Iowa Hill Students, Teacher Treat School Board To Dinner
by Richard Marks
Iowa Hill teacher Richard Marks and his students prepared a homegrown, gourmet dinner for the Colfax Elementary School Board members on April 14th.
Prepared by Wendy Van Wagner, who operates a cooking school in Nevada City, the meal featured ingredients obtained from local farms.
Each spring for the past 15 years, students at Iowa Hill perform a community project, Marks explained. They pick an area of interest and go into the community to learn about that place. "They usually go to a place of business or agency and find a mentor that knows a lot about the subject," he said. "This is an elementary level of Colfax High School's senior project.
This year, Marks decided to tackle a community project that reflects his personal passion -- small, sustainable food and farming. The focus of his project, then, was to obtain food available within a 15 mile radius "rather than an average of 1,500 miles," Marks told the board members. "It's also a return to our grandparents or time before 1940 when 30 percent of Americans were farmers relative to 2 percent who are farmers now," he said.
To prepare for the event, Marks took the students to local farms to gather food for the dinner. In Nevada City, they visited Riverhill and Blue Bird Farms, Flying Mule Farm and then went to Bakbraken Acres in Chicago Park.
In addition to the lamb kabobs and vegetables from these farms, parents of the students prepared sourdough bread and ginger ale. Dried pears and frozen cherries grown in Colfax topped homemade ice cream.
After dinner was finished, sixth graders Lacy Campbell, Emily Ruth and Marc Taylor as well as seventh grader Michael Alexander gave brief presentations on each of the farms visited.
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by Susannah Brown, Intern & Photographer
Students and faculty of the Woolman Semester hosted a meal of locally grown seasonal delights on the deck at Sierra Friends Center outside Nevada City on April 25th. Donations from the benefit dinner go to the garden program at the Woolman Semester, to educate the next generation of potential farmers.
The Woolman Semester is a residential high school program focused on peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability studies. As part of the students' curriculum, several days prior to the Locavore's Dinner were spent on a field trip to get a glimpse of food production from farm to table.
The trip began at Lundberg farms, a family-owned industrial organic rice farm in the Sacramento Valley, with a tour given by Jessica Lundberg (granddaughter of the original Lundbergs).
From there, to an Asparagus farm near Yuba city, and a meeting with the Western Farm Workers Association, an organization working for farm workers' rights. At a work camp, students met with farm workers and helped the WFWA volunteers who handed out clothing to the workers.
The following morning, a visit to People's Grocery, a non-profit that provides access to healthy, affordable food in the community of West Oakland through educational outreach, city gardens, and a bulk-buying program.
For lunch, the group went to Alice Waters' Chez Panisse restaurant, and met briefly with a chef there. After lunch, a walk to the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School and the Edible School Yard (another Alice Waters' project), featuring a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom.
Then, to follow a Chez Panisse lunch, the students selected their dinner from the farmers' market in Davis.
The next day brought a visit to Full Belly Farms, a small scale organic farm in the Capay Valley. In the afternoon, the group went to the UC Davis meat lab, where they watched the slaughter of a cow and pig.
To finish off the trip, the students met with Kent Bradford, Director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis, for a discussion on GMO and large scale farming in relation to world issues.
Then back to campus to spend all of Friday preparing for the Locavore's Dinner, featuring fresh-from-the-garden foods and local products.
The menu for the evening:
"Locavore's Delight" Benefit Dinner for The Woolman Semester
April 25, 2008
Mixed green salad
with watercress, fennel, chives and
honey mustard dressing
Rice pilaf
with figs, apricots, and almonds
Frittata
with leeks, spinach, kale, cheese, and green garlic
Fennel venison stew
with garlic scapes, kale, carrots, leeks,
and fava beans
Strawberry Almond Crumble
with honey drizzle and whipped cream
Mint tea with honey
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