Ontario Farm to School Inspiration: Kingsville Public School
Posted: January 11, 2017
Categories: Edible Education Network / GoodFoodBites / News from Sustain Ontario / Schools
Canada’s 3rd Annual National Farm to School Month, led by Farm to Cafeteria Canada (F2CC), was held throughout the month of October 2016. The month sent a big delicious, nutritious Farm-to-School wave across the country.
Continuing the ripple of this inspiring farm-to-school wave, Farm to Cafeteria Canada has shared with us the stories that Ontario schools submitted for 2016’s #ThinkandEatLocalatSchool contest.
Here is the first of these stories that we’re posting, as inspiration for 2017!
Kingsville Public School shared the following on how they engage in thinking and eating local at school:
Over the past few years, our school and community have been engaging in learning about growing our own food, how to start gardens, how to buy locally, and how to help out in the community. For the last 2 years, we have been growing our own food in our school garden and helping out at the Access Community garden in town.
This past
year, the school grew seeds for the garden in our classrooms, learning about the process of growing food right from seed.
Recently, we had 4 local restaurant owners come in and teach the students how to use local ingredients and how to cook with them. The majority of what was cooked with came from the school garden, the garden at Access and local farms. The four restaurant owners spoke to the students of the importance of using local ingredients, and showed the students how to prepare a salad and stew with seasonal vegetables. The students discussed with the restaurant owners how to support local business, how to know where your food comes from, and the impact on knowing where your food comes from.
A representative from Access Community Garden also came to participate in the learning, also engaging with the students and discussed the process of growing food, and supporting local food growing projects. The students truly got to experience and understand the whole process 
of seed to plate. The food that they started growing last winter in the classroom, they were now cooking with. It was a true full experience to learn from the process, from people in their own community, and about how to use food to make delicious and healthy options.
More stories from Farm to School Month 2016 will be posted on the Sustain Ontario Blog.