The (incr)edible schoolyard

Welcome to Day 1 of my week-long California adventure. This morning found me back at Alice Waters' original Edible Schoolyard project. It was amazing to revisit this most beautiful and extensive school garden, tucked away in Berkeley. Having worked in the field for nearly six years since Ollie and I passed through here on our cross-country bike tour, I was even more impressed than I was the first time around. Imagine that!

I picked up my visitor's badge in the school's main office a bit after 11am, then wandered out to the garden to poke around. When I asked them a couple of questions about their interaction with the green space, two middle school girls hanging out at the garden's long picnic table proceeded to give me one of the best garden tours I've ever had. After tasting some delicate yellow raspberries growing near the entrance, the girls walked me past the espaliered apple orchard and excitedly told me about pressing the fruit into cider the previous autumn. We strolled past the in-ground beds of swiss chard and brassicas, with a stop to admire the gorgeous dahlias (my new favorites) as we made our way to see the chickens cavorting around the straw fort students had helped to construct in the far corner of the outdoor space. We continued on to the chicken coop to check for eggs, admired the orderly tools around the shed, and then explored the greenhouse, where I examined the remnants of last week's seedling sale on tables that students had built.

My impromptu guides led me next to the bee hive, apologizing that the usual veil and gloves were not around for me to borrow so I could take a closer peek. (Yes, kids are invited to check out the honeybees on their own. Pretty awesome!) After that, we meandered to the school-built outdoor prep tables and stone pizza oven, where eighth graders annually prepare and bake their own pizzas. The young people have become much more involved in garden work and construction than seemed to be the case during my last time through, and they sure are proud of this... as they should be!



As if I wasn't enamored enough, my teenage guides led me next through a tunnel of grape, kiwi berry, and passion fruit vines. "Certainly more prolific than my own school garden's vining fruit," I muttered, mostly to myself. California weather and four garden teachers certainly help things thrive around here. Still: impressive. We ended our loop back near the entrance, where I admired the outdoor worm bins and rustic kitchen setup.



With a friendly wave, my guides were off to class, and I was left wondering if one of my own gardens might be as impressive one day. Something to ponder during lunch tomorrow at Chez Panisse with my friend (and kind local host) Colin....

School food revolution

Poor-quality (not to mention downright repulsive) cafeteria food has long been the bane of schoolchildren, nutritionists, and educators around the country. In recent years, the issue has been getting attention from community activists, celebrity chefs, Slow Food, and the First Lady. And it turns out that last week was not only DC Farm to School Week, but also School Lunch Week. As such there have been all kinds of fun, food-related educational activities going on around the country. (See? It was more than just my group's apple tasting station at the DC Farm to School kickoff event. Those local WV apples do look tasty though, no? Go on and try one.)

School food is finally getting the attention it deserves -- I mean, cripes, how are kids supposed to learn when they're eating junk, or nothing at all?? Local policies like DC's Healthy Schools Act are allowing schools to put more money where their mouths are, allotting funds to get healthier food to more schoolchildren. While the additional money for food, training, and infrastructure going toward improving food quality and access in our public schools pales in comparison to, say, what we spend on our country's military or penal systems, it is something. We're talking a rise of 10 cents per child per meal in DC schools, with an additional 5 cents for locally-sourced ingredients. It may not sound like much, but considering the 2009 $2.68 per meal rate, those pennies can add up.

There also appears to be an unprecedented empowerment of schools and students to demand better food...and some of them are getting it. One of the success stories I recently learned about is the work being done right here in New Orleans. It involves some unlikely partners including a city-wide, student-driven activist group (known as "Rethinkers" in the most recent issue of Edible New Orleans) that has been issuing school food report cards and corporate catering giants like Sodexo (a group which I have long held in low esteem for their poor quality and unfair labor practices, but who seem to be turning over a new leaf -- which is good, even if the leaf turning is entirely profit-driven) changing their offerings accordingly. School food has long been contracted out to corporate catering giants like Sodexo, Chartwells, and Aramark. While I am inherently suspicious of the ability of such groups to produce anything resembling fresh or high-quality food, it turns out that technically these Food Service Providers (FSPs) are supposed to answer to their customers -- the school district, school boards, and even students. It is possible for a school district to demand something better, and groups like New Orleans' FirstLine Schools (which include Samuel Green Charter School, home to NOLA's Edible Schoolyard, which I visited last May) are demanding exactly that from their provider, Sodexo: three servings of fresh fruits and veggies each day, a salad bar, healthier versions of native cuisine. (And let me just say that to describe the native cuisine here in NOLA as "delicious" is a vast understatement.)

Want to know what's going on with school food in your area? For national programs, I'd recommend checking out the National Farm to School website (www.farmtoschool.org) and the First Lady's website (www.letsmove.gov).

For my fellow DCers, there are resources like the DC Farm to School site (http://dcfarmtoschool.org/healthy-schools-act/) and councilwoman Mary Cheh's website (www.marycheh.com). Incidentally, I spotted both Ms. Cheh and USDA deputy secretary Kathleen Merrigan -- both champions for improved school food -- at last Tuesday's DC Farm To School Week kickoff event. Neither stopped by my apple tasting station, though, so I didn't have a chance to gush about their work in person. Maybe I should drop them a postcard saying as much when I get to Italy tomorrow.

Apologies in advance for a week unplugged from the crackberry, but international data plans are, shall we say, astronomically expensive. Also, I'll be busy gorging myself on local wine and gelato.

More on the Community Food Security Coalition and Terra Madre conferences to come when I return from Italy.... Oops, sounds like they're boarding my flight. Ciao regazzi!

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Tabula rasa

After my time visiting the original Edible Schoolyard (ESY for short) on my way through Berkeley, CA, I was excited to see what its first attempt at replication would be like in the markedly different climate -- both socially and seasonally speaking -- of New Orleans. Before I sat in on a few classes last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to have a chance to speak with Kelly, the school's ESY community outreach staffperson (and, ahem, AmeriCorps alumnus), about the program's origins and other Louisiana-specific aspects of the program at Samuel Green.

It turns out that the original public school was in dire straits a few years ago and the school board had more or less thrown its hands up in exasperation. After a series of fortuitous conversations and almost impossible good fortune that included a chance meeting with Alice Waters (who founded the original ESY and who was looking for a way to reach out to the post-Katrina New Orleans community), the founders of a high performing charter school across the city agreed to take over the troubled school. The new charter school's program was essentially built from scratch -- a tabula rasa, as it were -- with a chunk of money from Ms. Waters and the steady support of the community. (For those readers who were not in my NY Teaching Fellows professional development sessions, "tabula rasa" means "blank slate." Jim, stop shaking your head.) The Edible Schoolyard NOLA folks were determined to develop strong lessons that built on Louisiana state standards -- a move that helps lend legitimacy to the gardening and cooking education program that has been criticized by some as taking students away from important lessons on things like memorizing the US presidents in order or diagramming sentences -- and I believe the school is the stronger for it.

The lessons that the California school garden program used didn't translate well to the New Orleans setting. This is not to say that the lessons at the Berkeley ESY were poor, but the school had more leeway. I didn't have an opportunity to sit in on classes there, but I did get the distinct impression that the curriculum was just recently starting to be more structured. (And for the record, I am not all about rigid "structure" or "standards." Heavens no. But as a former public school teacher, I also know you are asking for trouble if you don't have a solid lesson plan or can't justify a nontraditional educational activity. Also, many of the kids seem to respond well to classroom rituals and consistent expectations.)

At Green, the garden lessons for grades 1-8 are closely tied in with science class, while the cooking lessons are (quite creatively, I think) linked to history coursework. Every class is slated for 16 sessions each in the garden and kitchen (which works out to four times per quarter in each space). So while the 1st grade class that I observed conducted group activities related to plant cycles -- having seen the garden during different times of the year, there was much to notice and discuss as they planted flowers and collected seeds -- the 7th grade class reviewed people, places, and documents of the Civil War before cooking up steaming tureens of New England clam chowder and saute pans with traditional southern shrimp and grits. (My stomach started grumbling near the end of the lesson as students and teachers sat down to share the communal meal -- complete with flowers, napkins, and ice water -- so I had to hotfoot it down the street soon afterwards to get myself a shrimp po' boy. Not exactly sustainable, but local and delicious.)

While I did not have a chance to speak with the teachers at Green, I was impressed by the creativity of the lessons and the focus of the majority of the students as they joyfully (as much as 7th graders allow themselves to be joyful) undertook their assigned tasks. It's a very different model than, say, the School at Blair Grocery, and yet both tap into the potential for personal and community growth via food-centered experiences. Pretty fitting for a town known for it's culinary heritage, agrarian roots, and distinct populations.

I'm not saying I'm moving to New Orleans, or that I'm looking to jump back into a classroom full time just now, but what a place to teach!

Cultivating success

A friend recently forwarded me an article in the Atlantic Monthly that made me really angry. I was all kinds of disgruntled and indignant after reading "Cultivating Failure: How school gardens are cheating our most vulnerable students" -- an attack on Alice Waters and the whole idea of incorporating food and garden experiences into the public education system. (Want to get me all worked up? Just make some snide remark about how reading is more important than weeding. Please. It's not an either/or scenario, people.) This woman must have had a bad experience involving a garden snake or a brussels sprout as a child. (I feel bad for her own kids.) Are hands-on activities that cultivate curious, joyful, well-rounded young people interfering with training them to be good standardized test takers? Goodness me, somebody sound the alarm.

I've continued to think about -- and visit -- food-related education groups quite a bit along the bikeable feast. Life Lab (which, like me, has been around since the late 70s) is the kind of program model I adore. If only I could help to replicate something like this on the east coast. (Yep, I'm still an East Coast Girl, all told, though mom and dad are convinced I'll find somewhere new to call home before I make my way back. The people and food around Santa Cruz are putting in a pretty strong bid. Must...resist...chantrelles....) On the UC Santa Cruz site, there's a demonstration garden, outdoor kitchen, beautiful walkways and signs and plants, and a small staff of knowledgeable, personable educators who clearly love what they do and love to share what they know. The space itself is a dream. Walking through for the first time during a brief sunny spell last Monday afternoon in Santa Cruz, I noted a wide variety of things to observe, taste, smell, and learn about. I found myself giddily counting the number of different fruit tree varieties, prancing over to the human sundial, enumerating the plants in the pizza garden...and daydreaming about working with a similar program back in DC. When I returned to the garden on Wednesday afternoon -- I, um, happened to be there around the same time as a group on a pre-conference field trip for EcoFarm -- I learned more about the fantastic Life Lab and UCSC Agroecology program that houses it from John and Whitney. It turns out that in addition to daily tours (except in the winter, when it drops to 2 tours per week) with school groups, Life Lab's UCSC Garden Classroom program (which works primarily with elementary school kids) and Food What?! (focused on high schoolers -- I wish they'd gotten back to me, I have tons of questions) offer all kinds of workshops and farm/garden/kitchen resources to educators across Santa Cruz county and beyond. They've partnered with local schools to start gardens and develop lessons in line with CA state curricula. I know I've maligned standards-based education on the blog (and to anyone within a 100-foot radius of my person) a few times, but using a garden and/or kitchen to round out the book learning can only be a good thing, it seems to me.

Speaking of farm-and-garden-oriented youth programs, I am just now realizing I neglected to mention another awesome organization I had the good fortune to learn about: Berkeley Youth Alternatives. Well, gardening is just one piece of the nonprofit's work, which also includes after-school tutoring, counseling, and teen job placement. (I was reminded of the program when I bumped into the garden manager, Kim, at an EcoFarm workshop last Thursday. Small world.) The 2 gardens comprise a rather small part of the overall organization, but the opportunity to learn about the natural world, to grow food for themselves and for donation to a local food pantry, to have a peaceful green space in the midst of the chaos that is an adolescent's daily life make the BYA gardens an indispensable part of the counseling and mentoring program. Developing the *whole* person -- what a concept.

Oh, my, look at the time. Speaking of nurturing young ones, I need to get back outside and help Becky feed the baby lambs.... Yep, you read that correctly. More details on adventures in bottle feeding lambs and making sheep's milk cheese to come....

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I rode through the desert on a bike with no name

Okay, so my bike has a name -- Ollie just cast a disgruntled look in my direction from where she's leaning against a fence post -- but I'll be damned if I could get Neil Young out of my head as we cruised first through West Oakland and then around Hunter's Point last Tuesday. (The mp3 player stopped working about a month ago, so things that get stuck in my head are harder to get out than usual. At least it wasn't Whitney Houston this time.) We were making our way through serious food deserts and noting the odd proximity of these to other parts of the city I've been lauding as Food Mecca. It was kind of surreal.

Have you heard the term "food desert"? It's been bandied about by food and social welfare advocates quite a bit lately. It generally refers to an area, often a low-income neighborhood, without access to fresh food within a reasonable commute on foot or public transit.

During our last day in the Bay Area, Ollie and I rode over to the YMCA in West Oakland to help pack the weekly grub boxes with Jason -- another dynamic food activist and People's Grocery staff person -- and 3 other volunteers. The produce bags were loaded with all kinds of goodies, many of which, earlier in the season, would've been grown on the Grocery's farm outside of town, but which now largely come from Veritable Vegetable -- the area's largest distributor of organic produce whose bulk buying allows groups like PG to offer quite a bargain to its patrons. Like Growing Power's market baskets, the People's Grocery grub boxes provide a cornucopia of fresh, local (as much as possible) fruits and veggies each week to folks living in a veritable food desert. Odd that there are so many relatively inexpensive, delightfully diverse fresh organic produce options in the Bay Area -- I'd checked out Berkeley Bowl, Monterrey Market, and the slightly pricier Rainbow Grocery -- but none are within a reasonable walking distance for most people in this area. As we packed avocados, kale, garlic, kiwis, and sweet potatoes, Jason told me about his organization's varied efforts to not only provide an affordable option for fresh food to folks in the economically depressed area through these optional weekly bags, but to educate about the importance -- and the joy -- of eating well. The Tuesday night cooking classes have become so popular there's a waiting list. At the same time, PG is hoping to get the word out to more people and expand their weekly box distribution, currently just under 100, to 250. It's going to take some outreach -- many folks aren't aware, for example, that they can use food stamps to cover the cost of their grub boxes -- but education and advocacy are among PG's strong suits. Some day, Jason hopes that the group's original dream of an actual People's Grocery market will be a reality. It's very much needed in West Oakland.

After a trip on BART to get back to the other side of the Bay, Ollie and I stopped at Rainbow Grocery to pick up some nibbles for lunch and stock up for the next day's departure from the city. Then we made our way through another major food desert to get to Hunter's Point. With Neil Young still pulsing through my brain, Ollie and I cruised through what I think must be the poorest part of San Francisco, where we saw not a single grocery store or cafe, not even a gas station quickie mart, and the only 2 places where we saw any sign of life for multiple miles were both liquor stores. It was amidst this setting that we came to the local Boys & Girls Club. Here, Rachelle and Maddy helped me stash Ollie somewhere safe and showed me around the beautiful facility. I learned that the after school program here includes elements of an Edible Schoolyard. With cooking lessons in the kitchen 3 days a week while the other 2 days incorporate garden activities, it's not as extensive as the program at MLK Middle School -- the original Edible Schoolyard -- but it is inspiring. And beautiful. And offers an alternative to the potholed asphalt jungle outside. The kids here seemed safe and happy, I noted as they devoured the afternoon snack of oranges and sunflower seeds. I wondered, though, if this might be the only healthy food they eat each day. In many cases, Rachelle told me, it was.

As I left the youth center just before dark, Maddy (another avid cyclist, it turns out) was on her way to Whole Foods to give a presentation on the Boys & Girls Club kitchen and garden program. We biked part of the way together before I split off to make my way back to Erica's place in the Mission District. As I rode, I couldn't help but marvel at the comparative plethora of coffee shops and markets the further I got from Hunter's Point.

It was an interesting end to my Bay Area experience, and though I know there are dozens of programs I didn't have a chance to work with this time around, I am excited to know they exist. For while San Francisco and Berkeley sport some of the finest food in the country, many folks here don't yet have access (or even know that they might want it) to fresh, healthy food. Including the man who ate part of my pastry during my visit to Mission Pie a few days earlier, but that is a story for another posting....

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One of those days

This past Thursday was one of the strangest on the bikeable feast so far. Mind you, I learned a lot and ate well, but I can't help marveling at the strange juxtaposition of fine dining and shoveling poop....

7:30am: bike ride across Oakland and Berkeley
9:30am: tour of the Edible Schoolyard
Noon: lunch at Chez Panisse
1:00pm: shoveling horse manure

I'd gotten terribly, frustratingly lost in the Oakland hills the night before -- 2 hours of poorly lit streets and maddeningly steep, leg-numbing inclines -- so Barry offered to bike with me into Berkeley on his way (sort of) to work. (He joked that I was still suffering from PTSD the next morning. I very well might've been. I haven't gotten *that* lost since the episode in Kutztown, PA, back in early June.) We made it without a hitch, and even had time to stop in for egg sandwiches and coffee at the lovely new, biker-friendly Actual Cafe on the way.

I was somewhat giddy touring Alice Waters' original Edible Schoolyard site at Berkeley's MLK Middle School. I'd been reading about the program for a few years now and marveled at the beautiful kitchen and garden spaces. The 14-year-old, foundation-funded program focuses on community building as much as food appreciation, and tries to link math, science, and humanities lessons with hands-on experiences to complement traditional classroom learning. I learned that the 2 chefs and 3 gardeners on staff are in the process of working with the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teachers to more formally align the Edible Schoolyard lessons with public school standards. I hope this move means that it can be more easily replicated in other schools, and that it doesn't squash the unusual, beautifully organic nature of the program (as standards-based learning tends to do).

Following the tour, I had a chance to chat with my guide, Shaina, about some of the technical aspects of the Schoolyard. When I told her a bit more about my research, she suggested that I take myself to Chez Panisse for lunch. I countered that it wasn't in the budget. "Ibti," she pointed out, "You just biked yourself half way around the country. You're researching sustainable food. You can't pass up a chance to eat at Alice Waters' restaurant. Treat yourself." Twist my arm. I had been scoping out the famous eatery's online menu roughly once a month for the past year, after all. Ollie and I biked over and I got the $25 lunch special: salad, fried oysters with chicory, and the most divine candied orange icecream with caramel sauce. All seasonal and all relatively local. Afterwards, I talked my way into the main kitchen. Alas, the creator of the ice cream was not present or I very well might have kissed her (as I once did a pastry chef in the south of France who supplied me with an indescribably delicious chocolate mousse). It's not like I generally consider myself a dessert person. Or a kisser of cooks. But, oh, that ice cream alone was worth the splurge.

An hour later I found myself shoveling fresh horse manure into the back of a pickup truck with Max and Josh of People's Grocery. As we drove between the horse farm in the hills outside of town and one of their urban farms at 35th & Chestnut, the guys told me a bit about the Oakland-based food justice nonprofit. The program focuses on 3 main areas: small business development, urban agriculture, and education/advocacy. From nutrition and cooking classes to job training to grub boxes (reminiscent of Growing Power's weekly "market baskets"), People's Grocery works with other area groups -- like Food Not Bombs, where we stopped to chat for a few minutes, and other local social justice and greening organizations -- to address West Oakland's food deserts. They are one of many activist groups here in the Bay Area making a real difference in the community. I look forward to helping out at a few more places during my time here, so stay tuned for another posting soon!

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