Improving School Nutrition with Harvest of the Month

 

In a recent documentary, Capital Public Radio explored  "What's for Lunch? The Move to Improve School Nutrition." and featured a program very important to us, Harvest of the Month (HOTM).  As part of this program, our farm will provide fresh, organic fruits and vegetables to school districts in Yolo County.



First Harvest of the Month:  Sweet Peppers!

HOTM is a program that connects to core curricular areas and provides educators with materials and resources to motivate students to make healthy choices through hands-on experience with fruits and vegetables. Nutrition fact sheets will be made available to approximately 16,000 elementary and preschool students in Yolo County.  We are so proud to be a part of Harvest of the Month and aim for this to be a model for healthy eating in our schools.

“Healthy eating has a profound impact on improving our children’s ability to learn. Getting involved in this program was a moral imperative for our farm. We want to connect people with the farms that grow their food, and we want to help young students develop healthy eating habits that will serve them well their whole lives." - Thaddeus Barsotti, chief farmer and co-CEO of Farm Fresh To You/Capay Organic

Harvest of the Month allows students to learn about a new fruit or vegetable each month, starting in October with sweet peppers. Sweet peppers will be part of salads, pizzas and other dishes in Yolo County schools. In the following months students will explore these items: November: persimmons, December: kale, January: citrus, February: broccoli, March: carrots, April: asparagus, May: strawberries.

Photo by Andrew Nixon/Capital Public Radio

Our farm will harvest our produce and partner with other Yolo County farms to meet the program’s produce needs. In addition, we will work with the county to disseminate nutritional education information to students about each month’s harvest item.

Each month, Yolo County student nutrition directors will buy these fresh produce items and include them in their hot dishes and salad bars. Students will receive monthly nutrition fact sheets about each Harvest of the Month produce item.

Pictured: John Young - Photo by Capital Public Radio

“We are so glad that Farm Fresh To You and Capay Organic stepped up to the plate to help us provide produce to schools for this important program,” said John Young, agricultural commissioner for Yolo County. “Yolo County wrote the mandate of providing healthy produce to schools into its general plan, and we are fortunate to be able to take advantage of our county’s agriculture bounty to create lifelong healthy eating habits.”

To read the Farm To School article and listen to the Capital Radio documentary, visit http://www.capradio.org/lunch/farm-to-school.


For more information on Harvest of the Month, visit www.harvestofthemonth.com and www.harvesthubyolo.org/farm-to-school.

The Harvest of the Month launch coincides with National Farm to School month. Visit www.farmtoschoolmonth.org to find additional resources and materials.

Saving Tomato Seeds

In this small handful of organic heirloom-tomato seeds, I hold both a bit of history and of future promise.  I am holding a piece of the plants I once nurtured and the ones I will tend next season.  The seeds came from the fruit of one season's work and will grow into the fruit shared from another.

As an organic farmer, I can't help but be impressed by the natural world around us and this connection to the heirloom crops of years ago. 

CAN YOU SAVE HEIRLOOM TOMATO SEEDS?

Yes!  Heirloom tomatoes are self-pollinating and true breeding, allowing you to save seed and grow the same plant again year after year. This attribute is a rarity in the modern world of hybrid varieties bred for disease resistance, uniform size and long shelf life.

HOW WELL DO THEY GERMINATE?

In our first tests, we tried small batches of 20 tomatoes.  The resulting germination rate was very good, 97%, with each tomato yielding 150 seeds or so. 

HOW TO SAVE TOMATO SEEDS

Here's our Vintage Wine tomato seed-saving story and how you can can save tomato seeds for planting another season. 


Step One: Cut mature, very ripe tomatoes in half and squeeze the seed and juice into a container.

Here we cut 2 pallets of very ripe Vintage Wine tomatoes, about 900 lbs. of fruit, into large buckets. 

Step Two: Let the seed and soup juice sit for a few days. Your container will come to life and bubble with yeasts and other microbes at work during the fermentation process. Fermentation is good - it kills disease causing bacteria and harmful fungi, as well as digests the gelatinous, anti-germination coating that surrounds each seed.

Pictured above is approximately 70 gallons of soup!

Step Three: Thoroughly rinse the seed clean, and let it dry very well. Keep the seed dry while in storage.

Here we have a pound and a half of seed, which is enough to plant 20 or 30 acres of tomato plants!

Step Four:  Plant the seeds the following spring! If you select the year’s best fruits and grow their seeds next year, your plant population will be more strongly adapted to your area. Progress with each repetition!

See seed name listed as “Capay 1.”  These are the seeds we saved, now all grown up. They were made out of Capay’s air, soil and water and have gone another season in those same elements.  

Summer Special - Gravenstein Apples

Guest Blog Post and Recipes by Georgeanne Brennan

Article previously featured in Edible Marin and Wine Country Magazine, reprinted here with permission.  Chutney recipe from Brennan's The Davis Farmers Market Cookbook

Fruit Chutney with Stonefruit and Apples (recipe below)

Every season produces something unique, unavailable at any other time of the year, and in summer in our area, one of those is the Gravenstein apple. The Gravenstein is an apple so notable for its flavor that it has been declared to be a heritage food by Slow Food USA, but unfortunately, one in danger of disappearing. The largest United States planting of the Gravenstein is around the town of Sebastopol, but the quantity is much diminished from years past, when the variety dominated the substantial apple production in Sonoma County.

Like so many other flavorful fruits and vegetables, the Gravenstein doesn’t hold well in storage, nor does it ship well, and consequently it has been dropped by many large buyers and shippers in favor of sturdier fruits.  Only in recent years are we discovering the loss to both our agricultural heritage and to our tables of many of the old-fashioned or heirloom fruits and vegetables. Fortunately, dedicated farmers are bringing them back into production with the hope that educated consumers, looking for true taste and flavor, will seek out and buy these special fruits and vegetables. 

The Gravenstein, thought to have been brought to the area by Russian settlers and fur traders around the first part of the 19th century, certainly fits this description.

It has true apple flavor, balanced between slightly sweet and acidic, with a juicy crunch that, to my thinking, is the essence of a good apple. It’s a lovely waxy green, with red striations, or sometimes pure red, and one of its many virtues is that it is equally good eaten out of hand, cooked, or turned into cider.  The Gravenstein season is short, essentially July and August, so plan ahead, and make sure you get your fill of one of California’s finest fruits.

My son, recently back from Bulgaria, where any fruit with sugar was considered worthy of turning into rakia, is promising to make some with Gravenstein apples this year. His navel orange rakia was a stunning success and we’re looking forward to the apple version. For me, I’ll stick to eating them out of hand or frying them with onions to serve with sausages.


Fried Apples, Onions, and Sausages

Featured in Edible Marin and Wine Country Magazine
by Georgeanne Brennan

INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons butter
4 Gravenstein apples, cored and cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch slices
1 large onion, peeled and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
4 to 6 fennel or other favorite sausage

Heat the butter over medium heat in a large frying pan. When it foams, add the apples and sauté until the underside is golden, about 7 minutes. Turn, add the onions to the pan and continue to sauté until the second side of the apples is golden and the onions are limp and golden, another, 5 minutes or so. While the apples and onions are cooking, cook the sausages in your favorite fashion.

Serve the hot sausages accompanied by the hot apples and onions.
Serves 4 



Fall Fruit Chutney

Featured in The Davis Farmers Market Cookbook
by Georgeanne Brennan and Ann M. Evans

INGREDIENTS
2 pounds stone fruit such as plums, nectarines, pluots, chopped  coarsely
1 pound apples, chopped coarsely
1/2 pound yellow onion, chopped coarsely
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, minced, about 2 tablespoons
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 green jalapeño pepper, seeded, chopped finely
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns

Combine all ingredients in a large, heavy metal pan such as a Dutch oven. Bring mixture to a boil. Turn heat to low and cook mixture until all ingredients are soft and blended, about 3 hours. Mix frequently toward the end to prevent burning.

Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon stick.

To can, place lids with rubber seal into a small sauce pan with about 1 cup of boiling water in it. Soften the lids for about 2 minutes, and turn off heat. Ladle the hot mixture into sterilized pint jars, filling up to ½ - ¼ inch below the top. With a clean cloth, wipe the rim of the jar so that it is clean. Place lid on the rim of the jar. Screw on the ring, fairly tight. Place in a water-bath canner with water covering the jars by about 1-2 inches. Bring water to a boil. Process in a water-bath canner for 10 minutes. Remove jars from water. Let cool. You should hear a popping sound as this occurs. Prior to putting away the chutney, check each seal by pressing down on the lid. It should not give. Label with name of product and date made.

Makes 2-3 pints

GEORGEANNE BRENNAN
Georgeanne Brennan is an award-winning cookbook author, journalist, and food policy consultant with a distinguished culinary and business career spanning several decades. As a principal of Evans & Brennan, LLC , she has been working over the past several years piloting professional development with the Davis JUSD, focusing specifically on enhancing the skills and creativity of the nutrition services staff using the 6-5-4 School Lunch Matrix. The author of more than 30 books on cooking and food, and a cooking school owner and teacher, she brings her considerable expertise to Rethinking School Lunch in rural and urban settings.