Dinah: Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. Today we have the opportunity to talk about early childhood education and its connection to farm to school and childhood nutrition with Sarah Tousignant, the Executive Director of the Mountain Village School in Stowe, Vermont. The Mountain Village School is a nature-based independent school for children, birth through kindergarten, with afterschool programs for children in kindergarten through fourth grade. The school believes that early childhood is a crucial aspect of an individual's development and that nature, community harmony and discovery are the most important attributes of early childhood. Welcome, Sarah. Thanks so much for talking to me today.

Sarah: Yeah, thanks for having me, Dinah.

Dinah: Sarah, could you describe how the Village Mountain School has integrated farm to school concepts into your early childhood classroom, and what does that look like on a typical day or week?

Sarah: Sure. So it all started with our food program, which we established eight years ago. And so we serve three meals a day. So we serve a morning snack, lunch and an afternoon snack. And it's always from the very beginning when we started our food program, it's always included raw fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and the food is as local as possible, as organic as possible. And over the years we've added more locally sourced foods from local farms. So Long Winter Farm is a farm right here in Stowe. We also work with Elmore Mountain Bread, which is just down the road in Elmore, Rogers Farmstead provides all of our yogurts. And so over the years it's grown and grown, but every day children in every classroom have a morning snack together. They have a lunch together, and then they have an afternoon snack together. So throughout the day, we talk to children about the foods that they're eating.

We talk about where it comes from. We visit the farms, we help harvest the vegetables from some of those farms too. And then this past summer we added, we used to have three garden beds, but now we have seven. And so we added a few more this past summer and started our own seeds and filled those garden beds and grew a lot of our own vegetables. So a lot of our older children will do the planting and a lot of our younger children will do the harvesting and that food goes directly into their meals each day. And it also is shared with families. All of our excess gets to go home with them too. So it's a big part of what we do every day.

Dinah: How do you think eating fresh ingredients and farm visits impacts young children's relationship with food and their willingness to try new things?

Sarah: Children, they can see where the food comes from. They recognize how it's grown and they recognize, they see the process of then picking it when it's ready and it's ripe and they understand that cycle. So being able to go to a farm to visit, watching them put the seed livings in, helping them transplant those into the ground and then going back to harvest it, then composting. Composting is actually a law here in Vermont, and we did it even before it was, but they see when we take our waste and we put it in the compost, it then goes to create more nutrients in soil for growing more food. And I bring a lot of it home to my own chickens. So they understand that full cycle and their willingness to try new things. So we start our food program with our youngest children. So our infants that are being introduced to brand new foods, they're getting raw fruits and vegetables, they're getting the sweet potatoes and everything else. They're getting the yogurt. And so those are the first foods they're eating. And so that's what they're used to. So pickled beets are not an unusual thing for our eight month olds to be eating. They're, this is what they're exposed to and our whole grain muffins and the waffles that are filled with oatmeal and all of those things are very normal to these children. We eat a lot of lentils and our meals are also vegetarian, so we don't serve any meat. So we have to be really creative with our protein to make sure that we're offering enough when they're given that opportunity early on to explore and try these foods as infants and toddlers. So just putting on their plate, it really gives them an opportunity to become comfortable, to touch it, to squeeze it, to explore what is this that you're giving me? And to try it at the same time so it's not brand new to them when they're older and they're independently making choices about what they're eating, it's being presented to them on a daily basis.

And we work really hard in the classroom, exposing them over and over, especially if a child is maybe new to our school or new to a food and they're resistant to trying it, we just keep offering it. It's not required that they eat everything, but we just keep offering it. And then after a couple weeks of watching all the other children eat raw carrots and hearing that and seeing them snack on these things, they're more willing to try it. They're comfortable. They may have not have been offered that before in their lives, but seeing it in the classroom, so just exposing them to all of those things. We talk about our taste buds, how they can change. We talk about texture and flavor. We invite the children to share what they're experiencing. So how does that taste to you? And a lot of our vegetables end up getting pickled because that's a longer way to save them.

So on a day when they're eating a pickled cucumber versus a regular cucumber, let's talk about what's different. How did this happen? Our chef is Chef Ryan, who they often call Fresh Ryan because that's how they hear it. So what did Chef Ryan add to these cucumbers to make them taste that way? And how does it taste in your mouth? And it's not a bad thing if it's sour or if it's spicy, that's just a different flavor. So we talk about these things and we explore with the children, like, tell me how does it feel in your tongue? And inviting them to share with one another in the classroom. You'll have some children that are really adventurous eaters and they'll just go for everything. And other children who are shy and hesitant. So matching those children up and talking to them about, why don't you share with her how it tastes?

Why don't you tell her what you think? And that child, it might take them a couple of weeks, but eventually they try things. So when everybody's at the table sharing the same thing, when the meal is served to the entire classroom, it makes a huge difference. And so we noticed that makes a really big difference in their willingness to try things. When the whole class, when we're sitting around together and those social skills of being in a group, we sit down three times a day, that is a lot of opportunity to work on building our social skills with one another and to talk about food. So we have that time together. And it wouldn't be this easy if they weren't eating the same thing if some children had lunch from home and some children, we made certain meals, oh, this one doesn't like that. So we'll offer them something different.

It wouldn't be the same. We've set it up for success and it really works. It really has gotten to be really powerful and they eat well. And as they get older, we give them even more independence with allowing them to serve themselves and putting the shared plate of vegetables in the middle of the table with the tongs and so they can choose what they're taking and then scooping the rice or scooping the beans onto their own plate, giving them that opportunity to make decisions about what they want to try. And even if it's the tiniest little scoop of something they have, have the autonomy over what they're eating, which also makes a really big difference.

Dinah: Could you tell us a little bit about Mountain Village School?

Sarah: Sure. So Mountain Village School is an early childhood program right in the village of Stowe, and we start with children here at school as young as our youngest right now is four months, and our oldest is in kindergarten. And then we also, in addition, have an afterschool program. So those children are in kindergarten through fourth grade, but we're a nature-based program. We spend a lot of time outside regardless of the weather. So today is pretty some crusty snow out there, and these children are bundled up. So we spend a lot of time outside. Our curriculum is built around children, so we follow their interests, we observe what are they trying to understand, what are they exploring, what themes are coming out in their play. We build our curriculum around them and around what's happening in our natural world. So what do we see outside? Let's bring that snow inside and see what happens. Let's watch. We find caterpillars outside. Let's watch them as they build a chrysalis and see what happens and the birds and the nests, and identifying different trees and animals and finding tracks. So we use a lot of our environment around us to build our curriculum.

Dinah: What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced when trying to incorporate farm to school programming with young children, and how have you worked to overcome them?

Sarah: Well, I have to say in the very beginning, it was learning how to be a chef. I was the first one in the kitchen, so we built a kitchen. I jumped in there and then building the food program from the beginning. It took us a while. Five years ago, we found a full-time chef. He was moving back to Vermont with his family. He has made a huge difference. But building a food program, that was an experience. Just learning how to manage costs and quantity and reduce waste and all of those different pieces was pretty challenging from the beginning. But now I would say our biggest challenge is finding enough local food. Vermont does have, we have a lot of farms, but it's not a very populated state, and things are pretty spread out. So you might have a really great apple farm, but it's really far from here.
So getting that local food, figuring out how to make connections with local farms and getting it here, and we have over time, we've added on those. I spoke a little bit earlier about Elmore Mountain Bread and Rogers Farmstead, and we have over time started to build those relationships. But it does take time. And the biggest challenge is affordability. Especially even just this past school year, our food program is rolled into the cost of tuition, so it's not separated out, and tuition only goes up once a year. Food costs change. The cost of eggs will change this week to next week. And so trying to manage a budget to balance out those food prices is really challenging. So adjusting to absorb those increases and figuring out, okay, so eggs are going up right now, we're going to have to add more chia seeds in to make this muffin recipe works because the eggs are too expensive. So it's that constant managing of food costs that definitely challenges us, and we try to be, our big goals are organic and local, which organic food comes at a high cost. So that's definitely a big challenge.

Dinah: So beyond nutrition education, what other learning outcomes or developmental benefits have you observed when you see children engage with fresh food and farm to school activities?

Sarah: So we work hard to build in social skills. I spoke a little bit earlier about how food is served, family style. So children are all sitting at the table together. So we talk a lot about managing our bodies, interacting with our peers, sharing the food at the table, making sure when we put down a plate of raw, every lunch starts with a shared plate of raw vegetables. So with our infants and toddlers, we individually plate it, but with our preschoolers, there might be four carrots, four beets and four peppers. So the children looking around at each other. If somebody takes all the peppers, what is that going to leave for their peers? So that awareness of one another talking. Do you want any more cucumbers? Can I have the last one? So those social skills are being developed all the time. The skills of, we use open cups with children.

We don't have any city cups in our school. So our youngest infants are using, we're holding it and helping them with an open cup. Same with our toddlers. So they're learning how to use an open cup and drink from it. They're learning how to pour the water into their cups and count one, two, stop so that it doesn't overflow. We're teaching them how to compost their food to carry their bowl over to the compost and put it in to get their dishes in the sink. And so building all of those skills from fine motor to language development, we use a lot of sign language with our infants and toddlers and then really support children, our older children, and talking to one another and identifying foods and saying, will you please pass the quinoa in? Teaching them all of those different pieces about how to communicate with one another at the table.

So yeah, between if you've ever tried to pick up a beet with tongs, it's not an easy skill or how to ladle soup into your bow at three and a half is- that's tough. So there's a lot of things happening. And then also planting seeds in the spring, looking at the seeds, looking at talking about the soil and where we have to put the seed and all of those pieces of understanding that growth cycle. What does it look like in measuring the temperature outside? When is it warm enough to get these seeds outside? And what does that look like? So there's so much science, there's so much social scale development, there's a lot happening.

Dinah: Are the children at your school eating the food that they grow as well as bringing it in from farms?

Sarah: Yes. So with the addition of the extra garden beds outside, they're adding a lot. We add a lot to what we're eating. So if they're harvesting green beans, those go directly into the lunch. The tomatoes, we grew onions and potatoes this year, those get eaten, but we also have strategically placed some garden beds right near our infant toddler playground, so they can actually reach right through the fence. So in the afternoons when we're out there, they all know to sit down and then we pass out the green beans and they all crunch away. So it's part of their meals, but it's also part of the playground. So our preschoolers on the playground, they check to see, let's look at these tomatoes. Are they the right color to pick? How many should we pick today? And so they eat them right then and there.

Dinah: And so you must do some work with them on what you can eat in the garden, what you shouldn't eat?

Sarah: Yeah, we talk a lot about that. We always check first. We always have conversations and the food is accessible to children that are preschoolers. So are three and up, they can reach and touch and grab our infants and toddlers. There's a little bit of a barrier there, so we can help them pick what they can and can't eat. But yeah, just identifying what is growing in our garden and if they go on walks in the community talking first before they go pick something and say, is this safe? Is this healthy? What can I eat? And what should I ask first about? So yeah, there's a lot of education around that and not just picking all the tomatoes when they're green. So learning that self-control in that moment to say they're growing, they're not quite ready yet. Let's all go look at these. Are those green beans big enough? If we pick them now, will they have a chance to reach their full potential? So yeah, just that waiting and watching. It's such a great opportunity for them.

Dinah: It sounds like there's a lot of layers of work involved. How do you involve families and community partners in your farm to school efforts to support all of this?

Sarah: So with families, we write a lot about our food program. We have a weekly blog that we write and share with families. We share photos of our meals every day, so they know when they go home, they can talk about what did we eat today? We share recipes. We do seasonal tastings. So sometimes a pickup, our chef will be out there with little cups of what he's made to share with families so they can taste it and eat it together. We invite families onto the field trips. We go to the farms. We ask for recipes too. If we go apple picking and we bring things into the classroom, alright, do we have a family that wants to come and bake with us, cook with us, use these apples, we share the vegetables. So when we harvest things from our onsite garden beds, we leave extras on a little table outside the door.
We also have garden beds right near our main entrance. So as they come and go, they can pick beans and tomatoes right off of the plant as they come and go. So just seeing that growing, having that experience with their child. But this is also something that we really want to increase. We've built the program here at school and put a lot of effort into it, but having more family involvement is something, one of our bigger goals, long-term goals is we want a space here where we can host family dinners, where families can come in, we can all eat together. We want to have those opportunities. So that's something we are working on that families are always asking for more recipes. They want a recipe book. So it's something that over time we want to build into our food program is sharing more.

Dinah: So what advice would you give to other early childhood educators or schools who want to start incorporating farm to school elements into their programs, but they don't know exactly where to begin?

Sarah: Exposure, exposure to foods. Just starting with offering the raw fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. If you can manage just a snack, one snack a day of offering, cut up fruits and vegetables, getting the children more comfortable with foods like that definitely is an easy place to start. And then making more connections with local farms, figuring out, can we get regular deliveries of organic yogurt? Can we get regular deliveries of vegetables throughout the school year? Can we be part of a CSA to get these opportunities and how are we going to use these foods? So figuring that out with a CSA, it's great because you don't know what you're going to get each week, and then you really do have to figure out, okay, we got six butternut squashes this week. What are we going to make? So those are really great connections to have.

And then getting to know your community, what is around you, and how easy would it be to get set up with egg delivery on a weekly basis, and how are you going to use those? But yeah, that has made a big difference to us is connecting with the farm that does maple syrup and getting their delivery, connecting with the bakery just a couple miles away and getting their bread on a weekly basis that has helped us is when those farmers, they're the ones that come and they drop the food off here at school. It has made a world of difference. In the very beginning. Before we had all of those connections, a lot of it was driving to Costco, driving to Trader Joe's and buying these fruits and vegetables. But now when we get them delivered right to our door, we get a flat of tomatoes. It's amazing. And it makes our lives so much easier and the food is healthier and it's from down the road.

Dinah: I imagine that the farms and bakeries are really excited to have a customer and a local customer that's steady and keep that money within your community.

Sarah: Yeah, it's made such a huge difference. And over time, we just keep learning about more farms and making more connections. So it didn't happen overnight, but it's great when we can make those connections and make it happen.

Dinah: So is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would want to add to this conversation?

Sarah: I was thinking about a story you had asked me about other areas of development that are impacted. A couple of years ago, I was the lead teacher in one of our pre-K classrooms, and we learned a lot about fractions that year because sometimes we'll have pita bread with our lunch or tortillas, quesadillas, that sort of thing. And if we have some leftover or how do we split this? We have six children and we only have one pita left. We learned about fractions, so how are we going to split the circle evenly for everybody? And so they learned about parts and wholes and how do we make this work? And giving it back to the children to really learn about math. And so it was just, math is a huge part of this. And so counting the children at the table, counting the number of vegetables on your plate and figuring out all of those different pieces and how to make this work in a community such as ours. So yeah, they're not too young to learn about fractions when they're four and five.

Dinah: And do the students do–also thinking about math, do they do a lot of cooking themselves?

Sarah: They do. So one of our classrooms just made oatmeal, banana cookies for themselves. So yeah, learning about the ingredients, what's required, learning about how to mix things together, what that process looks like, and then coming down to the kitchen and putting in the oven. So yeah, I mean, they're really good at making applesauce. We have our Thanksgiving meal coming up on Wednesday, and what we do for that is the families come in and they come to the classroom. So the chef has a buffet set up in the kitchen. The parents will come through and then they'll go up to their child's classroom and everything's set up family style in there, and everybody will eat together. But for the meal to happen, it requires one classroom right now is making bread for the next two days. Our infants and toddlers are making butter, and they're shaking little baby food jars of cream. And another classroom is they're making cranberry sauce and another one is making, what are they making? Oh, they're making the pumpkin bread that's going to go home with them. So it's a shared experience. But yeah, anytime we go to the farm to visit for field trips, what we bring back, we give most to the kitchen, but they bring some to their classroom to explore and to cut up and to create recipes with. So cooking is really important to us too.

Dinah: Well, thank you so much. That sounds like a delicious feast you have coming up. And I love that they call the Chef Fresh Ryan.

Sarah: Fresh Ryan. He's an important part of it all, but I know it's a great nickname. It just kind of organically happened, just how they say it.

Dinah: Yeah, it's perfectly fitting. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Sarah, for talking to me today about early childhood education and farm to school and good eating.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you so much, Dinah. It was great talking with you. Alright, thanks.

Dinah: This podcast is a production of the Northeast Farm to School Collaborative. For more information about this podcast or farm to school in the northeast, go to northeast farmtoschool.org