Nathan Bates and Boyne Falls Public School are a shining testament to the impact of northwest lower Michigan’s flourishing farm to school movement. It is a movement that is benefiting schoolchildren both nutritionally and academically and, at the same time, is giving small and mid-size farmers a growing market for their crops and helping them stay on their land.
To celebrate Alice Waters’ visit to the National Writers Series, the first-annual Local Harvest Restaurant Series will feature a variety of Grand Traverse area restaurants, all of which will demonstrate their devotion to the local food community by featuring a “Harvest Week Special” menu item that is either 100 percent locally sourced or a recipe from one of Waters’ cookbooks.
Read individual stories that we excerpted in our September 2017 report, “Health Kids, Thriving Farms” which covers Groundwork’s 15 years of building the Farm to School movement in northwest Michigan.
This is Pellston Public Schools’ first year as a FoodCorps service site. New food service director Sherry Sedore, staff and students will benefit from the presence of this AmeriCorps program dedicated to “creating a future in which every school is a healthy school, and every child is well-nourished and ready to learn.”
Otsego Memorial Hospital is one of more than 1,300 hospitals nationwide that have joined the Healthier Hospitals Initiative and are striving to provide their patients with balanced, nutritious and sustainable meals.
Thanks to the Michigan Legislature, schools in 29 counties of Michigan have just been notified of an opportunity to tap into state funds to show the difference a dime can make in their efforts to serve Michigan-grown fruits, vegetables and dry beans to students. Michigan legislators expanded the popular 10 Cents a Meal for School Kids & Farms program from $250,000 in general funds last year to $375,000 for the upcoming school year; and added a third, six-county region in Washtenaw in southeast Michigan.