Akaogi farm in Vermont grows a variety of fruits and vegetables, but the thing that brought me there this past week was their most unusual New England crop: rice.

On a recent Sunday evening, the West Tisbury Library Community Room was crowded with people leaning over tables covered with white paper bowls. Each bowl was filled with a different kind of seed — some tiny, some huge, some fuzzy, some smooth, and in every shade of red, gray, white, black and brown.

From April 27 to 30, Island Grown Schools is hosting a workshop with a variety of leaders in the sustainable farming field to help plan for the future. They are also hosting a benefit dinner on May 3.

This fall begins the second year of Island Grown Harvest of the Month, a program of Island Grown Schools that highlights a different locally available crop every month to encourage healthy, whole foods, seasonal eating in our schools and in the wider community.

Island Grown Schools education coordinator Kaila Binney met Ellen Berube’s second-grade classroom at the front of the Oak Bluffs School on a sunny Monday afternoon. Ms. Binney was joined by Massachusetts State Representative Timothy Madden and legislative liaison Kaylea Moore, who were visiting the school as it celebrated Massachusetts Harvest for Students week.

I love fall, from the beautiful weather to the change in routines, with schedules a little more ordered and the kids back in school. But with back to school also comes the annual school lunch challenge. Parents and kids have a choice: buy lunch in school or pack a homemade lunch.

Throughout the school year, the Island Grown Schools Harvest of the Month program highlights a locally available crop at all seven of our K-12 schools and at six preschools, in school taste tests, on cafeteria lunch menus, and in partnership with Island grocery stores and restaurants.

During the summer, while IGS staff, parents, students and teachers volunteer to maintain our 13 school gardens, students from the regional high school are keeping the Harvest of the Month program alive.

Connected. Privileged. Honored. Thankful. Full.

Those were a few of the words the Chilmark School fourth and fifth grade class used in their class blessing at the school’s community lunch Friday afternoon. The lunch was the last of the school year in a series of gatherings organized by Island Grown Schools and volunteers.

Robin Forte, Island Grown Schools’ Harvest of the Month guest chef for the Edgartown School, moved through the lunch room with a tray of asparagus roll-ups for students to try. As she moved from table to table she saw a pattern emerging, one that has become familiar through the course of this first year of our Harvest of the Month program. The children at first would politely say “No, thank you” to the taste test. Then one student would venture, “I’ll try it,” and then each person in turn around the table would say the same thing.

Spring is here at last, and Island Grown Schools celebrates the appearance of the first spring greens in school gardens across the Island.

We dedicated April to greens in our Harvest of the Month program, with taste tests at every school and school meals featuring local and regionally grown greens at least twice throughout the month.