Iowa City students try locally grown lettuce during Spring Greens Day

NORTH LIBERTY - Emerson Bennett gave his salad a literal thumbs-up during lunch Wednesday, June 1, at Van Allen Elementary School in North Liberty.

The 7-year-old first-grader brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and chips from home, but Van Allen and the other 24 schools in the Iowa City Community School District served fresh, locally grown lettuce to all students for the district's Farm to School Chapter Spring Greens Day.

“We hope this is the start of many more opportunities to serve local foods,” said Heather Widmayer, volunteer Farm to School coordinator for the Johnson County Local Food Alliance.

The group worked with food services Director Diane Duncan-Goldsmith to provide lettuce to about 6,500 students during Wednesday's lunch, using a $900 Farm to School grant from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Cost and supply are among the barriers Duncan-Goldsmith cited in providing local foods in school lunches, “but it's definitely on the agenda,” she said.

Lettuce was harvested - some as recently as Tuesday - from Andy and Melissa Dunham's Grinnell Heritage Farm and Derek Roller's Echollective Farm in Mechanicsville.

Students could tell the difference.

“I think that it tasted a whole lot fresher,” said Reese Hancock, an 11-year-old fifth-grader at Van Allen.

Like Emerson, Reese brought her own lunch from home - a provolone cheese and salami sandwich, chips and marshmallows - but tried some of the salad from her friend, Anna Hitchcock.

“I eat salad all the time,” said Anna, also an 11-year-old fifth-grader, who had the school lunch of a meatball sandwich, cookie and watermelon.

Both girls knew from reading materials placed at the tables that the lettuce was grown in Iowa.

The project not only gave students the opportunity to try locally grown food, but was designed to teach students about the farm to table process.

Van Allen Principal Carmen Dixon said teachers were asked to talk to students about the lettuce and related topics, such as gardening.

The school district has five central kitchens where lunches are prepared for all 25 schools.

Food preparation begins at 6:30 a.m. Meals leave the kitchens by 9:30 a.m. to be transported to elementary schools.

Those limited hours didn't allow food service staff enough time to wash, dry and cut 330 pounds of lettuce.

Widmayer said the food service required the greens to be delivered to the kitchens “ready-to-eat,” so she and six other volunteers spent Tuesday washing and packaging the lettuce at James Nisly's state-licensed processing facility at Organic Greens in Kalona.

Other food might be simpler to process, such as apples or fresh tomatoes for sandwiches, she said.

The cost of purchasing locally grown food is typically higher than food from traditional distributors. Even high costs of transportation, local growers have difficulty competing with large commercial farms in warmer climates, Widmayer noted.

Second-grader Ethan Mason, 8, didn't try a salad until prodded by his first-grade friend, John Klosterman, 7.

“It has way more taste,” he said, after trying the fresh lettuce.

Kevin Sheffler, an AmeriCorps volunteer working with the Local Foods Connection, said some students went straight for cookies rather than lettuce and others threw away the salads, but many asked for seconds and even third helpings of lettuce.

“I'd say it was a success,” he said.