes, and I look forward to meeting more of my neighbors on future gleans,” Hope said.

The goal of de-centralization is to allow the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project leadership to focus their energy on organizing large scale farm gleans, while volunteer gleaning captains coordinate smaller-scale backyard gleans. “Fruit gleans from people’s yards are still a really important outreach tool, and we don’t want to see that go to waste,” Mitchell said.

Neighborhood glean captains are also intended to increase the awareness of The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project in their respective neighborhoods, potentially stimulating an increase in backyard gleans.

“The anticipated result is that, in 2010, Small Potatoes will achieve both more large scale farm gleans throughout the county and more backyard gleans within the city of Bellingham,” Hope said.


Becoming a Contestant of the Pepsi Refresh Project

In addition to increasing the number of gleans completed, the Bellingham Food Bank also hopes to see an increase in the distribution of produce collected. Over the last two years the Bellingham Food Bank has seen a 40 percent increase in clients. In addition to this, thirty other hunger-relief organizations throughout Whatcom County receive food distributed by the Bellingham Food Bank.

“As Small Potatoes expands to glean and distribute more fresh, healthy food to a growing number of hungry residents of Whatcom County, the need for reliable transportation will only increase,” Hope said.

For this reason the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project has entered the Pepsi Refresh Project contest to win $25,000 to go toward purchasing a cargo van. The submission will appear online at refresheverything.com/small-potatoes June 1 to be voted on throughout the month. If the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project receives enough votes to win the Pepsi Refresh Project contest for the month of June, the money will be used to purchase a used, fuel efficient, Dodge Sprinter.

In comparison to the current vehicle used for the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, a new cargo van would provide more reliable transportation, make delivery trips easier, and have a larger capacity to carry produce. A transportation upgrade would give the food bank the ability to “deliver more and deliver more in one trip” to other organizations, Mitchell said.

Donating Produce to the Bellingham Food Bank

It’s a common misconception that food banks only accept donations of canned food. Food banks actually accept a wide variety of foods, including fresh produce.

The Bellingham Food Bank encourages donations of fresh produce, an important source of nutrients for the 8,000 people served by the food bank per month. In an effort to increase the amount of fresh produce received the Bellingham food Bank runs three projects; The Food Bank Farm, the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, and Victory Gardens.

The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project reorganized in April, assigning seven volunteers as Gleaning Captains to coordinate backyard gleans in specific Bellingham neighborhoods. Greg Hope is the Gleaning Captain for Columbia, Birchwood, and Cornwall Park. See his feedback on volunteering below.

How you can help:

Donate:

• The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project collects home-grown sources of fresh food from gardens and fruit trees that would otherwise go unused. If you would like to donate plums, apples, etc. from a tree in your yard, but need help harvesting it, The Small Potatoes Gleaning project will provide volunteers, tools, and transportation to complete the harvest for you. (Call to request a visit to your home 360-676-0410)
• The Victory Gardens program encourages home gardeners to donate their surplus produce. If you have grown too many tomatoes, zucchini, etc. for you to put to use yourself, you can donate your extra supply by dropping it off at the food bank.
• You can also donate purchased produce by dropping it off at the food bank. (M-F 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.)
  

Volunteer:

• The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project and the Food Bank Farm rely heavily on the labor of volunteers to bring in local sources of produce. Volunteers with the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project make home visits to harvest fresh food from gardens and fruit trees. Volunteers with the Food Bank Farm participate in farm labor and harvesting.

Comments from Gleaning Captain Greg Hope:

"Small Potatoes provides our volunteers [with] opportunities to learn more about where our food really comes from through farm gleans, to strengthen the bonds of community through backyard gleans, to acknowledge the reality [that] many residents of the city we live in cannot count on access to adequate healthy food."

Certifying Your Yard As Wildlife Habitat

The National Wildlife Federation and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife offer wildlife habitat certification programs for individual homes. A personal yard or garden must provide food, water, shelter and places to raise young to be qualified as wildlife habitat. Chemical-free maintenance of the area is also required.

The Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department has Backyard Habitat Information Packets and can set you up with a Backyard Habitat Mentor for free assistance in the planning process. Information can also be found on the National Wildlife Federation and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife websites.

Both organizations have on-line applications for certification. The National Wildlife Federation charges a $15 application fee and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife charges $5. For a combined $20, certification with both organizations may be applied for using the National Wildlife Federation application.

Upon certification both organizations offer official signs of certification that may be posted in your yard or window. The National Wildlife Federation signs read ‘Certified Wildlife Habitat’ and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife signs read ‘Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary’.

-Informational Video

Celebrating Bellingham’s Community Wildlife Habitat Certification

Bellingham became certified for natural habitat on March 17, as the seventh certified city in Washington State and the thirty-seventh certified city in the nation. Columbia Elementary School, certified on March 9, was the final individual certification needed for Bellingham to receive Community Wildlife Habitat Certification.

The recent Community Wildlife Habitat Certification will be celebrated at the annual Backyard Habitat and Native Flora Fair. The fair will be at the Fairhaven Village Green Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include free kid’s activities, plant sales, tours of nearby habitat and various information booths. At noon, Courtney Sullivan with the National Wildlife Federation, will present Mayor Dan Pike with the official certificate for Community Wildlife Habitat Certification.

To receive certification cities must register with the National Wildlife Federation and set goals for the amount of certified wildlife habitat to be developed throughout the city. The scope of the goal depends on the size of the city.

Bellingham registered in 2005 and now has 283 homes, six schools, three businesses, six parks, five farms and City Hall individually certified. Each certified location is required to provide wildlife with food, water, shelter and space to raise young. The locations must also be maintained without the use of chemicals.

Creating Certified Habitat at Columbia Elementary School





Along the north fence of the Columbia school yard there are now 500 square feet of certified wildlife habitat. With the aid of Columbia students 22 species of native plants including snowberry, salmonberry, evergreen huckleberry and sword fern were planted in the habitat area.

Plans for creating wildlife habitat at Columbia Elementary School began in 2005 with a design process that included teachers, parents and students. Three teachers and one parent originally expressed interest in the project and the Columbia School Grounds Enhancement Committee carried it out. Gene Myers and Mardi Solomon, whose kids attend Columbia, spearheaded the project, Principal Missy Ferguson said.

Funding for the school yard habitat relied on a budget from the Columbia Parents Association as well as some donations. A series of workshops hosted by the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department provided teachers and parents with information for the habitat development.

The students were very involved throughout the process. Beginning with the design, it was emphasized that the kids were the main stakeholders in the planning process, professor at Western Washington University Gene Myers said. The school also plans to keep the students engaged in the maintenance of the habitat.

Maintenance and upkeep has been expressed as one of the biggest challenges of the habitat. It requires that everyone involved with the school be informed so that it is taken care of and not destroyed, said Rae Edwards, volunteer coordinator at the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department. Staff, parents and students all need to play a continuous role and communication is necessary to ensure that the vegetation does not mistakenly get sprayed or mowed as has occurred in the past, Edwards said.

“Another challenge with school yards is the balance between active play and vegetation,” Edwards said.

Especially during the establishment phase, stray soccer balls have posed a threat to the newly planted vegetation, but because the students helped with the planting they appear to be very considerate of their impact on the plants, Myers said.



Habitat Benefits Kids and the Greater Community

As an asset for Columbia Elementary School, the school yard habitat serves as an outdoor classroom and as an addition to the playground that offers unconventional options at recess. The habitat gives the kids an opportunity to interact more closely with their environment and understand how to take care of it.

The additional recess options benefit the kids by providing them with a diversity of environments and choices. This is beneficial to the kids who prefer quiet time or fantasy play rather than soccer, four square and other conventional activities outside the classroom.

“Kids learn in different ways and different kinds of kids need different things, some have energy to burn and some feel over stimulated in the classroom,” Edwards said.

It is believed that the kids who may feel over stimulated in the classroom need a break from organized activity. Imaginative play may be more beneficial to these kids, as is suggested to be provided by the wildlife habitat space, Myers said.

“If you give kids a natural area they are going to use it more creatively and more actively than a black top,” Myers said.

In addition to benefiting the students who have access to school yard habitat, certified wildlife habitat may also aesthetically and economically benefit property owners and the city as a whole. Certified wildlife habitat may make property more valuable, or at least more attractive, Edwards said.

“I’ve had people call me and say they want their yard re-certified so that they have a better chance to sell their house,” Edwards said.

Tourists, visitors, and potential residents are also drawn to areas with certified habitat. Bellingham is a location that particularly attracts people seeking an “outdoorsy kind of life” with the water, mountains and trails in the area, Edwards said. Certified habitat may serve as an additional draw.

Bellingham Food Bank Aims to Increase Consumption of Fresh Produce

For the approximately one-fourth of Bellingham residents who fall below the poverty line, access to fresh food and produce can be difficult due to cost and transportation issues, said Max Morange, Agricultural Program Coordinator of the Bellingham Food Bank. In an effort to combat this access issue the Bellingham Food Bank is starting the Bellingham Food Bank Garden Project this year in addition to accepting fresh produce donations.

Three other programs run by the Bellingham Food Bank aim to increase donations of fresh produce. These programs include the Food Bank Farm, Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, and Victory Gardens. The Bellingham Food Bank Garden Project differs from the other programs by supplying the tools needed to grow produce at home.

Funded by the Whatcom Community Foundation, the project is a partnership between the Bellingham Food Bank and Whatcom Volunteer Center to start gardens at low-income residencies throughout Bellingham. The Bellingham Food Bank is providing garden supplies and the Whatcom Volunteer Center is recruiting volunteers.


Community Sites Selected For Project

Ideally low-income homes will be garden sites in the future, but this year gardens will be built at community sites such as the YWCA and Sea Mar Visions, an in-patient treatment center for young women who struggle with chemical dependency. The staff at Sea Mar Visions has expressed excitement about the project, which they believe will benefit their facility by offsetting food expenses and as an exercise of responsibility for their residents.

“The girls will be able to literally see the fruits of their labors when harvesting and eating it,” Carl Ravencroft said, with Sea Mar Visions. “The whole process will be seen from the seeds to the dinner table and show that when you stick with something, it can be rewarding.”

Garden building is expected to begin on Tuesday at Sea Mar Visions. Some volunteers will build the 4-by-8 foot, raised bed garden plots. Another 20 volunteers will serve as mentors for the project, meeting with residents one or two hours a week to provide encouragement, resources, and knowledge to the individuals growing the gardens. The Bellingham Food Bank hopes that interaction with mentors will provide gardeners with a positive growing experience and enable them to become mentors themselves in following years.

“Mentors are people who enjoy gardening, are excited about it, and can share their enthusiasm with others who may not have had the opportunity to garden,” Dan Hammill with the Whatcom Volunteer Center said.

Providing Fresh-Food Resources

“One of the challenges of low income members of the community is access, the ability to buy the food and where it is if they don’t have access to a car or bus stop,” Morange said.

The Bellingham Food Bank aims to break down the barrier of access to fresh food. Providing people with the tools to have a garden and grow their own produce will grant immediate access from home to nutritious resources.

For each garden more seeds than needed to fill the plot will be provided. The variety of vegetable seeds will include peppers, tomatoes, kale, lettuce, and broccoli among others. The gardeners will have enough seeds to somewhat pick and choose what produce they want to grow, Morange said.

Twenty-five community locations will receive gardens this year. Next year the food bank plans to provide another 25 households with gardens.

“The main goal of the project is to increase consumption of fresh vegetables in the diets of low-income members of our community,” Morange said.



-Bellingham Food Bank Website

Business Changes in Fountain District

Fountain District maintains some history while experiencing business changes and plans for an Urban Village are underway.

Business Changes in Fountain District

The Fountain District has seen a lot of business swapping over the years and changes continue to be made. However, through the shuffle some long-term family owned businesses remain, such as Griffith Furniture, which opened 71 years ago.

“A lot of things come and go. The restaurant across the street changed hands four or five times in the last 30 years,” owner of Griffith Furniture Steve Griffith said. “But we’re getting some good new businesses in the neighborhood.”

Recent additions include three food service businesses; Supreme Bean Coffee Café, The Fountain Coffee and Wine Bistro, and Diamond Jim’s Grill. All of them agree that business has been good in the area and the community has been welcoming.

Diamond Jim’s Grill At New Location

Diamond Jim’s Grill opened most recently, on April 15. The restaurant has been an established business for about twelve years, Diamond Jim’s Grill owner Jim Green said, but he was forced to leave the original location in Sunnyland due to road construction.

The Fountain District location, formerly Speak E-Z’s BBQ, is larger than the original location. As early as summer or as late as the end of the year Green hopes to take advantage of the size difference to extend business hours and expand the menu to include dinner.

Urban Village Planning Fitting for Fountain District

Fountain District businesses tend to be unique, both old and new. This allows them to complement one another rather than compete with one another, Green said.

In addition to the range of complementary businesses, the location of the Fountain District between the Columbia, Cornwall, and Lettered Streets neighborhoods is ideal for the city’s Urban Village plan, Green said. The main idea of the Urban Villages is to make a variety of services accessible to people without the need to drive.