During this month in October, we enjoy celebrating the fall weather and National Farm to School Month! Community Roots participates in Farm to School programs locally throughout Knox County. We hope that by continuing our efforts to increase the consumption of locally-produced foods, our schools and children will adopt these habits and begin interacting with their local food systems.
The Farm to School Network sets aside time during this month to celebrate food education, school gardens, and school lunches full of local and nutritious ingredients. This year the network has focused its initiatives on the youth involved in these school systems by creating their campaign theme as Our Food, Our Future. There are six community values that the Farm to School Network hopes to amplify amongst our youth of today for a racially just food system:
Economic justice
Environmental justice
Health
Racial equality
Worker's rights
Animal welfare
As part of Community Roots efforts to celebrate National Farm to School Month, we continue our partnership with Twin Oak Elementary. This summer our volunteers were able to make it out to the school and install raised beds to be utilized by the staff and students for their daily curriculum. They recently planted radishes and carrots in the raised beds and we look forward to seeing this incorporated into the student's educational experiences.
It is also time for the Great Apple Crunch and we are excited to partner with Snap-Ed and bring awareness of local orchards to students. Our Farm to School Coordinator and the OSU extension office visited Knox Counties' local schools and educated them on the importance of eating local foods along with a gift from Community Roots and Glenn Hill Orchards in Mount Vernon. Students were able to taste locally grown apple from an orchard in their very own backyard and get their crunch on!
As part of the Great Apple Crunch, we also made sure that everyone at Community Roots was able to participate in their very own crunch. We posted our crunch photos on our Instagram to help celebrate our local orchards and the wonderful month of October.
Join us in posting your very own crunch photos with the hashtag #applecrunchinginknox
Happy National Farm to School Month!
You can't buy happiness, but you can buy LOCAL and that's kind of the same -unknown