For the past 15 years, Berries & Greens Day (formerly known as Strawberries and Salad Greens Day) has served as a citywide celebration, bringing healthy, locally grown produce to school lunch trays across every DC Public School. Of course, fresh, local fruits and vegetables are a daily offering at the schools where DC Central Kitchen serves lunch. So for us, this upbeat event isn’t just a single activation with a special menu—it’s a chance to have fun, build on healthy habits, and get everyone’s hands in the dirt!
For this year’s festivities, our Healthy School Foods team brought out extremely popular mobile urban garden—the Truck Farm—to the kindergartners at both Houston and Ketcham Elementary Schools. In addition to indoor activities like drawing a plant and chopping and cutting fruits and vegetables for salads that the students had a chance to enjoy, the children were treated to an extra special hands-on lesson outside the school thanks to our Truck Farm.
“Can I touch it?” and “Can I eat it?” were asked throughout the Truck Farm lessons. The kids definitely touched all of the plants in the mobile truck farm and the braver pupils did try the cilantro grown in the truck.
According to DC Central Kitchen’s Taylor Coleman, RDN, LD, the annual event is a perfect showcase for the Truck Farm’s seed-to-table teaching capabilities and a chance to promote healthy eating habits. “It’s an amazing opportunity to teach students how their food grows, how it’s locally sourced, and how they can grow healthy food for their body. It incorporates three elements. The kids are learning about their food, they’re seeing how it grows, and then they get to see it on the lunch line as they come through. The more exposure they get, the more familiar they are, the more often they’re going to select those options in the future.”
It’s always helpful to showcase healthy fruits and vegetables to students of all ages. But it’s a much more effective lesson when there’s hands-on learning featuring a bright blue garden on wheels!
