TRURO — Students at Truro Central School, be they kindergartners or fifth-graders, know that the florets that sprout at the top of kale plants are to be picked. And eaten.
Kale buds must be nipped because they divert nutrients from the rest of the leafy stalk, says school nurse and farmer-in-the-school coordinator Beth Cook. In the school garden, where those leaves could become school lunches, picking the buds is a daily ritual. A sample — proffered by Cook — confirms that kale buds, like other brassica florets, are tasty.
Kale is just one of the crops growing in small plots in the “learning garden,” an outdoor classroom behind the school.
“My motto is ‘If they grow it, they will eat it,’ ” says Stephanie Rein, who in her 11 years as Truro’s official farmer in the school has learned that “the things children will eat are remarkable.” She calls the pea shoot a “gateway vegetable.”
Rein is also Wellfleet’s farmer in the school. The program, created and supported by the nonprofit Sustainable CAPE with grants from the Mass. Cultural Council, Mass. Dept. of Agricultural Resources, the USDA, and private donors, is underway in Provincetown, too, and will be rolled out this fall in Eastham, Rein says.
On June 4, the Truro kindergartners and first-graders had a “salad party” where they munched on a medley of herbs and vegetables as they decorated paper bags that would soon hold their very own watermelon seedlings.
A kindergartner who was incidentally celebrating her sixth birthday was delighted: “My favorite part was the sweet stuff,” she said, nibbling a sprig of dill.
Rein walked around the table, offering them a sprinkle of pansies as an edible floral garnish. A student popped one in her mouth: “Good!” she said.
Recently, Rein organized the “great mustard challenge,” in which she collected five types of mustard greens grown locally for the kids to try. Students sampled them from mildest to spiciest: “Number five was like eating a wasabi pea,” says Rein, which the kids enjoyed “with a tear rolling down their cheeks.”
Growing now are gourds and beans; indeterminate tomatoes — ones that will continue to grow and produce until frost — will soon dapple the garden’s trellises. Chives stand sturdy and graceful, topped by just-bloomed pale purple blossoms. There’s also rosemary, thyme, tarragon, dill, mint, and fennel. Lemon balm is tucked away on the edge of the garden, which is steadily forcing its way down the abutting hill. Flowers blossom all around: “We need to draw the pollinators,” says Cook.
Garden coordinator Helen Grimm likes how the garden provides kids with “a sensory break” during their school days, relief from indoor overload. “We have different plants for different senses, or different ways of interacting in the garden,” she says. Grimm helps the students transform the fruit of autumn olives — high in lycopene — into fruit leather. With comfrey, yarrow, St. John’s wort, and calendula, they make salves.
The garden beds teach the kids not just about the intricacies and edibility of plants. “We live in a really fragile environment,” says Cook. “We are trying really hard to create stewards of the land.”
What happens here is different from other kinds of outdoor time, Cook says. “When they are on the playground or they’re at T-ball practice, they’re not really connecting with the land.” In the garden, the students become deliberate about where they’re walking and learn to take care of the plants they’re growing.
Various subjects are woven into the garden experience, from science in watching seedlings sprout to civics at “seed election” time. For that, before students voted on two crops to add to the garden mix, they made posters and campaigned for their crops of choice. Rein says that “they caucused, naturally.” Watermelons and blueberries were this year’s winners.
“This is the best job,” says Rein, who’s been farming on her own Truro property for more than 30 years. Rein grows beans in green, purple, and yellow, lemon cucumbers, and “very sublime and delicious-tasting” white cucumbers. Her real claim to fame? “I have a cult following for rocket.” At her place, she says, “the weirder the vegetable, the more it’s for me.”
That point of view has clearly rubbed off on her students. “If it comes out of the garden, it’s intriguing,” says Rein. “We’re eating pansies; we’re eating fennel.” In the garden, the kids ask to try straight oregano, known for its bitterness, and “they wash it down with kale.”