(gentle music) - We talk a lot about students needing to experience and understand how nature sustains life, and how to live accordingly.

What they're learning in the garden, what they're eating in the cafeteria, what they're learning in their classrooms should all be telling them and showing them how to be passionate about nature.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] "Bay Area Bountiful" is about agriculture.

It's about feeding us.

It's about land and water.

it's about the health of our planet.

It's about stories that matter.

(bright music) "Bay Area Bountiful" cultivate, celebrate, connect - [Narrator] "Bay Area Bountiful" is made possible in part by Rocky the Free Range Chicken and Rosie the Original Organic Chicken, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Made Local magazine, and Sonoma County Go Local, and through the generous support of Sonoma Water.

(gentle music) - It's important for our students to understand where their food comes from and how it's grown.

And knowledge like that from a young age creates healthy and sustainable school communities.

It creates lasting change in the food system.

And it helps folks understand how to make these choices lifelong.

- The Youth Garden is basically an area where we bring other elementary schools so they can focus on the different environments of the farm.

- And then they can learn more about like whole organic foods, and not just like unhealthy stuff that they eat usually.

(students chatter) - The Center for Ecoliteracy was founded in 1995.

We're a nonprofit dedicated to education for the sustainability of people and the planet.

We have a network of over a hundred public school districts across the state.

It's called the California Food for California Kids Network.

And they work to create connections between the classroom, cafeteria and garden for students in California.

Those districts alone serve more than a third of the meals in the state.

And we support them in serving more locally sourced and freshly prepared school meals.

- If I eat something good, I feel good, honestly.

- Yeah, like whatever I eat that tastes good and refreshing.

Like this salad, it made me feel good, because I know what I'm eating is healthy, and that it tastes good, so it makes me happy.

- Santa Clara Unified School District has been part of our network since 2015.

And this farm is right next to Peterson Middle School, where students get to experience and learn with nature, and get to enjoy the produce in their cafeteria.

Fresh fruits and vegetables grown right here.

- I like the kale, the kale is really good.

(laughs) Yeah, I like the kale.

(gentle music) - The farm is a dream.

To be able to plan what we're actually going to grow and serve in the cafeterias is amazing.

And we enjoy it every year, and coming up with new ways to utilize the produce so that we can distribute it to all our schools.

So even our elementary schools can get the produce right from the farm.

(gentle music) - The farm here is 11 acres.

And 4.3 of those acres are row crops.

And then we have another 4.2 acres of orchard.

And then the rest of the land consists of a barn area and a facilities area that we store tractors and equipment on.

What we do here is we grow organic produce, and we send it to the district warehouse.

And then from there, that produce gets distributed throughout the the school district and into the cafeterias.

So I do have to go to Peterson Middle School first and drop off the produce there.

So are they still over there?

What we're trying to do here is replace the product that they buy off the distribution channel, and replace it with an organic product.

We have a spreadsheet that we share with child nutrition.

And they know what we'll be pulling out of the field and harvesting.

We clean it up a little bit here.

And then once we complete that harvest, we bring it to the school's warehouse.

And then tomorrow morning or late this afternoon, they'll go ahead and divide that product up to each of the individual schools.

And then the chefs at some of the schools will go ahead and utilize that product for the salad bar, or they'll make a side dish out of it.

(gentle music) - We have 30 schools, and we serve about 2,600 breakfasts and 8,200 lunches on average.

(gentle music) - We try to plan our menu cycle based on what we're going to be able to harvest through the farm.

And of course, mother nature play an important role in it.

But yes, we have a great distribution from the farm.

And we try to have at least twice weekly.

(gentle music) - We pick the product right when it's ready to go.

And so we feel that that freshness allows the students to actually taste something that has substance to it, and taste what a product should actually taste like, versus something that's been harvested a little early just so it can spend another week on the road to ultimately end up on their plate.

And that just has lack of flavor, lack of sweetness and different textures.

(gentle music) - It's a really game change, being able to control what we're serving to the kids.

As a father, and of course as a chef, I really appreciate the fact that we know we can control like the distance from where we have something.

And we can also have the kids go and take a look at the farm.

That is like an awesome place to go.

(gentle music) - There's definitely benefits to having the farm so close by.

(gentle music) I know that the fruits and vegetables from the farm go off to other schools in our district.

But having that connection right here where we have our students go out and actually learn in that farm area, and then get the experiences that they have with different foods in the cafeteria, gives them experience to try these new foods.

- This is the pea.

- Yeah.

- And you can do two things.

One, you can eat the whole thing like this, like I like.

Or you can snap it off and pull this part off.

- We have kids that come for tours.

It's a field trip tour, and they come out to the farm and they learn a little bit about where their food comes from.

And then we also have students on a weekly basis that come out here.

And they're trying to gain some job experience.

So they can go out into the real world with a little bit of experience underneath their belt, hopefully get a job in the future.

All right, and so we're cutting broccoli.

And we're going to cut cabbage.

And we're going to gather radishes.

- Good job.

- Radishes, I love radishes!

- Everybody eats.

So food is this universally experienced, viscerally understood subject matter that anyone can access.

So you can use it to teach about literally any subject.

And it can be a math lesson, it can be a science lesson, it could be an English language lesson.

Anything can be applied in the garden or in the kitchen.

- Do you all know that there's some people that will cut the whole part here up?

And they can steam it and eat it.

- Really?

- To be able to experience and see actually how food is grown and harvested is truly an amazing experience.

It gives you an appreciation of what's on your plate.

(bright music) - I don't know.

- The broccoli is good too, try the broccoli.

- The broccoli?

Mm!

- We've had kids come, and adults come here, and this is the first time they've ever harvested broccoli, and been able to eat it.

- Okay, but Evan, make sure you're listening.

Tell him, you got to go down there.

- Cut it about three to five inches down.

So we want that length.

Yeah, you got it, Evan, about like that.

- The farm wouldn't be the farm without David.

He really is the connector between education and nutrition and growing and teaching at the farm.

- Now you how to pull it out, perfect.

- Good job, Chris.

- I want you to pull your shirt down.

- I can't.

- Evan, there's big ones right there.

- Big ones?

- Yeah, see it?

- Yeah, right there.

Every Thursday and Friday, we have our post-secondary kids come out.

And these kids are great.

They come out and they work really, really hard.

- Oh, I got it!

- Very good.

- Yep.

- Is that okay?

- They help us plant, they help us harvest.

They help us clean the field up, get it ready for the next planting.

There's one right there.

(bright music) - There you go, you hear it?

(bright music) Keep it going.

There you go.

So our post-secondary students are aged 18 to 22.

And they are students with disabilities who have completed four years of high school, and are still eligible for four additional years of public education.

They are no longer working on their academic track.

They move on to vocational skills and daily living skills.

- [David] And then this one, this is a good one, Chris.

- They're learning skills such as tending to plants, planting, harvesting.

- Today at the farm, we picked radishes, broccoli and cabbage.

Yeah.

Some are easy to harvest than others.

- [David] There you go, see?

- Just the willingness for them to be open to new things, excited to come back and tell what they've planted, what they've done, is very rewarding for them.

- Yeah.

- It's a big one!

- They call it a brown radish.

- Yeah.

- These might be easy to pull.

When students get to grow food from seed to harvest, when they get to bring it into the classroom, the kitchen classroom, when they get to prepare that food and eat it and see that they are a part of what came from the ground and that nature is a part of them as well, that's what this program has to offer.

- Like it's okay.

- Sometimes I never like anything from the grocery store.

But sometimes I like it better if it's outdoor and it tastes good.

- He eats everything.

- Want to try it, Susan?

- I think it's given our students an opportunity to try new things that they might not have tried otherwise.

I know they bring it back.

And sometimes we cook things at school with the ingredients.

So I think it's broadening their palate.

- Pepper on it.

Oh, roast!

- Good job, Evan!

- I call that roast broccoli right there.

(bright music) - We really like to just put a little bit of seasoning, a little bit of olive oil and either roast things, or really serve our farm vegetables in their simplest form possible.

- When it comes to radishes, they have like a very savory flavor.

- Yeah, you like it?

- Uh huh.

- [Evan] It almost reminds me of ginger.

- I'll try a little piece, but man.

- Little bite.

- Thank you.

- [David] No, I don't think so.

- Students are so much more enthusiastic about an ingredient that they've grown themselves.

They're invested in it when they plant it as a seed or as a seedling, and they see it through to harvesting.

They see the value of what goes into producing food.

And they see and taste the difference between what they might get in a grocery store, an ingredient that maybe has been shipped across the country, versus what they've been able to grow on their school campus.

And it's better, it's tastier, and they see it differently.

- Because we're able to see like where all this food is coming from.

Yeah, it just makes you think about the cycle of like food.

- Like, you can see the plant part that it comes from.

That's kind of fun.

Like, you can see like after pollination, you can see the...

The science teacher in me is like, oh, you can see the whole plant after like all of this life cycle moments.

- And it makes you care more about what you're eating.

Because like obviously this is all like very healthy.

And it's all natural, organic.

And it just makes you feel more kind of like obligated to eat good food, because this is like what we're learning about.

So yeah, you kind of feel like committed to being good to your own body.

I'm only going to take one.

- I can eat this too, right?

- No, yeah, all of it.

- Divy's tasted more sweeter than this one.

- It's got dirt on it.

- That is so good!

- Sweeter.

- They are really, really sweet.

- Yeah, that's so sweet.

- When you work with something that's really amazing itself, it's like awesome, just a little bit of oil, a little bit of love on it, and then it's ready to go.

(upbeat music) - The thing about this work, the thing about sourcing locally and serving more freshly prepared school meals, is that it serves the bottom line too.

It actually improves student health, which improves their academics, which improves attendance.

So that ties into funding for a school and for a school district.

- The Center for Ecoliteracy has been a big supporter of local foods, and really helped to drive the introduction of local foods into schools.

They've had some really innovative conferences that connected school districts that were scratch cooking all over the state.

They helped support us with some, finding local vendors to procure local food and really supporting the movement to local and scratch cooking.

Recently, California Department of Education gave us some kit fund grants for training.

So we've sent groups of employees to the Culinary Institute in Napa.

And right now we're doing some development with our job descriptions to really give our employees from the entry level position a pathway to learn and grow within our culinary culture here at Santa Clara Unified.

- Gardens and food systems were kind of a perfect project for the Center for Ecoliteracy.

We saw the entire school as a classroom.

So that meant that the garden and the cafeteria, as well as a classroom, was where learning could happen.

(bright music) - Since we started the farm, more and more education is happening.

We have field trips that come through.

And we have a nature center next door.

So we're partnering with the nature center.

And kids get to see nature, including a fresh water stream, and then walk over to the farm, and really see the full cycle of life and food.

And I think it's such a unique experience for kids.

- Being able to see firsthand what's coming from the farm, and then going into what we eat every day.

It just makes you feel like you're learning so much more than just like studying facts from a textbook, or doing like an online course or something like that.

- That way you don't just understand the concept through the screen, but you also get to see them do it in real time.

So it's always fun, 'cause while in other schools they get to follow the seasons through walks or what so on, we get to see it in the trees and the blossoms and such.

- Another great asset to our campus is the nature center, which is right at the heart of the campus.

We're fortunate that that our district provides us with a teacher on a special assignment who kind of helps oversee that area, Ms. Kim Hunter, who is wonderful.

And she works with our environmental leadership class and other teachers during the day to get other science classes and ELD classes to come to the farm, come to the nature center, and really have those learning experiences together.

- My class is an elective here at Peterson Middle School.

And it's a seventh and eighth grade elective.

And the students there learn how to lead groups of elementary students here at the Osborne Nature Area.

(upbeat music) TK through fifth grade has NGSS-aligned curriculum that we touch on, it's all thematic.

And my students ask the questions and guide the students through stations here and in my classroom.

(upbeat music) - When they're like younger kids, we tend to like make them use their five senses a lot.

And you can like really see how many connections they make with what you're looking at.

- Yeah.

- And it makes you feel really good to be able to teach them so much about what you already know, because you were able to learn that yourself.

So then you get to pass down that like knowledge to them.

- Yeah, and like a lot of the things that we might find boring, they find really interesting.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, because we're so used to it.

- Yeah, like even the leaves.

Like randomly, stuff they see, they're like, "Oh my god, wow."

Or when they crunch it up and they hear the noise they're like, "Whoa, like that's really cool."

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) - Additionally, my students are restoring the habitats here and making sure that people know where to stand, and where not to stand.

- Students did this on Friday, they took the mulch pile over here hauled it with wheelbarrows and lined the trail.

They plant native plants in this area.

So depending on what habitat it is, we will plant milkweed, for example, where the riparian zone is over there.

And if we didn't have this, the third graders, one of their benchmarks is learning about the land of California.

And so when they see the chaparral, they're like, oh, this is what it feels like or looks like.

It gets really hot, especially in the summer.

And they see the redwoods, and they're like, oh, the redwoods are this large, and like the red is actually red.

So it really brings to life what they're learning.

- We have the privilege of going into the nature center, and being able to see all these different areas of the world from one place, which is very cool.

- You're exposed to more than you usually are.

- Yeah, it's more interactive than normal school.

- It increases like your knowledge too, 'cause you learn more, and you study or focus just on one plant and you learn a lot more.

- It's a big contrast from when we're in the classroom.

Like we're just doing work, and then when we come to the nature center it's like, wow.

It's like we get to go walk around, and it's more... You just see more things and take more things.

- This is one aquatic system where there's tiny micro-invertebrates that will eat leaf litter.

And then there's bigger animals, like dragon flies, and ducks even, or the turtles that are here, they'll eat the little, micro-invertebrates.

So my kids are trying to guide the fifth graders in discovery, and then linking their science class learnings to the outdoors.

- Being able to have field trips for elementary students and middle school and high school.

I think it's a really important thing, because when you appreciate something, you want to take care of it, and you want to make sure that that stays the way that you may have seen it.

And then once you see something, you ask questions of it.

So then that activates that like curiosity and critical mind that will help you in science class, and other classes too.

It's like the ultimate teacher, right?

If you just let yourself observe and wonder, and then sort of make connections with it, I think it goes a long way.

(upbeat music) - This year is the first year that I started taking like the nature center class, the leadership environmental class.

And it made me realize like a lot of what's around me, and how cool like stuff can be, even the slightest things that you find.

- Yeah.

- Really cool.

Or like little insects or bugs.

- Yeah, it makes you value nature way more than you would before, even if you thought you did.

It makes you think about it, and like think about the process of all the lives of the things that you're seeing and all the organisms way more.

(upbeat music) - Part of having a learning environment like this connected to a school and connected to a district is for students to be able to see how climate change might be impacting their particular region.

- [Instructor] Walk through the mud.

- Right now, with all the rains we've had, all the challenges the farmers are going to have.

And kids that come here to the farm get to see how muddy the fields are, and what it means when we have two weeks of rain, and how that's going to affect what you can buy in the grocery store in a few months.

(gentle music) - But when the weather changes, you definitely see a huge change in like the things that come out, the things that hide, like animals, or the plants, how they bloom and stuff.

Like when it's hot, when it's like hotter than usual, you can see a change in the plants a lot.

- Being able to witness a farm like this over time, being able to see the health of the soil, how it changes, how it responds to flooding or fires in the area.

it can be transformational experiences for students that actually allow them to understand, and pair with that experience that nature is our teacher, and they are a part of it.

(gentle music) - It makes you think about all of the bad things that are happening to the climate.

And it makes you have just like more compassion for all those animals and all those plants and all those habitats, because we know how important they are, because we're learning about all this.

And we know how much they need to survive.

(gentle music) - Empowering them to do something with that knowledge, and make their own imprint on the world, and address the challenges that we face in our environment with climate change.

That's why, that's why we do this work.

- Yeah, it's pressure, but I feel like I'm kind of proud of having that responsibility.

- Yeah.

- And knowing that we can do something about it.

- Yeah.

- And we're being taught so much about it in school and all of that, so I think I have hope.

- Yeah.

- To visit a school campus like Peterson Middle School, and to see the ways that farm to school programming have infiltrated all parts of the campus, and the reinforcing lessons that students get to experience both in their classrooms, their cafeterias, in school gardens, that's the potential of farm to school programming.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - Pay more attention to the soil.

'Cause the soil's going to change a lot more than what we think it's currently doing.

- Plant a tree?

- Yeah.

- Plant a tree.

- Plant a tree.

- Yeah.

- And make sure that you're feeding yourself and your family healthy food, because just by doing that, you're supporting all the healthy things that you should be doing out there.

And then it'll also inspire you to do more things, like planting a tree and paying more attention to the soil.

(upbeat music) (energetic music)