Meetings Ahead
Meetings in Truro are often held remotely. Go to Truro-ma.gov and click on the meeting you are interested in for an agenda and details on how to join.
Thursday, Oct. 3
- Coffee Hour with Town Manager Darrin Tangeman, 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., Town Hall
- School Committee, 3:30 p.m., Truro Central School Annex and online
Monday, Oct. 7
- Energy Committee, 4:30 p.m., online
- Conservation Commission, 5 p.m., Town Hall and online
Tuesday, Oct. 8
- Select Board, 5 p.m., Town Hall and online
Wednesday, Oct. 9
- Council on Aging Board, 8 a.m., Council on Aging
- Planning Board, 5 p.m., Town Hall
Conversation Starter
Farm to School
October Farm-to-School Month got underway at Truro Central School on Oct. 1 with an all-school meeting. Students sat criss-cross applesauce on the gym floor as school nurse Beth Cook talked about the program, which has integrated gardening and healthy eating into the curriculum here for more than a decade.
She introduced the rest of the program team to the students, putting names to the familiar faces of garden coordinator Helen Grimm, farmer-in-the-school Stephanie Rein, nutrition coordinator Nicole Cormier, and cafeteria staff Susie Roderick and Laura Chambers, who make their lunches with locally grown ingredients.
“All of us work together,” Cook told students before sending them off with their teachers to group activities in the cafeteria and school garden.
In the cafeteria, Drew Locke of Hillside Poultry Farm talked with a group calling itself the “Seed Squad” about the two options they could vote on for lunch: a harvest quesadilla or a southern harvest bowl. Both included collard greens and peaches as well as polenta and tempeh, which Locke had to describe to curious would-be eaters.
Overheard before one vote was cast: “I’m going to do quesadillas because I like quesadillas.”
Meanwhile, Cormier conducted a strawberry tasting. “Try to connect with your strawberry,” she said. “If you already ate it, try to connect with yourself.”
Asked how the strawberry tasted, one child said: “My whole brain feels changed. It’s too powerful for me. Ahhhhh!”
In the school garden outside, where cherry tomatoes still hung on the vine, Rein sent the students on a scavenger hunt and helped them plant corn kernels in rich black soil. They wandered through the last of the basil, calendula, and lettuce, overturned stones and logs looking for worms, and checked off items on the hunt list.
“The overarching thing is to understand where the food is coming from,” said Rein. Then she repeated her farm-to-school mantra: “If they grow it, they’ll eat it.” —Aden Choate
