{"id":1438,"date":"2019-06-17T13:54:20","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T21:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2019-06-25T12:14:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T20:14:14","slug":"specialty-crop-block-grant-school-success-story-sierra-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/?p=1438","title":{"rendered":"Specialty Crop Block Grant School Success Story — Sierra Harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As part of their Harvest of the Month program, Sierra Harvest provides tastings of fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables for students at participating schools in Nevada County<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Based in Nevada City, Sierra Harvest<\/a> is a non-profit\norganization whose mission is to educate, inspire and\nconnect Nevada County families to fresh, local seasonal food. Sierra Harvest\nworks to accomplish this mission by supporting activities for three key groups \u2013\nchildren through its farm to school program, farmers through training and\neducation, and the community through connecting people to local food. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sierra Harvest\u2019s farm\nto school program has become one of the key ways Nevada County\u2019s students are\nlearning about and eating more specialty crops. Celebrating its 10th\nanniversary this year, Sierra Harvest\u2019s farm to school program currently reaches\n96% of K-8 students in western Nevada County. Sierra Harvest offers participating\nschools a variety of activities as part of its farm to school program,\nincluding harvest of the month, cooking lessons with guest chefs, field trips\nto local farms, farm-fresh produce on school garden carts, farmer visits to\nclassrooms, spring plant sales and support for school garden initiatives. Because\neach school is unique, Sierra Harvest\u2019s Farm to School Director Marisha Finkler\nencourages schools to implement the program differently depending on their\nneeds and priorities; this flexibility ensures there\u2019s a combination of\nactivities that works for every school. In addition, Sierra Harvest works to\nkeep the program affordable at $2 per student and assists schools with fundraising\nopportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core activity\nthat is consistent across all farm to school participants is the harvest of the month program<\/a>. Over the past 10 years, this program has introduced Nevada County\nstudents to 50 varieties of fruits and vegetables and provided over 50,000\npounds of local produce through monthly tastings. According to Finkler, Sierra\nHarvest has found that even picky eaters will try vegetables at school if they\nsee other kids trying them. Finkler reports that over the past year, 72% of\nstudents tried something new through harvest of the month and, on average,\nSierra Harvest has seen a 43% increase in students liking the items sampled\nthrough harvest of the month. Generously sponsored by BriarPatch\nFood Co-op<\/a>, Sierra Harvest is\ncurrently providing monthly tastings of seasonal, fresh produce to 33 schools\nand other institutions such as Dignity Health and Cascade Senior Living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to farm to school activities, Sierra Harvest works\nto promote specialty crops in schools by supporting local procurement efforts. Sierra\nHarvest partnered with Nevada Joint Union High School and Nevada City School District\nto help launch Foothills Fresh, a scratch cooked school meal program featuring\nlocal organic foods. This new program served over 53,000 scratch cooked lunches\nin the 2017\/2018 school year, more than doubling the number of students participating\nin school lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Finkler, Sierra Harvest\u2019s farm to school\nefforts have grown more than just produce in Nevada County \u2013 they have also\nhelped grow meaningful relationships between students, schools, farmers, guest\nchefs and the community. From harvesting produce in the field to preparing it\nin the classroom, these hands-on farm to school activities help students\ndevelop an understanding of where their food comes from and may even have\nimpacts outside the classroom. Finkler notes Sierra Harvest has found that on\naverage, 57% of participating students\u2019 families are buying farmer direct,\nincluding farmers markets, community supported agriculture memberships, farm\nstands, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about Sierra Harvest, including their\nharvest of the month newsletters and guest chef recipes, please visit their website<\/a>. To\nhear what students are saying about the program, check out their YouTube channel<\/a>\nor follow them on Instagram<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay tuned for more specialty crop school success stories in\nthe coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– CDFA Farm to Fork Staff<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is part\nof a series highlighting organizations that are successfully promoting\nspecialty crops in schools. Made possible by Specialty Crop Block Grant\nfunding, these success stories aim to inspire similar efforts, ultimately increasing\nstudent access to, knowledge of, and demand for California specialty crops.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Based in Nevada City, Sierra Harvest is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate, inspire and connect Nevada County families to fresh, local seasonal food. Sierra Harvest works to accomplish this mission by supporting activities for three key groups \u2013 children through its farm to school program, farmers through training and education, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-farm-to-fork-website"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4z2wv-nc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdfa.ca.gov\/TalesFromTheField\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}