Twinhill Elementary Celebrates Farm To School Month With Focus On Local Growers

Apples, bananas and oranges are staples for most elementary school students, but how many can say they’ve had dragonfruit, rambutan or a finger lime? At Twinhill Elementary School in Riverside, almost all of them can.

“We actually have a fresh fruit and vegetable grant, and the school is one of the recipients of that grant and it allows us to bring in different fruits and vegetables that are just kind of more exotic or just different,” Eric Holliday, director of child nutrition services, said. “Sometimes they like them, sometimes they don’t like them, but they get to feel the texture and experience the taste, and so it’s a really tactile experience as well.”

The program has been up and running at the school for a few weeks now, and its “snack of the day” component has been a huge hit with the students, Principal Mary McAllister-Parsons said.

“The kids get the opportunity at recess time to grab a snack, and it’s a fresh fruit or a fresh veggie,” she said. “I share some fun facts about whatever the snack of the day is during my morning message.”

That morning message is brought to the students via Google Meet, and McAllister-Parsons also tries the snack of the day live on camera for the entire school to watch in hopes of getting the students excited about trying new foods, even when she isn’t so sure about what she’s about to eat.

“The importance, I think, is exposing them to things that they might not consider,” she said. “And so it gives us an opportunity to try something before we say, ‘No, I don’t like that,’ or, ‘No, I don’t want it.’”

As part of the program, the students also got to celebrate National Farm to School Month with a special farmers market and presentation by farm educator Jackie Stewart earlier this month.

“We go to different elementary schools all around the Southern California region, and we bring fresh in-season fruits and vegetables from our farm that we’re growing,” she said. “And we educate the kids about them, and then at the end, they get to take a few home.”

Stewart has a farm in Redlands, Old Grove Orange, where she grows oranges, apples, cucumbers, carrots, squash and pluots, a combination of a plum and an apricot.

“We call it nature’s candy on my farm because it’s so, so, so sweet,” Stewart said, holding one up for the students to see. “It looks like an apricot … it’s firm like an apricot, but the inside is red, juicy and delicious like a plum.”

For Stewart, coming to elementary schools and teaching students about the benefits of eating fresh fruits and vegetables — what she calls their superpowers — is more than about the food, it’s also to show them that anyone can be a farmer.

“I think that it’s really cool for them to see that anyone can be a farmer, and that being a farmer isn’t a negative thing,” Stewart said. “I think sometimes, like in popular culture, there’s a connotation with it of who is a farmer, but the majority of people on our farm are women and people who identify as women, and I think that’s also kind of not known that there’s so many women farmers, especially in this area, and it’s cool to shed light on that, to be an example to the kids.”

At the end of the presentation, all of the students were able to take home three fresh items from Stewart’s farm. They were also able to visit the farm stand set up outside the cafeteria where they not only got even more fresh produce to take home, but were also able to try some.

“Just thinking about the demographics of our school district, 85% of our students are on the low socioeconomic and demographic side,” Alvord Unified School District Superintendent Resma Byrne said. “And so just being able to take fruits and vegetables home, which is one of the most expensive things when you go grocery shopping, how impactful is that? How powerful. I just think that’s wonderful.”

The event was in partnership with the Center for Ecoliteracy’s California Food for California Kids Network which assists schools in serving more fresh and local school meals while providing food education for students.

“We work with school districts all across the state of California,” Cindy Hu, education program manager at the Center for Ecoliteracy, said. “We want to help support them in working with farmers to source more locally grown food, and specifically, we really want the kiddos to be able to eat more fruits and vegetables, so we work with school districts and food service directors to have more fresh fruits and vegetables in their school meals.”