(Elida) – Elida Local Schools and Margie Plummer, local grower and business manager of Floyd Municipal Schools, will receive top awards this month in a statewide Golden Chile Awards Program for connecting students to locally grown food through meals and educational activities.
The awards program recognizes farmers, school districts, senior centers and preschools in a four-tiered recognition program – Seed, Sprout, Blossom and Golden Chile — designed to acknowledge all levels of involvement in New Mexico’s local food movement. State officials will recognize the 31 winners at a virtual celebration Sept. 14.
“Congratulations to Elida schools for making children’s nutrition a top priority and supporting locally grown food,” said Rita Condon, who coordinates NM Grown efforts as manager of the New Mexico Department of Health’s Obesity, Nutrition and Physical Activity Program. “We also appreciate our hard-working growers; We couldn’t do the program without them.”
The Elida school district’s Blossom award – the second highest award category — reflects the district’s efforts to buy and serve locally grown food in student meals, cultivate a school garden, and promote NM Grown food.
“There’s a huge difference between store-bought products and off-the-vine fresh. It’s so much better,” said Beth Fair, Elida’s food service director. “I guess the kids think so too because they keep coming back for more.”
Fair buys a variety of homegrown products, including melons, peppers, squash, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes from Plummer and Eric Nelson from Nelson Farms in Texico. She goes out of her way to find other options too, such as meeting a La Luz farmer in Roswell to buy his freshly picked apples.
“She really wants to offer healthy options for her kids in Elida; That’s her biggest thing,” said Caron Powers, coordinator of Healthy Kids Roosevelt County, which supports NM Grown as a way to increase access to healthy, local food.
The NM Grown program granted Elida $6,617 this school year to buy locally grown produce and for the first time, local beef. Statewide, the NM Grown program awarded its highest level of grants this school year — $1.27 million for schools, $300,000 for preschools, and $530,000 for senior centers.
Margie Plummer, manager of the Roosevelt and Curry County farmer’s markets, grows such produce as melons, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and black-eyed peas over more than 30 acres in Portales. She earned a Blossom award for selling a variety of fruits and vegetables to schools in Portales, Elida and Floyd. She promotes the importance of local grown produce through school field trips to her pumpkin patch, and at her small store and nursery where she sells produce and starter plants to encourage home gardening.
“She devotes her time to this part of the state, where there are few opportunities to purchase locally grown produce,” Powers said.
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