Celebrate Taste Washington Day on October 4th

Annette Slonim
WSDA Regional Markets

Taste Washington Day is a day for school districts around the state to celebrate Farm to School and local agriculture. This year, on Wednesday, October 4th nutrition services staff, school gardeners, teachers, administrators, and volunteers all over Washington will serve school meals with local ingredients and do activities to help children learn about the farms that feed us. Cafeterias across the state celebrate how Farm to School looks in their district by featuring local and Washington-grown products, farmers sign up to supply ingredients or speak at a local school, school gardeners host classes or lunchtime in the garden, and teachers do food and agriculture-related lessons in the classroom.

October is National Farm to School Month! If October 4th doesn’t work for your school, you can choose any day in October to join in on the Taste Washington Day fun.

Chief Leschi Schools Taste Washington Day 2022

How to participate

School districts: Food and nutrition services directors and staff can sign up on behalf of their district. Celebrations look different in each district and school, but some options include:

• Serving special menus with local ingredients. The Washington School Nutrition Association has developed some sample lunch and breakfast menus that use Washington-grown ingredients in each item. Click here to see more menu and recipe ideas.
• Highlight the Washington-grown foods already on your menu.
• Buy a product from a local farm to feature on the menu.
• Spotlight a “Harvest of the Month” crop.
• Participate in the “Washington Apple Crunch” at noon.
• Share your activities on social media with the hashtags #TasteWADay and #WAfarmtoschool.

Farmers: Sign up to join the list of participating farms for Taste Washington Day. WSDA will share your contact information and product availability with participating schools.

School gardeners: Let us know what activities you have planned in the garden for Taste Washington Day! Share photos on social media using the hashtags #TasteWADay and #WAfarmtoschool.

Teachers and educators: Feature a lesson on Washington agriculture, food, or nutrition. Let us know what you have planned! Some farmers love to do classroom visits. If you are seeking farmers in your area, contact WSDA Farm to School. 

Principals, superintendents, parents, administrators, and community members: Find out what’s going on for Taste Washington Day in your classrooms, cafeteria, or garden. Support it and let the community know all about it! You may also be able to help organize guest educators, farmer visits, or other activities.

Check out WSDA’s Taste Washington Day webpage for recipes, promotional sign templates, and other free resources to help you get started! 

How Taste WA Day works

School district food services sign up with WSDA Farm to School to participate, and share their local
menus, ingredients, or other Farm to School activities they have planned for the day. Other activities may include farmer guest speakers, taste tests, FFA presentations, or visits to a school garden. WSDA tracks and helps coordinate and promote all of the efforts statewide. Schools have access to free promotional templates and materials from WSDA, and receive information on participating farms to purchase products.

Farmers sign up to be a part of Taste Washington Day to offer to sell their products to schools, participate in school activities and receive information on participating schools. WSDA Farm to School Program helps with local food procurement by matching farms with schools, finding farmers to participate in school events, and other logistics.

This celebration was cooked up by the Washington School Nutrition Association (WSNA) and WSDA with support from Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Child Nutrition Services (OSPI) to promote locally grown food served in school meals. Taste Washington Day serves as Washington State’s kick-off for the month-long celebration of National Farm to School Month in October.

For more information on Taste Washington Day, or to get help linking to your local school districts or farms, please contact Annette Slonim, WSDA Farm to School Lead, at aslonim@agr.wa.gov or 206-714-2757.

Taste Washington Day 2020 celebrates resilient farm to school connections

 Chris Iberle, Farm to School Lead

Common Threads Farm, Bellingham, school garden harvest.

The tenth annual Taste Washington Day may look a little different this year, but even with challenges associated with remote learning and COVID-19 precautions, it remains true to its mission of celebrating community, connecting students and farmers through school meals, and educating them about where their food comes from.

Across Washington State this year, schools, farms, children, families, school gardeners, agriculture educators, organizations and businesses have come together to support one another, showing strength and resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges.

However school districts adapt their activities for Taste Washington Day, scheduled for Oct. 7, this special day highlights how they provide local food to students in school meals, learn in their schools’ gardens, and educate students about food and agriculture. 

Thirty-six school districts are signed up to participate so far, and working with dozens of Washington farmers and producers to buy food items and ingredients for their meals. School districts and farmers can still sign up online to be a part of the event and share their plans with WSDA.

School nutrition staff have showed heroic, creative, and inspiring efforts to overhaul their school meal programs since the COVID-19 pandemic turned school operations upside down. 

School nutrition programs continue to be a critical food access point providing millions of meals for many children, families and communities statewide, especially during the pandemic. School meals have also provided an opportunity for students to stay connected with their school. 

“Nutrition staff in our districts love greeting the kids when they pick up their meals,” said Janis Campbell-Aikens, Child Nutrition director at Auburn School District and president of the Washington School Nutrition Association. “They have been one constant for the kids, from before COVID-19, and through the spring and summer.”

Coupeville School District boxed pasta lunches with sauce
that includes Washington-raised meat.

New, unique meal needs

The Taste Washington Day theme this year is “What’s in the Bag or Box from Washington?” encouraging schools to feature at least one Washington-grown product in sack lunches or meal boxes distributed to students. 

Local Washington-grown foods have been filling schools’ new, unique needs, as farmers support schools with products that fit grab-and-go meals, such as lunchbox-sized apples or pears, individually wrapped hardboiled eggs, dried cherries, and snacking veggies for sack lunches. 

Schools offering multi-day “grocery box” or recipe kits have added local yogurt, cheese, potatoes, onions, rhubarb, broccoli, and bread to distribution boxes. Districts incorporating scratch cooking into new distribution models, such as prepared meals to heat and eat at home, have featured Washington-grown beef, vegetables, and other cooked ingredients.

Washington Apple Crunch goes virtual!

The Washington Apple Crunch will again be part of Taste Washington Day, albeit virtual this year. Teachers, students and parents are encouraged to participate in the Washington Apple Crunch, and bite into a Washington-grown apple at noon on Oct. 7, and make a statewide crunch to celebrate our state’s agriculture. 

WSDA partners with the Washington School Nutrition Association to organize Taste Washington Day, with support from Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Child Nutrition. Local nonprofits, parents, volunteers, and community partners also work to support Taste Washington Day. 

Together with schools and local farmers, we celebrate Washington agriculture and promote the nutritious foods being served in our schools.

Washington students enjoy Taste Washington Day during National Farm to School month

Chris Iberle
Education and Outreach
Farm to School 

October is National Farm to School Month, and at many Washington state schools, it began with Taste Washington Day.

Salem Woods Elementary
lunch on Taste Washington Day.

This year, the event fell on Oct. 5th, as students and farmers came together to celebrate Washington agriculture. There were 45 school districts participating in this year’s Taste Washington Day, the sixth year of the event. That means at least 280,000 students ate seasonal, Washington-grown lunches and learned more about local food and farms.

Over 50 farmers signed up to be a part of the event, providing everything from apples to beef to cabbage, from watermelon radishes to zucchini. Beyond growing all kinds of tasty ingredients for the menu, farmers were guest speakers, set up displays in the cafeteria, did taste tests of their foods, and even gave interviews.

First lady Trudi Inslee and a
Pierce County Public Works educator
visit students on Taste Washington Day.

The event, officially proclaimed Taste Washington Day by Gov. Inslee, was organized by WSDA and the Washington School Nutrition Association with support from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and many regional Farm to School partner organizations.

The annual event brings schools and farms together so students can learn where our food comes from and how Washington farmers put food on our plates.

It’s also a chance for many farms to strengthen or form new partnerships selling food directly to schools.

First lady Trudi Inslee visited the Eatonville School District, where Washington-grown produce was on the menu and Mrs. Inslee could lunch with the kids. As part of the visit, Mrs. Inslee learned about Columbia Crest A-STEM academy’s green school initiatives and visited the new Kjalsted Valley Ohop Farm, where students will soon be able to learn on the farm each year thanks to the recent gifting of the farm to the Eatonville School District.

Celebrating Taste Washington Day

Nutrition staff at all of the participating schools served menus featuring foods from local farms.

• At Methow Valley Elementary, students enjoyed a lunch of beef, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, and greens from their own school garden, Red Shed Farm in Twisp, Tomlinson Farms, and homemade buns from Bluebird Grains. 
• At the Mead School District, students were served pluots, bell peppers, and green garbanzo beans from LINC Foods/Jackson Farms, Tabbers Farm, Delap Orchards, and Fresh Nature Foods. 
• While in the Wenatchee School District, the menu was sourced almost entirely from within 60 miles of the district, even including tilapia fish raised by a Wenatchee High School Student for school lunches.

At some school districts, Taste Washington Day was celebrated in other ways. Students at Lake Stevens School District brought applesauce from their own apple trees at home to share with classmates. Moses Lake School District invited dairy farmers to speak to students in the cafeteria about farming and healthy dairy foods like milk. The local news covered the activities at Ridgefield School District where Quackenbush Farms and Northwest Organic Produce visited schools to talk with students.

Students at Carnation Elementary 
taste produce from nearby Oxbow Farms.

Many schools like those in the Grandview and Evergreen school districts had big “Washington Apple Crunch” celebrations on Oct. 5. Students across the state “crunched” into their locally grown Washington apples all together at noon. WSDA and other organizations even joined in the fun, to make an apple crunch heard ‘round the country.’

A big thanks to all the school districts, farmers, and students who help make Taste Washington Day a success every year.

USDA program brings more locally grown foods into schools

By: Karen Ullmann

WSDA Farm to School      

Washington is one of eight states selected to participate in the USDA Pilot Project for Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables.  The Pilot, mandated in the 2014 Farm Bill, enables schools to use their USDA entitlement dollars to buy more locally-grown, minimally processed produce. In recent years, schools could only use this money to buy fresh produce from a single designated contractor.

The Pilot Project allows them to use their USDA Foods budget to buy from a wider variety of vendors, encouraging schools to buy from regional farms and distributors, and allowing schools flexibility in the food they offer their students. 

Under the Pilot, schools can purchase fruits and vegetables that are “unprocessed” or “minimally” processed. Sliced, diced, chopped, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables are acceptable. Heated-treated processing such as canning or pickling is not allowed. Schools can still buy these products with their other funds, just not through the pilot.

WSDA Farm to School table at the Washington State 

Nutrition Association Conference

Already, Washington schools have set aside more than $1 million of this USDA funding for purchases made possible by the Pilot Project. WSDA is working to recruit and support farms, distributors, and processors to become approved vendors and to help schools buy through the pilot.

Every year, school nutrition directors and food service staff from across the state gather at the Washington State Nutrition Association Conference for education and meetings. I attended the conference on July 27, along with Tricia Kovacs, Small Farm Direct Marketing and Farm to School manager. We were there to join Jim Hemmen and Donna Parsons from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to educate schools about how to participate in the Pilot Project and what to expect. We found a lot of interest in the pilot project, but also a lot of questions on the nuts and bolts of buying food from local farmers.

The good news is that participation is relatively easy for schools, since USDA approves the vendors and pays for the food, and standard procurement rules and practices apply. There are 32 school districts currently participating and sign-up is open through December 2015. 

Schools interested should contact Jim Hemmen, Child Nutrition Services, OSPI, (360)-725-6209 or jim.hemmen@k12.wa.us for more information.

If schools need help with buying local, see A School’s Guide to Purchasing Washington-grown Food, developed by WSDA’s Farm to School team and partners from Public Health – Seattle & King County, Washington Sustainable Food & Farming Network and Washington Environmental Council. Funds came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

See our Farm to School Toolkit or email us at farmtoschool@agr.wa.gov for more information.