School system starts gardening
Photo Credit: Lucia Pawlowski
Decatur Culinary Arts students Kasia Slomiany, Robin Fabrick and Sarah Black prepare locally grown food with the DHS kitchen staff and Cathy Conway of Avalon Catering.
April 17, 2010 • Jay Stanley, Scribbler staff
Filed under News
It all started with Anna Rose Gable. She had a vision of what this was all about before anyone else. She wanted to have a place here at Decatur High School where gardening was done and people could learn from each other,” Decatur science teacher Angela Wade said. “I was her senior project coach, and she got me involved.”
“I wish it were my full time job. If I could, I would be at a garden every day helping students with what needs to be done,” Wade said. “I just wish I had a few more hours in the day, and a little more energy.”
Decatur students help to create and maintain small community gardens at each public school in Decatur. “Hopefully, all schools will have gardens up and running eventually,” Wade said. Interns from the organic gardening 101 class have been showing teachers at other schools how to start gardens, and those teachers have begun to cultivate and take care of them.
“The [farm to school] program is supposed to incorporate gardening into the curriculum of all Decatur schools and get kids interested in gardening,” Decatur organic gardening 101 intern Michelle Gillig said. “The main thing that the program wants to do is put fruits and vegetables that are grown here into schools.”
“The Farm to School initiative is based on three ideas,” Wade said. “Organic, which means that foods are grown without pesticides or herbicides. Sustainability, which means that you’re using resources wisely. The third idea is locality, which means your food is close by and there isn’t a big carbon footprint to get your food here.”
“The best part is letting students see where their food comes from, and elevating the status of farmers and appreciating their contribution to us,” Wade said. “We just go to the grocery store and food is there, but I don’t think most people give much consideration to where it came from.”
The program has already had two fundraisers, and an elementary school has a plot of land in the community garden here at Decatur.
Though it’s off to a good start, the farm to school program still has much work to be done. One plot of land isn’t enough to supply food to an entire school, and lack of communication between everyone is a major problem.
“I feel like we’re a little splintered in our efforts,” Wade said. “It’d be nice if everyone could get together periodically to talk about what’s going on at each school. There’s just a lot of pieces to this pie and I don’t know that I fully get it.”
Learn more about Decatur Farm to School.
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