Humboldt County Office of Education works to bring Fresh Food to Schools

The Humboldt County Office of Education’s Farm to School coordinator is working to bring fresh food to schools by making it easy for Farmers to bring food to schools. 

 “It was a game changer. Everybody who had been wanting to access local produce in the past all of a sudden could much more easily in about 17 districts, jumped on board immediately”, says Erin Derden-Little, Farm to School Coordinator at HCOE. 

Nutrition education and free meals are provided through a variety of programs. 

“One of the things we do here is a harvest of the month program. So we send out produce to up to around 200 classrooms every month, and 25 afterschool programs and 150 families as well, with some recipe bags where we’re featuring a fruit or vegetable.They’re excited about it. They’ve already tried it. And, it just increases the likelihood of success when school districts are introducing these items into their meals”, says Derden-Little 

School Gardens are another element of nutrition education, something the office of Education is hoping to see more of in the future. 

“So this was launched about a year and a half ago with support from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, through a farm to school incubator grant program. So we are a recipient of that. And we have brought on a school garden coordinator”, she said. 

“We’ve been seeing a ton of excitement and, and it has been very well received. So we’re excited to see how that keeps going. But it’s another way to connect to our harvest of the month program and to just continue that broad approach of introducing kids to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. And gardens, of course, provide many other opportunities for social emotional learning and other other learning or educational goals”, says Derden-Little. 

Story by Tucker Caraway