Farm to School program update

In their continued quest to feed our school children healthier meals the Hot Springs County School District Board of Directors heard a report from Becky Martinez at Thursday night’s meeting about a Farm to School conference she and Hannah Brooks, middle school cook, recently attended.

The conference, which was held in Cincinnati, showed Martinez that every Farm to School program in the country looks a little different and the pair came home with some great ideas for expansion of the middle school program.

One of the first things they learned was not a single case of any kind of outbreak, like e-coli or other food-borne illness, has ever come out of a Farm to School program. The food handling techniques and farming practices being used are excellent.

They have been gathering eggs from their chickens since last August and selling them to the school during the week for a dollar a dozen to help not only with their seed costs, but saving the school food service money as well.

They only sell eggs to the school during the week when they can gather them and candle them immediately. Eggs collected from over the weekend can be sold to the public for three-dollars a dozen, again, to help defray costs and Martinez hopes to start that over the summer.

The director of another Farm to School program who attended the conference gave a presentation on how, in his area, local ranchers have been donating cattle to the program and all the school has to do is pay for processing.

According to Martinez, the donations are cows that perhaps didn’t produce a calf or for some other reason would be sent to slaughter. By donating the beef, the rancher receives a tax write-off, sometimes more than what the animal would have brought in at market.

There are grants available that would cover the cost of processing the animal into hamburger, something that is used approximately three times each week in the cafeterias.

Some quick calculations on number of pounds for the animal and the processing cost showed the district could save about $800 per animal on the cost of buying the meat from one of their current distributors.

The presenter at the conference also told the group the meat was so much healthier than what they were buying from their distributor.

He had taken equal amounts of beef from the freshly processed animal and from the distributor, browned both and discovered the fat cooked off from the fresh animal was about a quarter of that from the meat distributor.

Martinez would like to get the word out that they will take donated beef this year at the county fair in August.

Locally sourced fruits and vegetables are the future of food service in the U.S.

Another presenter talked about apples being brought in from out of state rather than using apples from local orchards. After realizing where the fruit was coming from, they got together with the local producers and made a deal to use only locally grown products.

Apples and other fruits are easily grown in Wyoming. During discussion with the board, the idea was also tossed out that the property at Lucerne could someday be turned into an orchard.

In other business, the board agreed to offer Curt Mayer an administrative contract as the Dean of Students for 5th through 12th grades, offered Dana Bjorhus an initial teaching contract as elementary P.E. teacher, offered Jenny Ketterling an initial teaching contract for special education, and employed Rick Groh as part-time technology specialist.

Jere Apland will be taking on the Transportation Supervisor position along with his Maintenance Supervisor duties.

Josh Taylor is moving from being the Network Technician to Technology director, effective June 1 and Stephanie Boren will be moving from third grade teacher to second grade for the upcoming school year.