Farm to School Grant Application

Whew, yesterday I completed and submitted an application for a Farm to School grant from the Oregon Department of Education.  I did this task for a local non-profit that I volunteer for called Planting Communities.

Out school district currently has three school gardens.  The money we are requesting is to add funds to make daily work in the school gardens more amenable.  We were requesting garden tools, science tools, outdoor seating and funds for an After School Garden Club Coordinator.

The grantors also wanted to be sure to fund the promotion of Oregon-grown products, so we needed to include that in the work that we will do in order to score well.  

Here is one question from the application (they wanted all of our answers in a blue font):

Please describe the types of food, agriculture, and garden-based activities for students you plan to implement with grant funds.

Students will have many direct learning experiences:

Students will plan garden activities, and do planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, washing and preparation.  In addition, there will be exercises that link foods to math, science, and language arts.  We will teach about the impact of food choices and about environmental issues and sustainability, e.g., what does it mean to grow organically.

We will conduct tasting tables for garden vegetables and Oregon grown and produced products.

Lessons will be hands on/experiential in that students have the outdoor garden/classroom area for inquiry and investigation.  Most of the teachers will conduct hands on activities out in the garden.  New outdoor classrooms will create an environment that is much more conducive to outdoor school work.

The grantor has stated that they will let the applicants know the outcome of their applications by March 11th.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.