Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day)

How can child nutrition programs implement culturally responsive practices?

Join us for a free online panel of three school meal experts from Vermont and Maine to find inspiration! On Friday, January 30, our speakers will explore the many dimensions of culturally relevant food in schools — including implementing halal meal programs to meet students' needs, weaving personal cultural foodways into the lunch line to celebrate diversity, and an early childhood perspective on honoring a wide array of family cultures through a shared love of food.

Learn more and register now: https://bit.ly/3LL5QWR

Earlier this month, Vermont passed a milestone 1,000 days of ensuring every student has access to breakfast and lunch at school, removing cost as a barrier through Universal School Meals legislation.

On Tuesday, partners from across the state gathered at the State House to speak up for farm to school and school nutrition programs and to help keep this momentum going.

School nutrition professionals, farmers, and students shared firsthand experiences with state leaders, showing how, with continued support, schools can serve more local food and offer students meaningful food systems education.

2026–27 Northeast Farm to School Institute applications are open!

Build relationships, skills, and a collaborative action plan with a team from your school or district. With the support of a coach, you'll spend the school year putting your plan into action and strengthening your capacity to impact classrooms, cafeterias, and communities with change that lasts.

Applications are due February 9. Find full program details and team applications: https://bit.ly/4jHOAyA

The Northeast Farm to School Institute is a program of Shelburne Farms Institute for Sustainable Schools and NOFA-VT and is supported by U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Every garden tells a story, and through farm to school, those stories come to life in school gardens across the Northeast.

Farm to school integrates the “3Cs” — Classroom, Cafeteria, and Community — but there’s a fourth C, too: Communication. It’s how we share our “why,” connect with others, and grow support for this work.

These recent news stories highlight school gardens and the "why" of Northeast Farm to School Institute teams in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut: https://bit.ly/43VxR3Q

Meet the leaders transforming school meals. 🍎 Sixteen school nutrition leaders from across the country joined our Farm to School Leadership Academy to reimagine school meals with local food and classroom-community connections. This Shelburne Farms professional learning program is offered in partnership with the National Farm to School Network (NFSN). Learn more about the program, the leaders, and more: https://bit.ly/3W80PJN Chesterfield County Public Schools Houston Independent School District

October is National Farm to School Month, a time for celebrating and supporting our vision to engage every child in a local food and farm culture!

As part of the Vermont Farm to School & Early Childhood Network, we’re sharing a few ways that you can help celebrate this collective work. See upcoming opportunities to connect with the Network, resources for sharing the impacts of your work, ways to deepen community connections, and more: https://bit.ly/4h43Jcc

Cooking with kids isn’t about perfection—it’s about confidence, creativity, and connection. At a recent Northeast Farm to School Institute workshop, educators learned how to bring that exploratory spirit into the classroom.
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Get one of the workshop recipes from Farm Functions Chef Jackie Major: Chilled Cucumber Soup @ bit.ly/3UENojr

"Everybody needs to realize how important food is to students. It can make or break their day, even. If they're hungry, they can't focus."

Food Service Director Denise Tapley Proctor in Maine joins the Northeast Farm to School Podcast. She shares the positive impacts of their scratch cooking program, which recently received the 2024 U.S. Department of Agriculture Innovation in Preparation of School Meals award. Listen to the episode @ bit.ly/4lsMzGz

Denise is an alum of the Maine Farm & Sea to School Institute, an adaptation of our own Northeast Farm to School Institute. Maine Farm to School Network.

🫘 Dress Up a Bean
👅 Taste Tests Through a Student Lens
🧀 Sun to Cheese
♻️ Trash Talkin’: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
🌽 Indigenous Relationship to Land
🌿 Printmaking with Plants

These are just a handful of the workshops and activities offered during the 15th annual Northeast Farm to School Institute retreat last month! Eight school, early childhood, and district teams are building robust plans to support kids in understanding where their food comes from. Four states — California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico — experienced the program firsthand, too, as they adapt our model for their communities.

The Northeast Farm to School Institute is offered annually by Vermont FEED, a partnership program of NOFA-VT and Shelburne Farms.

👏Congrats to this year's cohort, we can't wait to see your work unfold:
Arlington Area Childcare, Arlington, VT
Bellows Falls Union High School, Westminster, VT
Lyman C. Hunt Middle School, Burlington, VT
Jefferson Elementary School, New Rochelle, NY / The City School District of New Rochelle
Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District, VT
New Lebanon School, Greenwich, CT / New Lebanon Central School District
Robbins Children's Programs, Attleboro, MA
Stepping Stones Museum for Children, Norwalk, CT