Taste Washington Day celebrates farm fresh food in schools statewide

Christopher Iberle
Regional Markets

First Lady Trudi Inslee visits with students in the Cordata
 Elementary school garden, supported by Common Threads.

Imagine all the all the good things you could do if people got together to connect school lunchrooms with local farms that grow the food.  You could:

• Feed thousands of school children with nutritious, local foods. 
• Teach students about where their food actually comes from. 
• Connect farmers with a growing local market.
• Begin to bridge the gap between our urban and rural communities.

First Lady Trudi Inslee visits with students in the Cordata
 Elementary school garden, supported by Common Threads.

Here in Washington, partners and advocates for children’s health and education, agricultural business vitality, farmland preservation, environmental protection, and poverty alleviation have made that vision a reality with farm to school -- and it’s flourishing.

Today’s Taste Washington Day event brought a wide-ranging group of people together – everyone from school lunchroom staff to Washington State First Lady Trudi Inslee - in celebration of the farm to school collaboration.  

Preparing red peppers for Taste
Washington Day lunch at
 Bellingham Public Schools. 

“Taste Washington Day is a great way for students to make the connection between farmers and the healthy food that is critical in helping them to learn, grow and develop,” said First Lady Trudi Inslee. “It’s also is a fantastic opportunity to spotlight the hundreds of crops we have here in our state and to recognize the people who grow them.”

Governor Jay Inslee issued a proclamation for the day recognizing the values of school meal programs and the contributions made to them by Washington state agriculture.

WSDA Regional Markets works with dozens of partners to help connect farmers with school districts. Working with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and the Washington School Nutrition Association, they coordinate the annual Taste Washington Day promotion of farm to school connections. This year more than 40 school districts statewide served a Washington grown meal to help celebrate how Washington farmers provide food for schools year-round.

Farmers statewide participate in Taste Washington Day

The Washington Apple Crunch!

Eighty-seven farmers signed up to take  part in this year’s Taste Washington Day and partnered with a school to provide seasonal, local ingredients for breakfast or lunch, or visit a school for lunch. About 240,000 students at 43 participating schools ate a locally-sourced meal, learned about Washington agriculture, worked in a school garden, or did other farm to school activities.

Many schools also did a “Washington Apple Crunch” to celebrate one of Washington’s top crops, by simultaneously crunching into farm fresh apples all across the state at noon.

"We love the rich impact that community food systems offer our society”, said Eric Abel, owner of Bellewood Farms which sells to multiple districts in Whatcom County. “We believe it's important children learn how food gets to the table. By selling to schools, we hope kids will discover the difference that ‘local’ can have—providing fresh food, great taste, improved nutrition, all while supporting farms in the local community in which they live."

First Lady Trudi Inslee joins the celebration

Students, teachers and staff in Bellingham Public Schools welcomed a few special guests for their Taste Washington Day events. First Lady Trudi Inslee visited Bellingham Public Schools’ (BPS) new Central Kitchen, which is serving locally sourced, scratch-cooked meals across the district.

On the menu: salmon cakes, bean salad, pilaf with
 farro, apples, and milk.

The Central Kitchen is a facility years in the making, with support from BPS administration, school board, food service staff, students and parents, Whatcom Farm to School, WSDA Farm to School, Whatcom Community Foundation, Common Threads, and other local partners. The new scratch cooking kitchen and menu allows BPS to use a wider variety of seasonal ingredients from Washington farms. On the menu for Taste Washington Day were salmon cakes with Lummi Island Wild salmon and Cloud Mountain Farm Center onions, pilaf with farro from Bluebird Grain Farms and beets from Joe’s Garden, farm fresh apples from Bellewood Farms, and a local cabbage and kale on the salad bar.

First Lady Trudi Inslee tours Bellingham Public Schools'
Central Kitchen with Director of Food Services and
Executive Chef Patrick Durgan on Taste Washington Day.

Mrs. Inslee also visited Cordata Elementary to see food and agriculture educators from Common
Threads giving lessons in the garden. Produce from the 19 school gardens supported by Common Threads is also served in cafeteria salad bars during the school year. To top off the visit, Mrs. Inslee visited the new Sehome High School to tour BPS Career and Technical Education (CTE) sites related to food and agriculture education.

School market in Washington State

The USDA Farm to School Census estimates that Washington school districts spend more than $17 million on Washington grown foods each year. But this only makes up about 9% of an average school’s food budget. There’s plenty of opportunity to grow the school market for Washington farms - especially in a state that grows over 300 different products, many available year round.

Keith Carpenter from Lummi Island Wild, Chef Patrick Durgan
 from Bellingham Public Schools Central Kitchen, Eric Abel from
 Bellewood Farms, Chris Iberle, WSDA Farm to School Specialist,
 Mataio Gillis, Bellingham Public Schools Central Kitchen, fisher
 Ellie Kinley from Lummi Nation, and First Lady Trudi Inslee
 visit Sehome High School’s CTE kitchen classroom.

For smaller and direct marketing farms, schools can be a particularly meaningful market that provides a regular, larger volume buyer.  Many farmers find it personally rewarding to know their food is being eaten by people in their local community.  Farmers selling to schools also make an impact by teaching kids about agriculture in urban and rural districts of all sizes, and helping schools put nutritious, fresh meals on the tray for students each day. About half of school districts in the state participate in farm to school in some way each year.

“Local agriculture plays an important role in Child Nutrition Programs in Washington State”, said Leanne Eko, Director of Child Nutrition Services at OSPI. “Learning about where their food comes from and getting to taste local foods in school meals promotes lifelong healthy eating to our children and supports local farmers.”

At WSU, the future of bread lies in the past

Karla Salp
Communications

Walking into the Washington State University Bread Lab evokes feelings of both the comfortable familiar and wonder of the strange and unusual.

Baking bread, of course

PhD Student, Robin Morgan from Italy,
sets out loaves to cool. 

As one might expect when walking into a bread lab, you are greeted by the intoxicating smell of fresh-baked bread – whether being whipped up in the professional kitchen by PhD students or in the on-site King Arthur Flour Baking School.

On a visit to the lab while Washington Grown was shooting a piece for their television show, the crew experienced three types of bread. First, the baking school was packed with attendees from the public learning how to make a traditional French baguette. In the bread lab’s kitchen, PhD student Laura Valli from Estonia shared a fresh-baked rye spice bread. And trials of an “approachable loaf” came hot out of the oven.

Creating an “approachable loaf” is one of the current Bread Lab projects. The goal: to create an affordable, nutrient-dense whole-wheat loaf of bread with simple ingredients that Americans will enjoy. The object is to offer an alternative to the standard white loaves sold in most grocery stores which, while popular and well-known, are nutritionally inferior.

"Approachable loaf" trial

Keeping the past alive, literally

"Miracle" wheat variety

But baking the best bread starts with breeding the best grain. As you enter the Bread Lab, one of the things you notice even at the entrance are the displays of various types of wheat – many of which most people have never seen.

Take for example the “Miracle” variety of wheat, which has been around for centuries, but is scarcely known now. Rather than the single-branched head of wheat on a stalk, this variety is multi-branched. Gracing the hallway are mounted wheat varieties developed by WSU. And in a back room of the lab, over 1,000 varieties of wheat and hundreds of other varieties of grain are stored and maintained for breeding purposes.

This “wall of wheat” provides the genetic material used in traditional breeding programs to evaluate existing grain varieties and breed new ones that will benefit farmers, processors, and consumers. Varieties are grown and evaluated for qualities such as flavor, color, baking quality, disease resistance, and nutrition.

Reinvigorating a local grain culture

Wheat variety trial fields. Photo credit: WSU Bread Lab

With an emphasis on developing publicly available grain varieties that thrive in Washington’s climate, the WSU Bread Lab is helping to reestablish a unique culture around local grains. From small grain growers to mills to baking or even brewing, the program is restoring a grain-centered culture that faded from American memory once milling became a larger industry and white flour became the norm.

The WSU Bread Lab is creating not only healthier bread but reviving a craft-grain culture that has nearly been lost in the United States. We'll drink - and eat - to that. 

After touring the WSU Bread Lab, fresh-baked bread,
local strawberries, and cheese seem like the perfect dinner.

Apply early for your Cottage Food permit, be ready for farmers market season

Liz Beckman
Cottage Food Coordinator 

Spring is not far off when a harvest of strawberries, raspberries and other fruits prompt some of us to envision desserts, jams and jellies to enjoy with seasonal summer fruit. If this has you thinking of starting a Cottage Food home business and selling your goods at your local farmers market, the time to submit your application is now.

The application process can take several weeks and first-time applicants sometimes miss key parts that can delay approval. By applying now, you still have time to get your Cottage Food permit and be prepared when Washington’s farmers markets are in full swing, as well as when the fruits and berries are coming into season.

Depending on the number of recipes submitted, it could take anywhere from four to six weeks for an application to be reviewed and approved for a home inspection, which must be conducted before a Cottage Food permit is issued.

You can get an application by visiting www.agr.wa.gov/cottagefood or by calling the Cottage Food Program at (360) 902-1844.

If you are working on your application and have questions, we’ll be holding a Cottage Food Workshop on March 3, 2016. There, a reviewer will go through your application and be available to help you identify areas that may need more work. Or you may get the good news that your application is ready for submission!

If you have any questions, you can email us at cottagefoods@agr.wa.gov or give us a call.