Frederick County Farm to School Progress Report
-5 farm field trips scheduled for the spring at Catoctin Mountain Orchard. Field trips were funded through a Starbucks Foundation Grant. STEM leaders were offered the trips for their classes and they filled immediately! Alysia is working w/ Katlyn at CMO to write the lesson plans. A main topic of focus will be pollination and they are hoping to time the trips with the apple blossoms.
-5-10 farm to school share tables are being implemented at Frederick City and Frederick County schools. The first has started at Lincoln ES. In 10 days they collected over 500 containers of milk and an average of 19 pieces of fruit a day, F2S was awarded a share table grant from Rotary of Carroll Creek, Brook Hill United Methodist Church, LiveWell 55210, and Community FARE. The DC Food Project is our partner and has supplied their toolkit!
-Harvest of the Month programs took a break in December and January and are gearing up to start again on Feb 28th at North Frederick ES. The hope is to feature pickles from Sweet Farm and demonstrate the process of turning cucumbers into pickles. 🙂
-F2S submitted another grant to USDA for the 2020 – 2021 school year. Much of the funding request will be put towards creating a position within Food and Nutrition Services to support the farm to school initiatives and help link the cafeteria to the classrooms using an evidence based program called Smarter Lunchrooms.
-FCPS communication team and Frederick County Ag is partnering with F2S to develop a F2S promotional video to launch in May. FCPS will film and assist with the storyboard and Frederick County is looking into supplying drones to capture footage of farms. After this conversation, Alysia was invited to meet with FCPS to explore a formal partnership agreement. It is currently being looked into.
-The Frederick News Post interviewed Alysia on Wednesday, 1/29 and is planning an article on food waste in schools and highlighting the F2S Share Table project. Be on the lookout for this article. We are hoping it will generate a lot of community awareness and support for F2S.
-Food Council is sponsoring a F2S Production Planning Meeting with 6 farms, the director of FCPS Food and Nutrition Services to plan what farmers will grow for FCPS in the coming months and the 2020/2021 SY. At that meeting we will learn about an app being used in F2 S programs in VA; we will most likely test it to facilitate purchasing from farmers in Frederick County.
-The second F2S planning team meeting is being planned for the last week in February. Stay tuned!