School districts promote & serve NM grown food
(Portales) – All of Roosevelt County school districts and Veggie Shack earned awards in a statewide Golden Chile Awards Program this year for buying and serving locally grown food, providing tasting opportunities, supporting student-led gardens, and educating students about the importance of healthy nutrition. This is the first year Portales Municipal Schools, under the direction of Food Services Director Shaunna Smith, earned the highest award of Golden Chile.
The awards program recognizes farmers, school districts, senior centers and preschools in a four-tiered recognition program – Seed, Sprout, Blossom and Golden Chile — to acknowledge all levels of involvement in New Mexico Grown programming. State officials recognized the 92 statewide awardees at a Dec. 1 ceremony in Albuquerque.
“We really do have great things in place with our policies, procedures and activities,” Smith said.
“Caron with Healthy Kids is an asset to our district and all that she has helped do with our school garden. I think we really just embraced the new guidelines with NM Grown and the Universal School Meals rule.”
Smith’s crew incorporated 50% scratch cooking last year, before implementation was required. She’s reached out more to students and parents to get feedback through food fairs at school events or Student Council meetings. Even Portales’ community Facebook page has become a source for Smith who delighted in sharing a recipe with a parent whose son kept asking her to make the school dish at home.
Last spring, Portales Municipal Schools received a Healthy Meals Incentive Award after the NM Public Education Department nominated Smith for her innovation and nutrition education. She’s already spent the $22,500 of NM Grown funds her district received this year. She bought produce from Veggie Shack and replaced box commodity patties with patties from the Foote family for older students and smaller patties from USA Beef in Roswell for the younger ones.
“Those have been a big hit,” she said.
Community partners, including Caron Powers of Healthy Kids Roosevelt County, support the district’s extensive garden at James Elementary, and works with local schools, including in Portales and Elida, to provide nutrition education and introduces healthy alternatives to sugary drinks with fruit-infused water demos.
Elida Schools earned the highest award in the Golden Chile Awards Program for the third consecutive year for their school garden, Beth Fair’s dedication to scratch cooking, her creative taste testing and promotion of locally grown food. As the director of Elida’s food program, Fair continued to experiment with new dishes like pizza crunchers and a cowboy caviar with corn, black beans, cilantro and red onion.
She used NM Grown funds this year to buy a lot of green chile from Margie Plummer, owner of Veggie Shack, for calabacitas, green chile stew, breakfast burritos, and green chile burgers. She’s also growing spearmint and two kinds of basil on grow towers in the cafeteria to make mint tea and basil pesto.
She plans to continue expanding the school garden and plant crops like garlic and lettuce in the greenhouse this winter. The biggest addition to the school’s robust food program is fresh eggs from the 25 chickens now housed in the school yard.
“All of the students are jumping in to take care of them and feed them,” said Fair. “We have to teach kids that food doesn’t just come from a grocery store but from gardens and farms.”
Margie Plummer has supported NM Grown long before it was a funded state program, launching the Portales Farmer’s Market in 1995 and selling her homegrown produce in Melrose starting in 2005 before expanding into Portales seven years later. Today, she sells produce to Floyd, Elida, Portales, Grady and Melrose schools in addition to running the farmer’s market in both Portales and Clovis—earning her the top Golden Chile award in the Golden Chile Awards program.
As the business manager of the Floyd school, she’s also the reason the school earned a Seed award this year for buying local melons. “Even canned fruit has other things in it and isn’t the highest quality,” she said. “We know they’ve got a healthy product when they eat local melons.”
Rita Condon, who helps facilitate NM Grown efforts as director of the New Mexico Department of Health’s Obesity, Nutrition and Physical Activity Program, congratulated all four awardees.
“Thank you for investing in the health of your community,” Condon said. “You help make NM Grown a success.”
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