Community Partner Highlight: Burlington School Food Project

The Burlington School Food Project offers whole, fresh, and local meals to 4,000 Burlington students. With one third of products coming direct from VT farms, we are building a new school food culture.

Our Farm to School team directly connects students to their food through innovative projects such as the new CP Smith Orchard and the half-acre Healthy City Youth Farm at Hunt Middle School.

This summer we launched one of our most exciting ventures to date. Ten students ranging from incoming freshman through graduated seniors took part in a five-week pilot food systems course. Weekly field trips, daily gardening, and hands-on lessons on topics such as lacto-fermentation (led by City Market’s own Caroline Homan!), bee keeping, and soap making were a huge hit. In the words of one student, “I thought that this class was awesome and I loved everything we did.” We hope to expand this course to the academic school year in 2014-2015.

Want to support our work? Next time you’re at City Market, swing by the deli counter to try our falafel; friend us on Facebook to keep up to date with our progress; or do your City Market Member Worker hours in our gardens and kitchens. For more information, email Jenn McGowan: jmcgowan@bsdvt.org.

Burlington School Food Project: we get local.