On a sunny day in September, high school seniors dug into the soil to harvest over 140 pounds of potatoes at the Partridge Creek Intergenerational Farm in Ishpeming, Michigan. After being cleaned, peeled, chopped, parcooked, vacuum sealed, and frozen at Northwoods Test Kitchen, the fruits of their labor will be served to the students in their school lunches this fall. This is just one example of the impactful regional efforts that actively involve multiple partners and more importantly, students, into decisions that are being made to provide more healthy, local food in cafeterias.
Who Is Involved
Partridge Creek Farm (PCF) provides local food access and education to connect members of the community with their food and one another. In partnership with Northwoods Test Kitchen, Marquette Alger Regional Educational Service Agency (MARESA), Michigan State University Extension, and the local Negaunee and Ishpeming School Districts, PCF received a $250,000 Innovation Collaborative award from the Lake Michigan School Food Systems Innovation Hub, which is funded through USDA’s Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative. Over the next two years, they will build upon their existing work to operationalize it and create community integrated impact by getting kids engaged in the food they eat.
“There is no way we could do this without our farm partnerships,” said Mary Antonia Andronis, director of programs and partnerships at PCF. “So many people have our backs.”
How We Work
Each member of this partnership contributes their expertise to the multi-faceted needs of connecting local food to schools. As this program continues, these relationships will be nurtured to facilitate success, equitable involvement, and trust building. To work toward a bright local food future for the area, PCF is expanding their work through two focused teams: Education, and Production, Processing, and Purchasing (3P).
The Education team will engage with students through tastings, school garden activities, and presentations that highlight culturally relevant foods through voices and recipes from the community. Additionally, the Education team will collaborate with Locally Integrated Food Teams (LIFT-UP), to incorporate a student-led process to investigate food system barriers with the question, “What would it take to get more local food in our lunchroom?” Representatives from MARESA and MSU Extension will work directly with the students to understand their vision of a school lunch to directly inform the work of the 3P team.
Focused on making this work sustainable over time, the production team will concentrate on crop planning, standard operating procedures for school kitchens, scaling recipes that match available produce and school nutrition standards, and getting local food served in schools. Vegetables and herbs will be grown at Partridge Creek Farm, while Northwoods Test Kitchen—a commissary kitchen that provides commercial processing space in Marquette—will prep and freeze locally grown food to make incorporating local produce easier for the school food program managers. This processing partnership solves a lack of capacity and equipment, which can be a consistent bottleneck in getting local food into the school cafeterias.
“Through our collaborative work on this pilot project, an additional goal is to create replicable systems that can be shared widely throughout the region, thus having an even wider and more long-term impact on our regional food system,” said Andronis.
These collaborative teams are the ingredients that will create a recipe for success. Through thoughtful production, processing, purchasing, and education, PCF will improve a lasting and locally integrated supply chain that supports a healthy relationship with fresh food for students.
Photo by May Tsupros. Story by Emma Beauchamp.