- Yeah, so it's all about turning what they grow here in these fields into the meals that your kid eats in the cafeteria.

Local farms providing local schools with the best and the freshest local produce they can get.

- So this is our late grape tomato fields, and we do cucumbers, and we do strawberries in the spring.

- [Jeff] Doug Patterson's 550 acre fruit and vegetable farm was founded by his grandfather in 1919, and they've been putting Patterson Farm produce on Rowan County tables ever since.

- There's no better quality crop than what's grown right here where you're standing.

Everybody knows that fresh vegetables, the fresher they are, the more nutrients you'll receive out of those fruits and vegetables.

They're not shipped half across the country, they're not refrigerated for weeks, so they're gettin' them fresh right from the farm.

- [Jeff] And those same homegrown farm fresh fruits and veggies, the ones they weigh on the scale here at the Patterson's Rowan County Farm Store, well, they're also on the menu here at the Rowan Salisbury schools and other nearby school districts too.

- It's good, it's all local.

It's people that we know, and it was a way that we could connect with the kids in North Carolina, so they would know where their food came from.

- Sometimes students will stop in ask what that smell is, that it smells really good, and it just gives that aroma, and it just makes it feel like home.

- School Nutrition Director Lisa Altmann says here at Overton Elementary in Salisbury, their talented cafeteria cooks are also mixing up and browning up and serving up a big batch of these scratch made Sloppy Joes for lunch with the fresh ground beef they're using also from North Carolina farms.

- It's actually really good, very high quality.

We made 100 servings of that, and at the end of the day, we only had like 20 left.

- Yeah, that's great news.

Yeah, we love to hear that the kids love it, and I kinda want a Sloppy Joe right now.

- [Jeff] Jamie Ager works up an appetite talking with us here in the big barn at Hickory Nut Gap Farm near the mountain town of Fairview, with four generations of family farm photos hanging on the barn's old wooden walls, where you can also take in the views and hear the moo from the farm's brushy hillside pasture.

- We raise grass fed beef.

We raise pasture raised hogs.

We do some pasture raised chickens and turkeys as well, and we sell all of our products locally.

- [Jeff] Including this ground beef from Ager's farm and several other family farms, all part of North Carolina's Farm to School program.

- We were just really lucky to be able to work with the school system and be able to sell some meat and do a lot of business.

And then B, like we have three boys that go to public schools, and it's nice to be able to know that some of the meat that they eat is comin' from the farm.

We need to connect the dots between farms and food, and the school system's a great place to kinda build some education.

- [Jeff] And this is where food education meets food transportation, the Farm to School warehouse, with truckloads of North Carolina tomatoes and other homegrown crops rolling in from the growers.

- The schools order, and we go out and purchase and pick up fresh produce from North Carolina farmers and businesses, 'cause some of it is minimally processed, and then we distribute it to the schools.

And we typically do this every two weeks, so they have a constant supply of whatever is in season and local.

- Distribution Director Walter Beal says more than 100 North Carolina school districts participate in Farm to School and other buy local programs.

The packing and shipping of all that fresh food is paid for by the State Department of Agriculture.

And here's where the education comes in, these Farm to School lesson booklets and other learning tools that the state also sends out to classrooms and the School to Farm field trips that bring those lessons to life.

- And it is actually helping us teach the kids what you can buy local, so they know where the food comes from, and when you buy local and it was just picked a few days ago, freshness and everything makes a big difference.

- All that's good marketing.

It's a good education.

It's a good program all the way around.

- [Jeff] And growers say Farm to School is good for the farm business too.

Those school orders a welcome constant that farmers can depend on to help make their fields more profitable.

- It's an order that we can plan for in advance.

Usually, we get our strawberry orders a week to 10 days in advance, which is really good.

Strawberries are very perishable, so if we can get that order in early and can plan ahead for it, it really helps us out.

Same with the grape tomatoes and the cucumbers that we grow.

We'll get that order almost a month ahead, and that helps us plan for our crop and for our sales.

Farming is something you can see your results daily.

It's satisfying.

It's satisfying every day because you're seein' progress.

- [Jeff] Not just higher yields in the farm fields, but also more smiles in the aisles of a local school cafeteria, where eating healthier also means learning better.

And where today's test might just be a taste test of something new and fresh and homegrown.

- And it's just neat to see the kids at the table, talking about some of the food.

I truly believe if it's kid tested, they're gonna eat it.

It's about the child, so we wanna make sure that we're giving them the best quality we can.

- By the way, every child here in the Rowan Salisbury schools, as well as lots of other school districts, well, they all qualify for no-cost breakfast, lunch, and after school meals, either in the cafeteria or the classroom, with North Carolina fresh from the farm Sloppy Joes and tomatoes from Rowan County making those meals better, Amy.