ALBANY — The Albany School District recently announced the launch of a new Farm-to-School program. The district is looking for local farmers, families, and community members who are interested in donating or selling fresh, locally grown, or produced foods for the school.
“I think many districts do it, but for us, it’s about trying to connect our local farmers and local producers with our school food service program to try to bring in food items that are healthier, locally sourced, and it’s kind of a win-win for everybody. The ultimate goal is to try and bring in the best food product that we can for our students and staff,” school district superintendent Kurt Soderberg said.
“It’s pretty much trying to bring the community in to see what we feed the children, and have them contribute,” school food service director Maggie Strehlow said. “We had some parents bring in a bunch of cucumbers, green peppers, and squash. The kids were so excited. It was very heartwarming to me watching that come in.”
The response from the community about the Farm-to-School program was wonderful, Stehlow said, and the school has even planned a fun event for elementary students using produce they have received.
“We put it out there and asked for donations. We’ve had people say they’ll donate eggs, butter, apples and produce. We had about fourteen responses right after we put the post on Facebook. I told all of them that we’ll get back to them and we’re in the very early stages of this,” Strehlow said. “I’ve never done this before so we just had out first donation come in from a family, and then we have an apple donation coming. With the apples, we’re going to do a ‘Big Apple Crunch’ where we’re going to have all of elementary come and try an apple. I’m going to try to do some decorations and make it fun for them.”
The idea for this program came about mainly through knowledge of the state Farm-to-School program.
“There’s a state Farm-to-School program that kind of gets people rolling, and we had this idea aside from that program where we started with apples, like ‘what can we do to locally source our apples in the fall?’ We have some great providers around here that are able to do that. It’s not a new concept, but it’s new to us,” Soderberg said. “I think it’s just a matter of we put out the need, and we have gotten tremendous response. Our food service director (Strehlow) is doing a wonderful job managing all of that.”
It is still early days of the program, but they’ve gotten many donation offers already.
Soderberg said it was pretty overwhelming, actually.
“We did the one social media post and got lots of responses very quickly, and Maggie has sorted through those, working with those individual providers to make a plan. It’s a work in progress but we’re off and running,” Soderberg said.
That’s the biggest thing: Taking that first step.
“We have the ones from that family and then I have the apple one coming. I have a couple of emails out for some eggs and butter too. I’m excited about that because the kids love hard-boiled eggs on the salad bar and stuff like that,” Strehlow added.
Any food that people in the community can provide is helpful, but some of foods that they are looking for include eggs, fruits and vegetables.
“I think eggs are big and it allows us to do a lot of things with those. Fruits and vegetables as well. Particularly we found that it’s not hard to find those suppliers. Lots of people here have chickens and they have more eggs than they can handle, so we’re setting up some avenues there. The community has answered in a big way, so we’re very excited about it,” Soderberg said.
Strehlow really likes the fresh vegetables.
“The kids love the salad bar; little kids to big kids love to have a salad. Any kind of vegetable and fruit is good. I was really surprised when that guy said something about the apples. I thought about reaching out to some apple orchards as well and seeing what that will bring, but this guy is bringing me like eight bushels of apples. He says they last for a long time in the fridge,” she said.
Strehlow is very pleased with how things are turning out and can’t wait to continue this plan in its entirety.
“I’ve had great support from admin and staff here and I couldn’t believe how many people reached out and wanted to do this, which I think is wonderful. I’m very happy about it,” she said.
Anyone may contact Strehlow at maggie.strehlow@albany.k12.wi.us if they would like to donate or want more information.
