Farm to Food grant provides ingredients for meals

LENOIR, NC (November 4, 2020) — Food and Nutrition 1 students across Caldwell County will receive bags of local food thanks to a Farm to School grant awarded by the Center for Environmental Farming to Caldwell County Schools Career and Technical Education (CTE) department.

Debra Hadley, Family and Consumer Science teacher at West Caldwell High School teaches Food and Nutrition I students (she’s preparing a bag of food for one of her students).

The $4,000 grant provides fund for the CTE department to develop an online farm-to-table unit exploring local foods and food sources for Food and Nutrition 1 courses.

One of the grant requirements involved students receiving local foods to prepare at home. Caldwell County Schools Food and Nutrition 1 students will receive a package of Sugar Grove Country Ham from Mays Meats in Taylorsville, two bottles of honey from Blue Ridge Apiary in Hudson and three pounds of apples from Deal Orchards in Alexander County. A recipe for each food item will be included in each package.

The packages will be distributed to each student in Food and Nutrition 1 at all traditional high schools, and students taking Food and Nutrition 1 through Caldwell Connect, the remote learning option. A total of 270 students are taking Food and Nutrition 1 courses this semester through Caldwell County Schools CTE department.