Healthy foods don’t just nurture the body, they spark the imagination.
Lacey Fletcher is a mom, local farmer, and FoodCorps service member in Cedarville, Arkansas. She teaches lessons on cooking, gardening, and nutrition, and works to promote a school-wide culture of health in her community. As a result, her young students are seeing their food in a completely different way.
As a third-grader, Carson Dyer was asked to describe her ideal garden. “If it was really magic, I would grow squash cupcakes. They would be rainbow and they would grow to be the size of a car so it would take you, like, days to eat it.”
At Carson’s school, students cultivate their own garden and develop a first-hand appreciation for what they eat.
Another FoodCorps service member, Abrianna Peyton, points to the practical benefits of farm-to-school: “I was a big hands-on learner as a child, and there’s something different when you can get in there and do the things yourself and see what you created. Farm-to-school gives kids the self-confidence that they’re capable of achieving things.”
Getting an eight-year-old to want to eat squash for days? Now that’s an achievement!