As I entered the gymnasium of Lakeview Union School for Harvest Dinner, students buzzed busily around tables piled with plates of food – quinoa salad, beet and apple salad, pita bread, local Jasper Hill Farm cheese, turkey, squash, corn and mashed potatoes. Many are dishes that these students made themselves in the classroom using local ingredients, and most of the rest was grown in the school garden. A third-grader takes a bite of the pita bread made by the fourth graders and chews thoughtfully. Then he checks a box underneath a smiling face that proclaims, “I liked it!”

My two children are students at Lakeview, a small elementary school of 74 students nestled among the hills in one of northeastern Vermont’s most picturesque small towns, Greensboro. Here, in the heart of a pastoral landscape, you might think that local, farm-fresh foods in the cafeteria are a given. But due to budgetary constraints and other challenges, this hasn’t always been the case. No matter how rich the local food system, it can be difficult to produce quality lunchroom food.

Several years ago, a movement began with students and has grown into a revamping of the school lunch program, with direct-farm purchasing, a school garden, and even a whole-school composting system. It started when two fourth-grade students accompanied Lakeview’s principal, Linda Aiken, to a Vermont Rural Partnership conference and returned with an enthusiastic plan to start a salad bar. With the help of their teacher, they surveyed the students to find out which foods they would want and with food service staff support they set up and began offering it one day a week.

From the salad bar, the idea for a school garden grew – and with it, community interest in the food served at Lakeview. Staff, parents and teachers collaborated to build raised beds for the garden. One student’s grandfather donated his time and machinery to excavate a space for the garden, while another grandparent donated the materials. Ag Day, a biennial celebration of local farmers, launched in the spring of 2006. Farmers bring their animals to the school and children get a chance to experience farming, hands-on.

Alongside the garden, a natural cycle unfolded. The school set up their own worm bin and began composting food scraps. By 2007, the program had expanded, and Lakeview was sending cafeteria scraps to the nearby Highfields Institute in Hardwick, and in return received compost for the garden. Teachers tied the study of composting into science units, and students learned how food that would otherwise be thrown away was transformed into rich nutrients for growing veggies.

The kids loved the garden. My daughter proudly informed me when I had lunch there one day that the zucchini muffins contained zucchinis she had grown, and as I made my way along the salad bar, students pointed out which items came from the garden (most of them!). Dawn Desjardins, Lakeview’s Food Service Director, noticed that the children were much more likely to eat the food that they had grown themselves. She also became an expert at folding vegetable purees into various baked goods and slipping them into soups.

It was in this environment of growing student involvement and enthusiasm that the Farm to School Committee formed in the fall of 2007. I jumped on board. I’m a parent but also a small-scale farmer raising pastured chickens with a personal interest in the farming side as well.

Besides myself, there were other farmers on the committee as well as Lakeview’s principal, the Food Service Director, Jeff Roy, the Maintenance Director (who grew up on a local farm), several parents and three students. We were awarded a competitive grant by the Vermont Department of Agriculture to implement a Farm to School Program. Our objectives were to set up several purchasing arrangements with local farms to buy fresh food in bulk. The foods would be used as ingredients in new recipes that would be taste tested with the students. The most successful recipes would then become part of the food service menu.

With the idea to connect the kids more directly with the origins of their food, the objectives included both a guest farmer coming to the school to talk about what they grow, and field trips to local farms where students would learn more about how the food was grown and even participate in harvesting some produce. Our culminating activity was Harvest Dinner, where the students served dishes they prepared themselves in the classroom, using local foods, including produce from their garden.

The grant funds helped us purchase a refrigerator to store the bulk foods as well as begin construction on a storage shed – a kind of root cellar – for cold storage of root veggies and other produce. Without this infrastructure for storing large quantities of farm-purchased food the project would never have gotten off the ground. It was one of the first logistical hurdles we faced.

The support of food service staff members was key to the program’s success as well. One challenge is that bulk-purchased farm foods require more preparation than packaged foods from a food service distributor. More prep work is required – peeling carrots and potatoes, shredding zucchini, and so on. And there are stringent federal regulations for what foods can go into school lunches and how they must be prepared.

Over the past two years, the school has achieved its grant objectives. Among other successes, farm to school has become integrated into the curriculum, with the kindergarten class experiencing a whole cycle: they grew wheat, harvested and threshed it, ground it and made pizza dough and bread with it. This tied in with a literature unit on the book, The Little Red Hen.

The circle felt completed when parents, students, teachers, staff, farmers and community members joined together to eat locally-grown food for Harvest Dinner last year. The kids were proud to show off what they’d learned, and they felt invested in the dishes that were displayed for taste testing.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some challenges as well. As I mentioned, managing the storage, rotation, and preparation of the foods has been a logistical obstacle to overcome. And the development and coordination of delivery systems, we found, can be particularly difficult. The unknown factors involved in working with bulk-purchased whole foods can cause stress for food service personnel as well. It’s one thing to look at a can of pumpkin puree and see what quantity it provides for a recipe. But how many pumpkins do you need to roast and scoop to generate a certain number of cups of puree? Using farm-fresh food often requires rethinking recipes completely, not just adapting them to fresh ingredients. Yet as much hard work as it is for kitchen staff, they have risen to the challenge.

For farmers, the benefits abound: it’s great to know that you can count on the school to purchase a set quantity of product at specific intervals. It’s also a chance to connect with the community in a new way. Both the school and the farms appreciated the opportunity to keep school lunch funding in the community – there are so many benefits, both tangible and intangible, to exchanging money for goods locally.

Linda Aiken is excited about what’s next for the project. The school is in the process of developing a sustainable plan to continue the initiative now that the grant money is spent. It’s really important to have community and especially parental support, so there’s motivation to continue bringing healthier, locally-sourced lunches to students.

“Shelburne Farms!” “Oh you got to visit Shelburne Farms?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms amazing?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms beautiful?” “Are they still making cheese at Shelburne Farms?” This is all I heard when I got home from my very first trip to Vermont. The night of my return to San Francisco I helped run our fifth installment of Kitchen Table Talks (on Mayor Newsom’s new sustainability directive, watch for a re-cap post) and chatted with a lot of people who are very found of Shelburne Farms. And, yes, it is amazing and beautiful and they are still making cheese there. Bread too!

So, what is Shelburne Farms? I certainly had no idea before I went there. All I knew was that I had an invitation to stay at a friend’s father’s place near Burlington. I knew it was in a gorgeous spot near Lake Champlain. But with zero concept of Vermont aside from knowing it’s the home of rural farm lovers, Ben & Jerry’s, and Burton and that it lacks billboards of any kind (which is truly radical and wonderful to see), I was clueless. Of course, after three nights and three days on the property, I now have an understanding of the love, attraction and appreciation for Shelburne Farms.

Once a 4,000-acre “model agricultural estate” created in 1886 by William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb, it has, since 1972, become a National Historic Landmark, working farm, and educational non-profit who’s mission is to cultivate a conservation ethic. That ethic is abundantly evident and demonstrated in the stewardship of the land, the condition of the barns, the impressive archiving, preservation and utilization of materials found on the property and in the ways in which their farm and forestry programs play a major role in sustainability education for visitors and the folks who are fortunate enough to live there.

The current property sits on 1,400 acres of woodlands that are Green Certified from the Forest Stewardship Council (the remaining acreage was sold off in plots). And, their grass-based dairy has 125 purebred, registered Brown Swiss cows whose milk is used to make award-winning farmhouse cheddar cheese on the property. During my visit, I didn’t see the cheese-making facility, but I did enjoy the bakery’s dark rye and olive pugliese. Every morning I woke to an impressive view of Lake Champlain and the sounds of wild turkeys, hawks, and geese; each day included a long beautiful walk along the property’s many trails. Suffice it to say, I left feeling at peace, grateful for an opportunity to enjoy the quiet of a country estate. (I feel compelled to mention that my host rents one of the many modest homes on the farm. And we had run of all the public spaces, which are abundant.)

I also learned a lot about the sustainable food community in and near Burlington. I especially love what’s happening around Intervale Compost. This business takes the city’s organic waste, mixes it with milky wastewater from Ben & Jerry’s and transforms them both into enormous mountains of compost. As a soil lover I really enjoyed watching backhoes move three-story high piles of black gold goodness. The compost is sold to local gardeners and landscapers and the entire operation is moved every few years so that a farm can enjoy the soil and new farmland can be cultivated.

The really cool thing, though, are Intervale Compost’s neighbors. Community and independently-owned small farms, a garden supply store, and a wood-burning power plant. The whole area, known as The Intervale, all 700 acres of it, is a green flood plain on the banks of the Winooski River that was once an industrial wasteland, literally on the other side of the tracks, where folks came to throw their used tires.

The person who led the transformation was Gardener’s Supply’s founder, Will Raap, who settled his business near the McNeil power plant to take advantage of saving energy by heating his building and greenhouses with the power plant’s waste heat. With the vision of creating new resources from other waste, and in partnership with the city and the utility, the area is now home to bike and hiking trails, a community garden, and 350 acres of organic farms that provide the Burlington area with fresh produce and flowers. Each farm is under the guidance of the Intervale Center which exists to manage the land and provide education resources to the community and associated businesses. According to their website “there are three categories of farms that operate in the Intervale. Incubator farms are the newest farms and receive business planning support, mentoring and reduced prices for land and equipment. Enterprise Farms have operated for at least three years. Mentor Farms are mature farms who have been operating in the Intervale for at least five years and take on the role of mentoring incubator farms.” What’s not to love?

Of course, back in the day the area was rich farmland for the Abenaki Indians and Ehtan Allen had a homestead there. However it’s only been since 1985 that it’s slowly transformed into the productive and bio-diverse farmland I saw on my trip.

I also enjoyed a wonderful meal at Hen of the Wood in Waterbury. The picturesque restaurant is housed in an old grist mil, complete with recessed stone and wood walls and a roaring river’s waterfall outside. They are known for serving exceptional local, seasonal cuisine. I enjoyed some local Vermont cheeses, a superbly autumn hen of the wood and dumpling dish, and the tastiest fried oysters that side of NOLA.

My discoveries aren’t new, especially to those who are deeply entrenched in the good food movement or to folks who love Vermont, but having never been there I was so grateful to experience them firsthand. My trip reminded me that when communities work together with the shared value of growing good food, feeding people good food, and preserving the land on which we grow good food, the world is beautiful indeed … just like Shelburne Farms.