More Good News Grows At Crescent Elk

We've featured successes from the Crescent Elk Middle School garden before, but this time Joe Gillespie and his students have taken things a step further. They have been providing food to the school kitchens on a regular basis and have been featured in a "Know Your Farmer" spot! It's a great way to close the circle and make an impact:

ReThink Your Drink!

World Water Day is coming up. March 22 is the day set aside to celebrate freshwater and further the discussion on the importance of safe water, sustainable access and practices. This year, the focus is on the link between food security and water security. Drought is the leading cause of food shortages - it is especially hard on communities relying on local agriculture for food.

Del Norte County is fortunate to have a large supply of freshwater, but that doesn't mean everyone always has access to safe, clean water. Sodas and other sugary drinks are  sometimes the most accessible beverages at parks, schools, hospitals and other public spaces. A 20 ounce bottle of soda has 17 teaspoons of sugar, and soda is the number one source of sugar in the American diet. Consuming a lot sugar has known health risks. To address this, DHHS, First 5 Del Norte and the North Coast Nutrition and Fitness Collaborative teamed up to put on a "ReThink Your Drink" forum and training event for community members yesterday.

The afternoon was both informative and interactive, providing participants with materials and activities for furthering the campaign message, that water is best, and we can get it best from the tap. A "photo journey" through the "State of Our Water in Del Norte," with Sara Haug as Field Guide, showed that some places were better at providing access to the tap than others. This photo from Little School of the Redwoods, shows a girl taking advantage of hers.

If you're interested in learning more about the virtues of water, or getting involved in the campaign, click on any of the above links. There are some great materials already available. Maybe you'd like to do something special for World Water Day! 

New Feature On School Menus

Here at Growing Tables, we're all involved in the Building Healthy Communities work in our community. Part of the work is building resident power and bringing people together who have similar interests and passions to create community change. Sometimes, people get discouraged in working toward change because change can be hard. It can be uncomfortable and people in power can feel threatened and close themselves off to new possibilities.

But sometimes, everything works. Here's an example:

Several weeks ago, my husband was frustrated when looking at the monthly menu of school lunches. We eat a mostly vegetarian diet, with a little fish thrown in occasionally, and there were some school meals that were ambiguous: is a piazza pizza vegetarian or does it have sausage or pepperoni on it? Are the beans in the bean and cheese burrito vegetarian or are they made with lard?

Our kindergartener desperately wanted to check off hot lunch on her sign-in sheet some mornings, but all we could safely allow was the mac-and-cheese once a month. So my husband searched the school district's website and sent off an email asking for more information and ended up having a fairly lengthy and positive exchange with Judy Wangerin, the head of food services at the district. She agreed to try to find some solutions.

And she and her team did! This month's menu includes a single box explaining a new feature of the school menus: meatless meals are marked with an asterisk.


Note the message in the first Monday of the lunch menu!

This is community change at its easiest and best. One resident saw a problem that affected something he really cared about: his (our) daughter's lunches. He figured out who had the power to fix the problem, communicated with them and explained the problem, and the problem was fixed, the system was changed.

Now this particular system change might not affect very many people, but the lesson does:

If you see something in our community that you feel should be changed, say something! Figure out who can make that change happen and talk to them. Let them know you think a change is needed. If nobody speaks up, nothing will change. Be a part of the solution!

Working Together To Overcome Challenges!

One thing our community does very well is work together. In some places, organizations, public agencies, and private businesses jealously guard their corner of whatever market they are in. But not in Del Norte! Since moving here, I have been continually impressed by how well people come together when there's work to be done. Today's post highlights another of these stories.

Future Farmers of America (FFA) provides agricultural education, often through classes and after-school clubs, as they do at Del Norte High. FFA provides leadership and research training, and helps young people learn how to plan and execute individual projects. You can read more about the organization here.

In Del Norte, our local FFA chapter is actively engaged with the larger community. Students have been working with Porters Pots and Plants to grow fresh veggies for Our Daily Bread Ministries, which serves hot meals to our low-income and homeless neighbors. Like most supplemental food programs, Our Daily Bread is seeing an increased need for their services at a time when many former donors have been hit hard in the pocketbook themselves. This is a great example of a public (schools)-private (Porters P&P)-charitable (Our Daily Bread) partnership. (And even goes beyond our community thanks to a massive seed donation by Territorial Seed Company of Oregon!)

Nineteen of our FFA students have been selected to go to the California State FFA Conference in April and they are in need of travel funds. They are working on a variety of fundraisers and will be holding a big rummage sale on March 19th. The garage sale will be at the Chetco Federal Credit Union parking lot. There are three ways you can help:

1. If you have unwanted, saleable items sitting in your house or garage, you can donate them for FFA to sell. These funds will help send our students to the state conference.
2. Come to the FFA Garage Sale on March 19th and turn someone else's trash into your treasure, knowing that the money will send a student to Fresno.
3. Bring a donation of fresh fruits and vegetables to the FFA Garage Sale. The produce will be donated to Our Daily Bread and you will receive a free gift of vegetable starts grown by the FFA chapter. It's a win-win situation!

Our strength is much greater when we all work together. We can all support our FFA students, not just by helping them go to the conference, but by showing that we appreciate their community service and the work they do. These are potential future farmers right here in Del Norte -- we will need them in years to come.

Meatless Mondays At Schools

If you've been following local food news, you know that our schools are working -- slowly, but surely -- to improve the nutritive value of school lunches. With the urging of the Children's Health Collaborative, a local group of parents, pediatricians, and school officials, the school lunch program is trying a few new things.

Recently, Del Norte schools had their first Meatless Monday, a vegetarian lunch that follows a national trend. As NPR reported last summer, Sid Lerner is trying to market Meatless Mondays as a way for all Americans to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol found in animal products. It can also be easier on the pocketbook, one reason that the Smith River senior lunch program has been serving meatless lunches on Mondays since early last summer.

Sid Lerner is a veteran ad-man -- he brought the world the Charmin-squeezing shoppers who were harangued with "Don't squeeze the Charmin!" So it is no wonder that he is using smart marketing to spread the word about Meatless Mondays. The website features lots of reasons to go meatless and news about the campaign. It's also the source for the playful posters designed by Lerner's team that will be showing up in the halls at DN High School.

What do you think? Should our schools embrace this trend? Do you participate in Meatless Mondays or would you consider participating?