Parishville-Hopkinton Central School turns focus to farm-to-table menus

Bob Beckstead, Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
·3 min read

Sep. 13—PARISHVILLE — Farm-to-table is the new food service direction at Parishville-Hopkinton Central School.

It's all part of the effort to bring a delectable new menu to the table for students and staff.

They've scheduled a community forum for 6 p.m. Oct. 11 in the school's auditorium to advance plans as they reinvent the district's food service program. The district is looking to move to a more sustainable farm-to-table model that involves local farms and food distributors in Parishville, Hopkinton and the rest of St. Lawrence County.

Superintendent Steven G. Coffin said it's part of a new meal effort stemming from a Reimagining School Lunch Committee that was formed last school year after a parent's Facebook post about a "lacking" lunch went viral.

"We have a new cook. We have a new lunch manager and the new menu is delicious," Mr. Coffin said.

The new lunch manager is Taylor Harper, and Cory Foster is the new cook.

"The group that formed kind of laid out the vision for where we wanted to go. We used that to hire a new lunch manager that we thought would really be able to implement that vision," Mr. Coffin said.

Now it's time to move on to the next step.

"Our next step is developing relationships with local farms to really start making our farm-to-table plans kind of sustainable. On Oct. 11, we're going to be putting out basically that any local farm or food distributor come here and let us know how you can be a part of the solution for us," he said.

He said that with the farm-to-table option, they're not tied to set menus.

"We can be flexible week to week, month to month now with local farms and their distribution. We can now cater more to what they have on hand and not, 'We need this item this day.' We didn't set the menu for the year, so we're not tied to getting this product this day," Mr. Coffin said.

He said that if an item isn't available from one distributor, they can check with another.

"We're not going through just one or two vendors anymore. We're really trying to branch out and kind of diversify where we get our food," he said. "Yesterday, Martin's (Farmstand, Potsdam) gave us a bunch of local produce. We got boxes of pears. It's like, 'All right, we'll use those.' We made a dish and it was delicious. Then, they turned around with the leftovers and made a really good soup out of it. It wasn't a planned item. It was, 'We can make this,' and we made it and pushed it out the next day and the kids loved it."

Mr. Coffin said the goal is to get more kids and staff eating the meals, and the results have been positive.

"We have a lot more kids and staff talking about the good food. Our goal is just to get more people to eat here," he said. "If we go in the direction to develop more local partners, the more kids eating in school means the more local produce that's getting eaten. It's kind of a win-win."