Civil Eats

“Stir-fried kale. They ate it. All of it. Gone,” Aziza Malik, Healthy City Kids Coordinator, says in proud amazement of teens eating the kale they harvested that day.

At Burlington, Vermont’s Intervale Center, the Healthy City kids program is growing more than veggies. Twenty-five teens gain hands on experience in community food security: growing and harvesting vegetables from a five-acre farm for neighborhood nonprofits and for the Burlington School Food Project, a model farm to school program.

The Healthy City youth farm started working with the Burlington school district in 2003 with the first products headed to the cafeteria in 2004. The bounty for the school district includes basil, tomatoes, kale, chard, green beans, broccoli, zucchini, as well as other veggies.

Watch this amazing brief video of the program. Kudos to Eva Sollberger for her great coverage and capturing palpable hope and happiness in the fields.

Maybe you’ll grow some too by watching.

Video courtesy of Seven Days

Debra Eschmeyer, Co-Founder and Program Director of FoodCorps, Farmer, and Communications and Outreach Director of the National Farm to School Network, has 15 years of farming and sustainable food system experience. Working from her organic farm in Ohio, Debra oversees the FoodCorps program development for service members working on school gardens and Farm to School while deciphering policy and building partnerships to strengthen the roots of FoodCorps. She also manages a national media initiative on school gardens, farmers’ markets and healthy corner stores.