NW Michigan Food and Farming Network Report to the Community 2015 Report to the Community | Page 28

Food and Farming network

TCAPS is a Strong
Supporter of Farm to School
District tries to
source its food locally
By Tom Freitas
Traverse City Area Public Schools
Traverse City Area Public Schools
has had a Farm to School program
for many years. We try to promote
local, healthy eating to our students
and staff. We have salad bars in all of
our buildings where we feature local
produce nearly every day when it is
available. We have a long relationship with Cherry Capital Foods,
whose staff work hard to find us
produce and local products at a cost
TCAPS students slice up some local apples. (Photo: Daniel Marbury)
point where we can afford to sell
We have FoodCorps and now
those items in our school lunches.
FoodCorps-trained teachers in some
We have also recently teamed up
of our schools that help to educate
with Goodwill Industries and its
our students on good nutrition and
Farm to Freezer operations. We have
Farm to School, and they encourbeen able to purchase their Farm to
age our students to try new local
Freezer products through Cherry
produce. They have also helped to
Capital at a reasonable price, which
wrap around our Old Mission Elinstitute school gardens at elementary
has allowed for easy access to those
ementary School campus, to particibuildings. Every year TCAPS teams
products.
pate in our Farm to School program. with Oryana Natural Foods Market
We recently started a pilot proHe gave us outstanding prices and
and Cherry Capital to participate
gram with Goodwill where they
was able to supply almost all of our
in “Cooking with Kids at the Fair,”
purchase local tomatoes, roast them,
schools with fruits and some vegetawhere we give local kids a chance to
freeze them and then cook them into
bles from his farm. We are working
make and eat local foods. And we put
marinara sauce for our schools as
with the Michigan Land Use Instihealthy, local food recipes for families
we need it. We hope to expand into
other sauces as we move forward with tute and we are in our second year of up on our school website.
TCAPS also is working to use as
this project. With the help of Cherry the 10 Cents A Meal reimbursement
program pilot for which they were
much local products and vendors as
Capital we were also able to source
instrumental in procuring funds. We we can in our catering and concesall Michigan blueberry and cherry
received nearly $20,000 in the first
sion operations.
muffins from a Michigan bakery for
year of the program. We are very
www.tcaps.net/departments/
our breakfast program.
excited to see if we can improve on
food-nutrition-services/
This year we contacted a local
farm-to-school/
farmer, whose farm and orchards
last year.

“We try to promote
local, healthy eating
to our students
and staff.”

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