New Local Food Initiative In Barbour County Schools

Today, WesMonTy RC&D Coordinator Jason Teets and Sustainable Projects Coordinator Ben Nemeth had a meeting with the County Food Service Director of Barbour County schools.

During this meeting, expectations were set on what would be needed to begin a local food based initiative with the Barbour County schools. Currently, the school district receives federal grant funds that focus specifically on healthy food initiatives in the schools. One part of this takes the form of a snack several days per week. We have worked out an agreement to assist in the procuring of local food for the snack, as well as using foods that the children may not be exposed to otherwise. The local food can easily be provided for with current resources in the community. It is also important to expose children to a variety of foods to help encourage a healthy diet and also to affect the wave of food related health problems that are so prevalent in West Virginia.

A very important, and unique, aspect of this project is the sourcing of food through the local Community Garden Market. The market, being the main hub for local food in Barbour county is the ideal place to purchase the food from. This will keep it all very local and ensure that the producers benefit from this project.

A tour of WesMonTy's projects was also conducted. A visit to the Community Garden Market (a receiver of funding through WesMonTy) showed the Director the main local food hub of Barbour County. It was a good demonstration as to the availability of these foods especially entering the cold season. Finally, we took short trip to Chestnut Ridge to look at the high tunnel and low-tunnel projects. We were able to demonstrate WesMonTy's work towards assisting local producers with season extension and what our vision for the future is. Also at the high tunnel, we met with Jeff Sickler and spoke about his efforts and his excitement for the project.

The meeting went very well and the Director was able to see the a portion of our projects and get a better sense of what we are doing. This is a very exciting partnership between WesMonTy and Barbour County schools. Next week could possibly be the first week of the project, with local food being used in local schools!