Welcome back to the 2024-2025 school year. We hope you had an amazing summer and found some time to rest and relax. We are so excited to be working with you this year to incorporate local foods into your menu and highlight the amazing producers we have in our community! We are jumping right in with a celebration of farm to school month!

🍅🥕🥦 October is National Farm to School Month, with our local Taste Washington Day falling on October 2. ✨🐄🐖

We are so excited to celebrate with you. This year, we have made it a goal to have a celebration every day of the month. If you have not signed up for a day, please click the link below to sign up for a day. We will then reach out to you and work on planning your menu, a taste test, and hopefully bring a farmer in! We will also be ordering in posters and stickers to share with our districts.

In addition to the Farm to School month celebration sign up, you will find a link to resources from WSDA on Taste WA Day (don't forget to sign your school up!), as well as resources from the National Farm to School Network.

ESD 101 received a Partnerships for Local Agriculture and Nutrition Transformation ins Schools (PLANTS) grant this summer! This grant is focused on increasing availability of minimally processed and value added products that are appropriate for schools. Each month, we will be highlighting new products in the Farm to school newsletter.

This month, we are excited to show you an AMAZING piece of equipment that landed at CasaCano Farms. This commercial sectionizer was purchased through the PLANTS grant to provide an ongoing source of sliced produce to school districts. To start, CasaCano Farms will be offering sliced apples! We are so excited to see this equipment in action. Reach out to Kendra at kdean@esd101.net to set up a recurring order for sliced apples!

This summer, we had the opportunity to host two amazing events highlighting and celebrating farm to school! The first was a WSNA Pre-conference event. People from across the state joined us at CasaCano Farm in Valleyford, WA to experience a small farm in peak season. We saw a variety of vegetables growing, as well as some happy pigs! CasaCano Farm has been a great partner in Farm to School, offering several delicious local options weekly. We then went over to Freeman High School where Chef Mataio demoed some amazing recipes highlighting local foods. Check out the WSDA write up below to get the full picture!

Next up was our Farm to School Culinary Training and Networking event as part of our back to school training events! We made a variety of breakfast and lunch recipes and brought in our farms and partners in the afternoon. We celebrated all of the amazing things schools accomplished in the 23-24 school year and looked forward to even more fun in the 24-25 year! Check out some photos below!