Perry County students are the first in the Commonwealth to take part in the Food Corps program.

The nonprofit works to teach nourishing food related skills like gardening in schools.

More in tonight's Education Matters.

This is the first Food Corps program in Kentucky here in Perry County.

Food is important because it nourishes our body, but it also is celebratory and it creates a sense of culture in a community.

In Food Corps service schools, they do hands on food education, They do taste test, and they do gardening and planting.

So that looks like trying local vegetables, planting and growing local food and learning about their food and the culture of their food locally.

I actually went to grad school for about three years.

Preschool through first grade.

Monday and Tuesdays I'm leading lessons and we can either go out to the garden box all throughout the week in the cafeteria with my second or third and fourth, and talk to them about how lunch was the day and kind of getting their feedback on how they like the food.

You know.

Schools now are more than just the education.

Schools focus on emotional, physical, providing all kinds of needs and being able to take needs that, you know, with food that they can take from here.

Look at career goals with this.

Maybe they want to go with or a career future with farming or just being able to go home and show mom and dad how to use this.

We have a lot of connections with farmers.

So, for example, today I sourced apples and butternut squash for for our Food Corps members so they can come to me with a request and I can find it for them.

And thankfully we have a farm to school grants of $1,000 that enables us to purchase those those fruits or vegetables, wherever they might be from the farmers.

Right now we have lettuce, mustard and collard greens also going to be growing carrots and broccoli right now for the cold.

And then hopefully eventually I want to grow Tommy Toes and maybe even a cabbage or something like that.

But I'd like to see it grow from a bucket to having a full fledged, maybe a long tunnel or tunnel.

That way we can grow all year long.

There is a really rich culture of gardening and farming and growing food and being sustainable within your family and community here.

And so it's really sweet to get to continue this tradition with the next generation.

We don't want our culture to die.

So, you know, it's really we people like me that are being exposed to it.

It's kind of our job to step up and expose it to everyone, you know, But to continue on the way in life around here.

This can make a tremendous impact because we you know, food insecurity is a big issue with a lot of our students here.

And we do have a food pantry, a resource center has a backpack program to make sure kids are fed in the evenings, on the weekends.

Being able to incorporate nutritious food that's grown here that can ensure that, you know, not only are the kids getting fed, you know, healthy, nutritious foods here, but that they can go home and receive that same type of food on the weekends on the breaks just in time.

They're not with us.

I hope that we are teaching the next generation of farmers because that's what's going to take like you can't you don't have a country without farming.

I think that we need to we need to be sharing that knowledge with our children so that they'll be feeding us, you know, 30, 40 years down the road.

Any crops harvested by Food Corps will be shared among friends and family of the students, provided their gardens grow large enough that produce will be shared with the community as well.