Denver school farms help stock cafeterias

Photo by EdNews Colorado

Half a dozen workers crouched in the field mounding hay around organic bell pepper and zucchini plants as the morning sun beat down on a recent summer day.

With their work boots, gloves and brimmed hats, they looked a lot like farmers anywhere else in the Colorado’s rural expanse. The difference is these workers were toiling away on a one-acre plot at Bradley International School in southwest Denver, their shovels and wheelbarrows a hundred feet away from the school’s bright yellow swing set.

The farm, one of three on Denver Public Schools grounds, is part of the district’s pilot farm-to-school program, which converts unused school land into working farms that produce tens of thousands of pounds of produce for school cafeterias. In addition to the farm at Bradley, which was established in 2012, there are farms at Schmitt Elementary and Denver Green School. There’s also a farm at McGlone Elementary School, but it’s on hiatus this summer while construction occurs there.

“This is the beginning,” Anne Wilson, the district’s farm-to-school coordinator, said of the district’s recent plunge into urban agriculture. “Certainly, we hope to look at doing more sites in the future.”

By Ann Schimke

For the rest of the story, go to EdNews Colorado.