On one of the calm, unseasonably warm early December days we had last month, my husband Isaac took our three-year-old son Emmett and me scalloping in Menemsha Pond for the first time. With each dump of the drag on the culling board we were amazed by what we found — tiny sea robins and flounder that Emmett put in a bucket on the deck, jellyfish, eel grass, and an incredible bounty of bay scallops with their beautiful fan-shaped shells.
Island Grown Schools coordinator Kaila Binney is especially excited about January.
“I have this crazy idea,” she said. “I want to get conch in the schools. It’s the biggest export on the Vineyard and nobody eats it.”
Ms. Binney, along with IGS director Noli Taylor, is launching a new program called Harvest of the Month designed to introduce Vineyard students to a new locally-grown crop each month.
For the last five years a quiet revolution has been under way in Vineyard schools. It’s taking place in the lunchrooms, where leafy green salads, roasted pumpkin seeds and tacos stuffed with brightly colored peppers from local farms are replacing the more traditional canned corn, tater tots and government surplus fare.
It’s taking place in the school yards, where lush gardens and neatly-turned piles of dark compost can now be found alongside the playgrounds that are trampled by hundreds of young feet at recess every day.
The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources has awarded Island Grown Schools $12,000 in grant money. The grant is part of a larger $200,000 awards program doled out to seven “buy local” organizations across the commonwealth, and will be used to support Island Grown Schools’ efforts to bring more fresh, healthy and locally produced foods to school cafeterias.
The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources has awarded Island Grown Schools $12,000 in grant money. The grant is part of a larger $200,000 awards program doled out to seven “buy local” organizations across the commonwealth, and will be used to support Island Grown Schools’ efforts to bring more fresh, healthy and locally produced foods to school cafeterias.
Flowers come in all different shapes and sizes, but rarely do they come in the form of small children.
“Today you’re an apple flower,” Melinda Rabbit DeFeo, of Island Grown Schools, said as her student petals stood around her in Chilmark earlier this week. The Edgartown fourth grade had traveled to the home of Peter Norris to pick apples and learn how they grow.
