District of Columbia Harvest of the Month Program

Through funding from the 2014 USDA Farm to School Grant, OSSE created a Harvest of the Month Program to pilot a more intense farm to school involvement in 15 schools across the District. The purpose of this program was to promote regional foods for school meals; integrate complementary farm and garden based nutrition education; and leverage partnerships with existing organizations. The program targeted 15 schools with active school gardens that also were sites with FoodCorps service members present. Planned activities included hosting monthly cafeteria taste tests of seasonal items procured from a local farmer; providing supplies and materials to FoodCorps service members to ensure each of these items were growing in the school garden; promoting farm to school and school garden concepts to teachers at these schools through a training called "Lessons from the Ground"; contracting with the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Agriculture to bring their Mobile Market to each school for student engagement; and supporting the training of the citywide farm to school and school garden network.