The Farm to School project at Juanamaria Elementary School in Ventura Unified School District began in January 2000, when Michelle Mascarenhas (board member and former board president of Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and a staff member at the Community Food Systems Project at Occidental College) spoke at a Lighthouse Farm Network meeting. In addition to the usual farmers, we also invited school board members, school food service directors, and interested parents to the meeting. A Ventura Unified School Board member, Debbie Golden, and the VUSD Child Nutrition Services Director, Ed Diaz, came to the meeting, as did Pat McCart Malloy, a Juanamaria parent volunteer.

Malloy and I are the chief laborers in directing this project. I am theoretically the Salad Bar Project Coordinator, a job I tried to convince her to take. She declined to be employed, preferring to work as a volunteer who has done at least 50 percent of the work, if not more.

As of this writing we have completed our first two weeks of the Farm to School Salad Bar Project at Juanamaria Elementary School. Juanamaria is blessed with a great principal, Shelley DuPratt; a corps of wonderfully supportive teachers and staff; and an active and hard-working PTA. The primary language of 116 of the 524 students is Spanish, 162 students qualify for subsidized breakfast and lunch programs, and 82 students have families who work as migrant farmworkers.

The project's objectives are to improve the nutrition available to children through the school lunch program, to familiarize children with a range of fresh fruits and vegetables at a time when they are forming life-long food preferences, to develop a market for local farmers, and to test a model fresh local salad bar school lunch for wider adoption by this and other school districts.

Long before any funding became available, Pat began going to the Ventura and Ojai Farmers' Markets, purchasing fresh this and fresh that, and taking it around to the classrooms. She concentrated at first on the kindergarten, where she has a daughter, but over time she expanded her reach into higher grades. In January, Pat and I made visits to every classroom, taking kishu, satsuma and page tangerines, pummelos, and fresh vegetables to the classes, talking about the salad bar and discussing the virtues of fresh produce. Back in November, we had treated the teachers to a lunch of as many fresh fruits and vegetables as we could find, together with great local hummus and tabouli, to introduce them to the idea of the fresh and local salad bar lunch.

Our initial concept was to have volunteers, namely us and other parents, prepare the salads. The food service staff is unionized, however, and the union forbids volunteers in the kitchen. That prompted a big meeting with a multitude of school district officials, union representatives, volunteers and CAFF. We agreed to use some of our locally raised money to hire a temporary food service worker to do the salad bar preparation for the project. CAFF and the school district also agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding setting forth each party's obligations to the project.

When setting up the kitchen, Debbie Montague, the cafeteria manager, was told she needed to have a three-door refrigerator to hold the fresh vegetables, but she was bound and determined not to lose her two-door refrigerator that she knew worked. (Child Nutrition Services is not flush with money, and the employees hang onto any equipment they have that works for dear life.) So Debbie found a place to move the two-door refrigerator, and the three-door refrigerator was moved in, cleaned up, and, after a few adjustments, is working. (Although the first day I delivered produce we couldn't refrigerate it because the refrigerator was running right at 32 degrees. It would have frozen all the produce!) These logistical issues, such as the refrigerator, should not be taken lightly. The kitchen must have room for food preparation and appropriate equipment, and there must be room in the cafeteria to set up the salad bar.

Pat and I worked not only with Ed Diaz and Debbie Montague, but also with Shelley DuPratt, the Juanamaria Principal. Debbie rules the kitchen, but Shelley is responsible for the cafeteria, the aides who keep lunch running smoothly, the lunch schedule, Joe the maintenance man who cleans up, and about a million other functions. Shelley, Pat and I decided we would encourage salad bar participation one grade at a time, starting with the fifth grade and adding one grade per week. Our salad bar operates just two days a week, on Wednesday and Friday.

Finally, on Wednesday March 21, we served our first Farm to School Salad Bar meal. We served a fresh lettuce mix of romaine, red, butter and head lettuce (iceberg), cherry tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli florets, celery avocados, and pixie tangerines for dessert. Also on the salad bar were proteins (cottage cheese, grated cheese and chopped ham), grains (rolls and croutons), and dairy (milk and cheese). The vegetables were all grown locally except the cucumbers, and they were all sourced from Craig Underwood, a farmer who grows locally and operates a farmstand in Somis. The fruit comes from other local farmers or from the Farmers' Market.

Since our first week, we've added fifth graders, and fourth graders. Next we'll bring third graders to the table. We served up to 144 children and 27 teachers and staff in one day.

There's a different logistical challenge every meal - from vast amounts of time spent cleaning lettuce to the slow moving lines of children making their selections at the salad bar. This is in addition to problems encountered when working with very fresh produce. (Cafeteria staff prepare the vegetables over two days because there isn't time or staffing to do it all the morning of the salad bar.)

We've addressed the slow moving line problem by engaging parent and grandparent volunteers to help us move the children through the salad bar line, serve the dressing, and document participation.

How's it being received? The kids say they love it. I've observed that they take more time eating their meal, they're excited by the fresh fruits and vegetables and enjoy the opportunity to make their own choices. An informal survey of the trash reveals that they eat a lot more of their salad bar food than the standard school lunch. The teachers, who voted with their feet, are also in favor of the salad bar.

For more information, please contact South Coast Regional Coordinator, Jim Churchill, at (805) 646-1860 or e-mail jrchurchill@earthlink.net.